Seeing Things (1991), as Edward Hirsch wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "is a book of thresholds and crossings, of losses balanced by marvels, of casting and gathering and the hushed, contrary air between water and sky, earth and heaven." Along with translations from the Aeneid and the Inferno, this book offers several poems about Heaney's late father.

    In Reading Turgenev, a lonely country girl escapes her loveless marriage in the arms of a bookish young man. In My House in Umbria, a former madam befriends the other survivors of a terrorist bombing with surprising results. Nominated for the Booker Award.

    With the help of a new friend, and some friendly grown-ups, Alan unearths the story of another summer seventy years before and is at last able to give his new friends their dearest wish.

    There are 350 substantial entries, in alphabetical order from Aban, a 6th-century saint, to Weather, all with full references to sources, a synopsis of relevant stories, and discussion of their origin, nature and development. These are complimented by a genre-list of material under various headings, such as Mythical Lore, Fianna Cycle, Ulster Cycle, King Cycles, Peoples and Traditions, Religious Lore, and Folk Custom and Belief. There is also a wealth of genealogical detail, indicating how historical and social circumstances have influenced the growth and spread of Irish lore. DAITHI O HOGAIN, Associate Professor of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin, is an international authority on folklore and traditional literature.

    . . . Simply put, this book is a feast for the intellect"—Thomas M. Wilson, American Anthropologist"One of the best books to have been written on Northern Ireland. . . . A highly imagination and significant book. Formations of Violence is an important addition to the literature on political violence."—David E. Schmitt, American Political Science Review

    Keane is one of Ireland's most popular playwrights. With his plays now reaching the cinema, his work has become known to an international audience. 30 years after John B. Keane made his professional debut as a playwright, biographers Gus Smith and Des Hickey join forces to tell the remarkable story of the man from Listowel.

    Goddesses of war, fertility, and sovereignty ordered human destiny. Christian monks, in recording the old stories, turned these pagan deities into saints, like St Brigit, or into mortal queens like Medb of Connacht. The Morrigan, the Great Queen, war goddess, remains a figure of awe, but her pagan functions are glossed over. She perches, crow of battle, on the dying warrior CuChulainn's pillar stone, but her role as his tutelary deity, and as planner and fomentor of the whole tremendous Tain, the war between Ulster and Connacht, is obscured. Unlike the Anglo-Irish authors who in modern times treated the same material in English, the good Irish monks were not shocked by her sexual aggressiveness. They show her coupling with the Dagda, the 'good god' of the Tuatha De Danann before the second battle of Mag Tuired, but they conceal that this act - by a goddess of war, fertility and sovereignty - gives the Dagda's people victory and the possession of Ireland. Or they reduce the sovereignty to allegory - when Niall of the Nine Hostages sleeps with the Hag she is allegorical of the trials of kingship! With the English invasion and colonization, the power of the goddesses diminishes further. The book shows the fall in status of the pagan goddesses, first under medieval Christianity and then under Anglo-Irish culture. That this fall shows a loss in the recognition of the roles of women seems evident from the texts. This human loss only begins to be restored when, presiding over the severed heads in Yeats's The Death of Cuchulain, the Morrigu declares, 'I arranged the Dance.'

    By combining difficult, often fragmentary primary sources with sociological and anthropological methods, Patterson produces a unique approach to the study of early Ireland—one that challenges previous scholarship. The second edition includes a chapter on seasonal rhythm, material derived from Patterson’s post-1991 publications, and an updated bibliography.

    It is also about Celtic Christianity.

    In order to give Mary comfort and contentment, her father, the toy-maker, fashions three dolls that look like the children outdoors. Many years later, Mary and her granddaughter return to the toy shop and discover that her father's gifts live on!

    The photos accompany a succession of key extracts from the poet's verses, plays, essays, and memoirs--passages that evoke the landscape he loved. Includes a brief chronology of Yeats' life. 44 color photographs, 53 duotones.

    With over 200 full color photographs, this book focuses on the essence of Ireland - the language, the traditions, the legends, the literature, and the music, as well as on the open-hearted, good-humored people and the beautiful country they inhabit.