- Tim Robinson was a cartographer, artist, and writer whose scrupulous and lovingly-detailed records of the West of Ireland, its landscape, its people, and its distinctive languages were lauded, hugely influential, and are revered in Irish studies. These publications include Pilgrimage (1986) which won the Irish Book Awards literature medal, and what is referred to as his "Connemara Trilogy," a prize-winning trio of books which studies the link between place and people in the West of Ireland. Robinson died in 2020 from COVID. Liam Mac Con Iomaire was a writer and broadcaster who served as Director of the Modern Irish Language Laboratory at University College Dublin. His previous publications inlcude Ireland of the Proverb (Townhouse, 1988). He is particularly well-regarded by those who work in the Irish language. He died unexpectedly in May 2019. In their previous collaboration, the translators earned the MLA's Louis Roth Award for Cre na Cille / Graveyard Clay (Yale UP 2016).
- There are some books which are of enduring cultural, critical, and historical importance to their field, and this is one. After centuries of colonization and concerted efforts to eradicate Irish language, folklife, and culture from Ireland, the importance of artifacts such as this work cannot be overstated. It is of critical academic and general interest.
- As a new series, Irish Culture, Memory, Place has included the work of one rising Irish star, the innovative collaborative work of two established and highly-regarded American academics, and an edited volume which speaks both to the memorialization of Irish history as well as to the issues facing women in the current moment. What we are lacking as we establish ourselves is an engagement with the Irish language. With the publication of this title, the final work of two luminaries in the field, we will secure a beautiful and important work which honors the language and culture from which it stems.
- The work will appeal to scholars, students, and general readers interested in Irish history, language, folklore, and culture. It will also be of academic interest for cultural geographers, anthropologists, and folklorists. It is important that we have a strategy in place to get this title into Irish bookshops as this audience will be the largest and most eager for the work.
Industry Reviews
The greatest triumph of this book's many triumphs is its warm appreciation for family and community that emerge in the lovingly translated texts. These stories foreground the history of Ireland as experienced, remembered, and relived by oral intellectual leaders of a marginalized, and often forgotten, maritime community. . . . Indeed, if silence is the angel with which literature wrestles, these translations give voice to the memory, stories, and legacy of oral intellectuals who feature here and tell the story of history from below. Essential reading for any traveler to Connemara and the West of Ireland.
-- Brian O Conchubhair, University of Notre Dame
Sean Mac Giollarnath's landmark publication of 1941 demonstrates his work in collecting traditional material and transcribing vernacular culture. It is fitting to see the work in translation, and readers seeking to step into the wondrous world of Conamara tradition would do well to begin here."
-- Rionach ui Ogain, University College Dublin
With the same profound and intimate sense of place and absolute command of their source's rich Conamara Irish they brought to their translation of Mairtin O Cadhain's Cre na Cille as Graveyard Clay, in Conamara Chronicles: Tales from Iorras Aithneach-their superb translation of traditional lore originally collected and published by Sean Mac Giollarnath in 1941-Liam Mac Con Iomaire and Tim Robinson bring alive again the people, tales, and culture of another of Ireland's petites patries whose like is unlikely to ever be seen again.
-- Philip O'Leary, Boston College
A vivid and absorbing collection of tales that bring to life whole worlds of imagination and experience. Tim Robinson and Liam Mac Con Iomaire in their remarkable translation capture the poetic vibrancy and profound sensitivity to nature and place of a community of Conamara storytellers who see the local as the portal to the universal.
-- Michael Cronin, Trinity College Dublin
