Gather round me, all ye ladies fair, And ye gentlemen of renown; Listen, listen, and to me repair, Whilst I sing of beauteous Dublin town. The Irish have long been associated with great writing generally and with poetry specifically. The love of language pervades this strong culture, and the Irish people have long shared poetry with each other, whether in the street, in the home, or in the pub. These poems may be bawdy or tragic, but there is always something quintessentially Irish about them. In Gather Round Me, Christopher Cahill has put together a collection of the best of these popular poems, found in newspapers, heard in pubs, or put down in diaries. With explanatory notes that make the verse more accessible, these poems give voice to the Irish character, full of humor, mischief, and wit.

The people of Tyrone have the reputation for having 'open hearts and a desire to please' and their folk tales are as varied as their landscape. There are the tales of the amazing feats of the giant Finn McCool and the derring-do of the Red Hand of Ulster as well as the dramatic story of Half-Hung MacNaughton and the hilarious tale of Dixon from Dungannon and his meeting with royalty. All these stories and more are featured in this collection of tales which will take you on an oral tour across the country from the Sperrin Mountains in the west to the flat peatlands of the east.

Diarmaid O Muirithe's column Words We Use was a feature of The Irish Times over many years and has formed a critically acclaimed book of the same name. Words We Don't Use (much anymore) is a highly entertaining compendium of words which are either on the brink of extinction or have already been deemed obsolete by the great dictionaries. O' Muirithe's gentle and witty style reveals his vast knowledge and scholarship in an accessible way. Inside you will find words such as manable, meaning a girl of marriageable age, and adamite, a person who appears nude in public, among many others that you might want to casually drop into your everyday conversation! Words We Don't Use is a wordsmith's delight

The Little Book of Tyrone is a compendium of fascinating, obscure, strange and entertaining facts about this much-loved county. Here you will find out about Tyrone's myth and legend, its proud sporting heritage, its castles and great houses and its famous (and occasionally infamous) men and women. Through quaint villages and bustling towns, this book takes the reader on a journey through County Tyrone and its vibrant past. A reliable reference book and a quirky guide, this can be dipped into time and time again to reveal something new about the people, the history and the secrets of this ancient county.

This book investigates linguistic variation as a complex continuum of language use from standard to nonstandard. In our view, these notions can only be established through mutual definition, and they cannot exist without the opposite pole. What is considered standard English changes according to the approach at hand, and the nonstandard changes accordingly. This book offers an interdisciplinary and multifaceted approach to this central theme of wide interest. The articles approach writing in nonstandard language through various disciplines and methodologies: sociolinguistics, pragmatics, historical linguistics, dialectology, corpus linguistics, and ideological and political points of view. The theories and methods from these fields are applied to material that ranges from nonliterary writing to canonized authors. Dialects, regional varieties and worldwide Englishes are also addressed.

Diarmaid Ó Muirithe's column Words We Use was a feature of The Irish Times for many years. This collection of his most memorable contributions, by turns witty and sympathetic, wears its prodigious learning lightly and is sure to delight those captivated by the power of language to shape the world around us. Drawing on the author's nearly inexhaustible knowledge of languages, their mechanics and idiosyncrasies, Words We Use has sections covering everything from Magic and Shakespeare to Computers and Text Messaging. It will change the way you think about language forever.