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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Pat Kenny Show. With Timber Living Log Cabins. Saturday and Sunday from 10am on Newstalk. Conversation that counts.
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.
Chapter 2: What are danakals and how do they differ from shanakals?
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? Absolutely, yeah. So you kind of touched on two important points there in these poems. One is that a lot of them are very light and satirical and they're to entertain and to just provoke a laugh.
And then the second one is that you often do get a more serious message or some kind of veiled dig at somebody in power. So there's a whole section in this book which is having a go off the clergy and how they're holier than thou. And it's interesting because there's kind of two sources for these poems. Some of them were single verses on the margin of manuscripts.
And they had no other context and they didn't exist beyond those four lines. And then other ones were extracted from much longer poems where it was kind of a built in pre-existing proverb or a little moral or a little message of some description. And then it was taken out in isolation. So T.F. O'Reilly, who compiled the book, he was an expert in Irish manuscripts.
And as he was cataloguing and researching some of the hundreds of Irish language manuscripts that we have in this country, he was taking note of these phrases as he went along. And he compiled about four or five books similar to this, which is it's a kind of a subjective, you know, it's his own compilation and his own edition.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of poetic versions in Irish tradition?
But they speak to us still. And I think they're very enjoyable literature compared to some of the more heavier literature you find throughout Irish history. I love that, the veiled dig, which I think is something that Irish people are really, really good at, smiling but actually putting their elbow into your ribs at the same time.
I mean, out of all of them, and there's literally hundreds in this book, what is your favourite? What stands out for you? What do you think still resonates in 2026 Ireland? There's a few which immediately to do with drink, that we all recognise the ill effects of drink and, you know, what that can cause.
And then what you just mentioned, yeah, the veil dig, having a go off someone, maybe not saying it, you know, directly to their face or, you know, there's a saying in Irish, so saying, looking at somebody between the two eyes, which is a hard thing to do probably, but it kind of, it conveys this idea of having a go off someone, but being a bit indirect about it.
It's hard to choose just one in the book, but there's a nice one there which gives the book its title, number 55 in the book itself. And I read the Irish very quickly in translation, so... And that's a version of that. And that's a version of that. That is the one I was going to pick out, that exact one. Sweet is the mouth which is closed because it made me think, which came first?
That line, silence is golden, did it come from this epigram or was the epigram inspired by the line? There's really no way of knowing for sure. And you get this interplay throughout Irish history of the written tradition, written literature and an extremely robust oral tradition. And both were influencing each other as far back as we can tell from written records.
So it's very hard to know which one came first. But I think that particular line as well, it speaks to us now in our own day about, you know, we're all so familiar with whatever you say, say nothing. So even if you are speaking, in a way, you're being silent. We're so familiar with that concept.
So I think there's an idea in this collection of human behaviour and certain traits being timeless and being universal. Where did these come from? I mean, who was writing them? Were they writers of the times, poets of the time, or were they formed through ordinary conversation amongst Irish people? A mixture of both, I'd imagine.
Now, who wrote it down were poets, and some of these go back over 600 or 700 years and even more. But their sources of inspiration were mixed. They were from literature and also from their own oral culture. So, you know, whatever the equivalent of a pub was 600 years ago, pub talk and people conversing with each other.
And it's also important, I think, when we think about Irish literature over a length of time, just how robust and how strong the oral tradition was.
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Chapter 4: How do these Irish epigrams convey moral messages?
So was recognising his work important to you? And why do you think it should be done? Yeah, absolutely. He's extremely well known in a very small area, Irish studies. And he had a sister who should be recognised in the same regard, Cecile O'Reilly. Unbelievable scholars, both of them. They had a brother, and this was kind of a nice way to tie up the book for us.
Their brother, Alfred, was the founder of Cork University Press, who have published this book. a very famous controversialist and academic in his own day. He was president of UCC. Himself and TF fell out and TF got the boot from where he was working in Cork. And this book was originally published with a different publisher.
So we're delighted that the translation over 100 years later is with the imprint that Alfred founded. So it kind of came full circle in the end for us. But the O'Reilly's a fierce, interesting family. And they still have resonance in our own day. They're connected to the media world too. They're descendants. Well, the book is called Danfoggle. It's a beautiful book. Irish epigrams in verse.
I would love to say silence is golden, but unfortunately it doesn't work here on a radio programme. But we have to leave that conversation there for now.
Dr. Ken O'Donoghue, thank you so much for coming in to us.
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