Dr Ken Ó Donnchú

Now, if you ever thought social media invented the short, sharp one-liner, think again.

A fascinating new book called Danakal brings together witty Irish epigrams and verses dating back centuries.

And joining me now to discuss this is one of the book's co-translators, Ken O'Donoghue.

Ken, you're very welcome to the studio.

Thanks very much.

So I think some of our listeners this morning will be familiar with shanakals, right, which are old words or old proverbs.

What are danakals?

Yeah, so thanks very much for having me on.

Dawn Uchal is a word which was kind of made up in a way or adapted by the compiler of this book, T.F.

O'Reilly, to translate epigram.

So we're familiar with epigrams in English as being short phrases, short snappy phrases, and they're usually in prose, like a quick one-liner.

And Oscar Wilde was famous for hundreds of them.

You know, I can resist everything except temptation type thing.

So what you get in this book...

is going back over the centuries.

In Irish tradition, you get poetic versions of them.

So four lines of poetry.

And normally in the final line is where either something related to a seán achill or some kind of little moral or little kick is given, which kind of conveys the message of the poem.

And was that the purpose of these poems?

Was it to convey a message, a moral instruction, a piece of wisdom, a bit of advice to entertain perhaps?