Poets and Dreamers: Studies and translations from the Irish

A collection of translations and short studies presenting Irish oral poetry, ballads and dramatised pieces alongside essays on folk belief, healing, and rural experience. The work alternates close renderings of songs and laments with contextual commentary about wandering poets, communal memory, and local landscapes, and includes political ballads, workhouse recollections, and dramatic pieces adapted from traditional material. Recurring concerns are death, repentance, devotion, and the social settings that shape vernacular verse, and the commentary seeks to reproduce rhythms of the original language while explaining the customs and moods that give the poems their force.