This guy knows focail: Gary Bannister

Kiss My… Pog Mo Thoin: Dictionary of English-Irish Slang

Collected by Garry Bannister

New Island

This bracingly filthy little book is an essential reference work for Irish-language scholars, or anyone who'd like to add a bit of colour to their focail. It's often said that language provides the most revealing clues to a people's soul, and if the contents of Kiss My… Pog Mo Thoin are anything to go by, we're a subversive and very lusty race indeed. But then we knew that already, despite our school dictionaries containing no dirtier a word than 'gnéas'. Here, Garry Bannister helps fill out our repertoire of Irish slang, and revels in it. Taking the straightforward form of an English-to-Irish A to Z, the book not only holds words and phrases dating from the time of the síle-na-gigs, but a wide range of contemporary colloquialisms too ('go snasta' for 'funky', for example). Some of the entries are simple transliterations – the dreaded béarlachas your Irish teacher sniffed at – like 'an bother a bhualadh' for 'hit the road', but most of the content bears testimony to Irish people's linguistic inventiveness, whatever the teanga. And there's plenty of teanga action under the covers here – look up the 'f' word and you'll find nearly a page of spin-offs. You'll never think of comely maidens in the same way again. Don't be put off by the jokey title by the way – this is a serious and impressive piece of research, but still great fun.