Eibhlìn

Each of the lyrics comes from an old-time hickory song for fiddles, and is a lyric from that corresponding song.

"Fire on the Mountain" --> "Fire on the Mountain, run boys run"

Fire On The Mountain - Fiddle Player POV

"The House of the Rising Sun" --> "The Devil's in the house of the rising sun"

House of the Rising Sun

"Ida Red" --> "Chicken in the bread pan peckin' out dough"

Ida Red - Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys

"Granny Will Your Dog Bite" --> "Granny does your dog bite? 'No child, no'."

FTC #149 Granny Will Your Dog Bite

And for your furthered education, The Mountain Whipporwill.

in a time before things like radios and record players, every time you heard music was because there was somebody in the room with you playing an instrument. and many, many, many social events involved dancing, which requires music. so, if you're planning any kind of gathering in the american south or appalachia, you need to find a fiddler. and the fiddler's job is to play music that everybody knows and likes and can dance to.

the mistake The Devil makes in his bet with Johnny is that he misinterprets the contest as being about technical ability, so he has this big flashy song. he plays fast and impressively with a band of demons playing unfamiliar instruments in unfamiliar rhythms. he's definitely more skilled at playing than Johnny, and thinks he has it in the bag.

The Fenian Cycle follows a roving band of warriors and hunters at the edges of settled Ireland. Where the Ulster Cycle was set at a king’s court, the Fenian Cycle is set in the woods, on hilltops, on coastal headlands, and in the half-tame country between them. Fionn mac Cumhaill leads the Fianna; his son Oisín, his nephew Caílte, his foster son Diarmuid, and the rest of the band live by hunting, fighting, and the patronage of the High King Cormac mac Airt. The cycle’s tone is more pastoral and elegiac than the Ulster Cycle, often told from the far side of the Fianna’s destruction by the last surviving warriors recalling a world that’s already gone.

If you’re new to this series, the four-cycles overview sets the framework, the Mythological Cycle overview covers the gods, and the Ulster Cycle overview covers Cú Chulainn and Conchobar’s court. This article focuses on the Fianna’s life and the texts that survived them. The Cycle of the Kings overview comes next.

The world of the Fenian Cycle

The Fenian Cycle’s central institution is the Fianna, a hereditary warrior band sworn to the High King but living mostly outside the settled kingdoms. They served as soldiers in summer and hunters in winter, traveling the country in a fixed circuit, supported partly by the king’s hospitality and partly by what they took in the field. Membership was governed by a famous set of admission tests: a candidate had to hold off nine warriors with only a stick and a shield, recite the twelve books of poetry, run through the woods at full speed without breaking a stick or disturbing a hair on his head, leap a branch the height of his forehead and stoop under one the height of his knee, and pull a thorn from his foot without slowing his stride. The texts present these as standards, not exaggerations, something between a finishing school and a brotherhood.

Where the Ulster Cycle’s heroes contested the curath-mír at a king’s table, the Fenian Cycle’s heroes hunt deer in the morning, sleep in a thicket at night, and tell stories around a fire. The setting is woodland Ireland: ridges, rivers, lakes, forests, and the standing stones and síd-mounds that mark Otherworld entrances. The Otherworld stays even closer here than in the Ulster Cycle. Síd encounters are frequent. Fionn himself has divine ancestry through his grandfather, and the cycle assumes its heroes can step in and out of the Otherworld as easily as they step from a meadow into a forest.

By the cycle’s internal chronology, the Fianna flourish during the reign of Cormac mac Airt, High King of Ireland (a 3rd-century AD figure on the medieval timeline). They die at the Battle of Gabhra when Cormac’s successor Cairbre refuses their tribute. Most of the surviving texts are told after that battle, by Oisín and Caílte, who outlive the Fianna by supernatural means and recount the band’s deeds in the years afterward.

The texts and the late character of the cycle

The Fenian Cycle has more late and folkloric material than any of the other cycles. The earliest core sits in shorter ballads and lays preserved in Lebor na hUidre and the Book of Leinster. The cycle’s keystone medieval text is Acallam na Senórach (The Colloquy of the Ancients), a massive partially poetic narrative composed around 1200, in which Caílte and Oisín, the last surviving Fianna, travel through Ireland with Saint Patrick and recount the band’s deeds. Several of the most beloved Fenian texts are later compositions. The Bruidhean tales (the Hostel cycle), in which the Fianna are repeatedly trapped by hostile sídhe, are 14th- and 15th-century works. The version of Oisín i dTír na nÓg most modern readers know is from Micheál Coimín’s 1750 Irish-language poem, not from any medieval text.

The cycle has a long and complicated reception history outside Ireland. The Scottish poet James Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian (1760s), which presented partly-translated, partly-invented Fenian material as the work of a 3rd-century bard named Ossian, became a Europe-wide literary phenomenon and influenced Goethe, Napoleon, and the Romantic movement broadly1. Later 19th- and 20th-century retellings by Lady Gregory (Gods and Fighting Men, 1904) and Standish O'Grady consolidated the cycle’s modern shape.

The Christian framing in this cycle is more visible than in the Ulster Cycle, mostly because Acallam na Senórach is built around Patrick as the listener and recorder. The Fianna stories survive precisely because they’re being told to a Christian saint who orders his scribes to write them down.

Practical takeaway: when you meet a Fenian story, find out when it was composed. A Fenian ballad from a 12th-century manuscript carries different weight than a folktale recorded in 1890.

Major figures

Fionn mac Cumhaill Leader of the Fianna. Son of Cumhall, who was killed in battle before Fionn’s birth. Raised in secret by druidesses in the woods. He came of age, sought out the poet Finnegas at the Boyne, and accidentally gained the imbas forosna (the gift of poetic insight) by burning his thumb on the Salmon of Knowledge while cooking it for his teacher. He can summon the gift afterward by chewing the thumb.

Oisín Fionn’s son. The band’s bard. His name means “little fawn”; his mother Sadhbh had been transformed into a deer when he was conceived. After the Battle of Gabhra, Oisín is taken to Tír na nÓg by Niamh. He returns centuries later, falls from his horse, ages three hundred years instantly, and lives long enough to meet Saint Patrick.

Caílte mac Rónáin Fionn’s nephew. Famous for his speed; the texts say he could run the length of Ireland in a day. With Oisín, the main narrator of Acallam na Senórach.

Diarmuid Ua Duibhne Fionn’s foster son, raised in part by the god Aengus Óg. Known for the ball seirce (love-spot) on his forehead: any woman who saw it fell in love with him. The lover at the center of Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne.

Gráinne Daughter of Cormac mac Airt. Promised in marriage to the aging Fionn; sees Diarmuid at the betrothal feast and forces him by geis to elope with her. Often read by modern readers as one of the cycle’s most ambivalent and self-determined figures.

Cormac mac Airt High King of Ireland during the Fianna’s flourishing. The Fianna serve him; the cycle’s political center is his court at Tara.

Goll mac Morna Leader of Clan Morna. His clan killed Fionn’s father, but Goll later joins the Fianna under Fionn. A sometime rival, a sometime ally; the cycle’s most layered antagonist-friend figure.

Niamh of the Golden Hair Daughter of Manannán mac Lir. Comes to Ireland on a white horse and takes Oisín to Tír na nÓg.

The major stories

Macgnímartha Finn (The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn)

Cumhall, leader of the Fianna, is killed in battle by Goll mac Morna and Clan Morna. Cumhall’s wife Muirne hides their newborn son in the woods and gives him to two druidesses, Bodhmall and Liath Luachra, to raise in secret. The boy grows up learning the warrior arts. He emerges from the woods, performs feats that establish his identity, and goes to study with the poet Finnegas at the river Boyne. Finnegas has been trying to catch the Salmon of Knowledge for seven years; when he finally catches it, he gives it to Fionn to cook with strict instructions not to eat any of the flesh. Fionn burns his thumb on the salmon’s hot skin while cooking. Sucking the burn, he tastes the salmon, and the knowledge passes to him. Fionn arrives at Tara in time for Samhain, when the dragon-like creature Aillen mac Midgna had been burning the hall every Samhain for years; Fionn defeats Aillen and is acknowledged as leader of the Fianna.

Translation: The Boyish Exploits of Finn (Kuno Meyer, CELT); also at Sacred Texts in James Stephens’s Irish Fairy Tales

Candlelit Tales: Fionn, the Salmon, & the Dragon (Ep 40)

Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne (The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne)

An aging Fionn arranges to marry Gráinne, daughter of the High King Cormac mac Airt. At the betrothal feast Gráinne sees Fionn’s foster son Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, is struck by the love-spot on his forehead, and lays a geis on him to take her away that night. Diarmuid resists but cannot break the geis, and the two flee. Fionn pursues them across Ireland for sixteen years. They sleep in temporary shelters of branches; the “beds of Diarmuid and Gráinne” survive across the Irish landscape as place-lore at dolmens and rock-shelters. Eventually Aengus Óg negotiates a partial peace. Fionn invites Diarmuid on a boar hunt at Beann Gulbain; Diarmuid is mortally wounded by the boar. Fionn could heal him by carrying water from a nearby spring in his cupped hands; he does so but lets the water drain through his fingers each time, and Diarmuid dies. Gráinne later accepts Fionn as husband, ending the story on a note of long ambiguity rather than clean tragedy.

Translations: The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne (Mary Jones’s Celtic Literature Collective); O'Grady edition (Internet Archive) for parallel Irish and English; Irish Sagas Online extracts

Candlelit Tales: a multi-part series including How Diarmuid Met Gráinne (live show); The Pursuit of Diarmuid & Gráinne Part 1 (Ep 33, SoundCloud); Part 2 (Ep 34, YouTube)

Acallam na Senórach (The Colloquy of the Ancients)

The Fenian Cycle’s keystone medieval text, composed around 1200. Caílte mac Rónáin and Oisín, last surviving Fianna, live into the time of Saint Patrick by some unexplained Otherworld arrangement. Patrick meets them and travels with them through Ireland as he Christianizes the country. At each significant landscape feature (hill, lake, mound, ford, ancient tree) Caílte and Oisín tell Patrick the story of what happened there in the days of the Fianna. Patrick’s scribes write the stories down. The frame structure makes the Acallam both an anthology of Fianna stories and a literary tour of mythic Ireland. At around 8,000 lines, it is the longest-surviving work of medieval Irish literature, and it preserves dozens of Fenian stories that survive only here.

Translations: the standard modern English translation is Ann Dooley and Harry Roe, Tales of the Elders of Ireland (Oxford World’s Classics, 1999)

Candlelit Tales: Oisín and Saint Patrick (Ep 98, SoundCloud) covers the Acallam frame directly; the older Ep 09 - Oisín & St Patrick is a shorter version

Oisín in Tír na nÓg

After the Battle of Gabhra, Oisín meets Niamh of the Golden Hair, daughter of Manannán mac Lir, who has come to Ireland to take him as her husband. They ride together on her white horse over the western sea to Tír na nÓg (the Land of Youth), where neither time nor age operate. Oisín lives there with Niamh for what feels like three years, has children, becomes restless, and asks to return to Ireland for a visit. Niamh agrees but warns him not to dismount from the horse. Three hundred years have passed in Ireland; the Fianna are gone and the country has become Christian. Oisín tries to help some men move a boulder, the saddle girth breaks, he falls, and ages three hundred years instantly. He survives long enough to meet Patrick, which is where his story connects to the Acallam. The version most readers know today is Micheál Coimín’s 1750 Irish-language poem, Laoi Oisín ar Thír na nÓg, rather than any medieval source.

Translations: Coimín’s poem in English versions on Internet Archive; modern retellings in Lady Gregory’s Gods and Fighting Men (Sacred Texts)

Candlelit Tales: Oisín in Tír na nÓg (Ep 215, SoundCloud)

Bruidhean Chaorthainn (The Hostel of the Quicken Trees)

A 14th- or 15th-century composition representative of the bruidhean (hostal) genre, in which the Fianna are repeatedly trapped by hostile supernatural forces. Fionn and a small party are invited to a feast at a magical hostel by Midac, a foreign king Fionn had once defeated and adopted into the Fianna. The hostel turns out to be a trap. As soon as the Fianna sit, they’re stuck to the floor by enchantment, and a foreign army gathers outside to slaughter them. Diarmuid escapes capture and learns that the Fianna can only be unbound by the blood of three foreign kings sprinkled on the hall’s floor. He hunts the kings down and kills them while Fionn and the others sing fragments of the dord fiann to rally help. The Fianna are unbound, the army is routed, and Midac is killed. The story is a representative late Fenian narrative; it’s plotted more like a folktale than an early-medieval saga.

Translations: The Hostel of the Quicken Trees in P.W. Joyce’s Old Celtic Romances (Sacred Texts); also in Lady Gregory’s Gods and Fighting Men

Candlelit Tales: The Hostel of the Quicken Trees (Ep 19) on YouTube; also on SoundCloud

Oisín and Patrick

Less a single text than a body of dialogue passages preserved in the Acallam and in later ballads. Oisín, returned from Tír na nÓg in his ancient body, meets Saint Patrick. Patrick tries to convert him; Oisín pushes back. Their exchanges are some of the cycle’s most striking material. Oisín mocks Patrick’s bell-ringing and psalm-singing as feeble next to the music of the dord fiann and the hunting horns of the Fianna. He refuses to renounce the Fianna or to consider them damned, asking pointedly whether his father Fionn is in heaven and what the saint plans to do about it if not. The Oisín–Patrick ballads circulated independently of the Acallam in oral tradition for centuries and were collected into print in the 19th century. They informed Macpherson’s Ossian project and remain some of the most accessible Fenian material for modern readers.

Translations: the Acallam dialogue passages are in Dooley & Roe; the later ballads appear in Patrick Kennedy’s Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts and in Lady Gregory’s Gods and Fighting Men

Candlelit Tales: see the Acallam entry above; Ep 09 - Oisín & St Patrick and Ep 98 - Oisín and Saint Patrick both cover this material

Where to go next

Two reading suggestions for going deeper. The full Acallam na Senórach in Dooley & Roe’s translation contains dozens of Fenian stories not summarized here. Lady Gregory’s Gods and Fighting Men (1904), free on Sacred Texts, is a useful single-volume entry to many Fenian stories in accessible English.

The Cycle of the Kings is up next. The shift between cycles is significant: the Fenian Cycle’s heroes are warrior-hunters at the edges of the kingdom; the Cycle of the Kings moves into the kingdoms themselves, with kings real and legendary, geasa broken, sovereignty won and lost.

I've written up the rules of the deibhidhe form. It's not an easy one to write in; the first couple of lines are easy, but the constraints increase as you go. For the first line, you just need seven syllables and some alliteration. By the time you get to line 4, it needs to rhyme with line 2, have two internal rhymes with line 3, and the last word must alliterate with the previous stressed word.

I think this verse meets all the requirements: Sing songs of the sea, soldier; Tell tales of travel abroad. Count coins, show scars and marvel At those folk who simply stayed. It takes a lot more time to explain the working than the verse itself, but here goes: in line 1, "sing", "songs", "sea" and "soldier" all alliterate, although I don't get any extra points for more than one. Style counts, though. The ending "r" puts it in group 4. In line 2, "tell", "tales" and "travel" all work the same way. A terminal d lands in group 1.

In line 3, "count" and "coins" alliterate, and "show" and "scars" sort-of do. The terminal l falls into group 4, same as line 2.

In line 4, for the internal rhymes, "folk" rhymes with "count" from line 3 (group 2), and "show" with "who" (group 4, although it's weak). The final words alliterate; "simply stayed" and the terminal d obviously works with line 2.

And it has that undertone of faint sarcasm which seems to be an essential of Irish poetry in any era.

*notable may be a stretch for some of the people on the list but if they are in the public eye I included them. Most of the RTÉ employees and journalists were taken from Wikipedia’s list of Irish LGBT people.

Please keep in mind that for a lot of these people, especially those who lived and died long ago, it is impossible to truly know if they were LGBT+ or what modern term they would have felt most comfortable with. I have simply used my judgement from the information available when assigning modern terms to them.

Inclusion of a person here does not inherently mean I agree with their views and actions, it just means they are Irish and LGBT.

Living:

John Boyne - novelist; Dublin; gay

Francis Brennan - hotelier; Dublin; asexual

Stephen Byrne - RTÉ2 presenter; Dublin; gay

Jonathan Rachel Clynch - RTÉ presenter; genderfluid

Brendan Courtney - RTÉ presenter; Dublin; gay

Rory Cowan - actor; Dublin; gay

Lydia Foy - transgender activist, dentist; Kildare; trans woman, wlw

Ursula Halligan - TV presenter; Dublin; lesbian

Garry Hynes - playwright; Roscommon; lesbian

Adiba Jaigirdar - novelist; Dublin; queer

Brian Jennings - RTÉ Radio; gay, partner to Michael Dwyer before his death

Breda Larkin - comedian; Galway; lesbian

Fr Bernárd Lynch - Catholic priest who supported many during the AIDS crisis & first Catholic priest to enter a civil partnership; Clare; gay

Frank McGuinness - playwright, writer; Donegal; gay

Una Mullally - journalist; Dublin; lesbian

Graham Norton - TV presenter; Cork; gay

Eilish O’Carroll - actress and comedian; Dublin; lesbian

Rory O’Neill/Panti Bliss - drag queen; Mayo; gay 

Shuhada’ Sadaqat/Sinéad O’Connor - singer; Dublin; fluid sexuality

Andrew Scott - actor; Dublin; gay

Steven Sharpe - musician; Tipperary; gay

Fiona Shaw - actress; Cork; lesbian 

Judith Storm - trans activist; Dublin; transvestite, wlw

Colm Tóibín - writer; Wexford; gay

Leo Varadkar - politician (TD for Fine Gael, Taoiseach and Tánaiste); Dublin; gay

Tonie Walsh - activist, founder of GCN and the Irish Queer Archive; Dublin; gay

Dead:

Anne Bonny - pirate; bisexual, partner to Calico Jack Rackham and probably partner to Mary Read; Cork; 1697-? Possible dates include 1733 and 1782. She disappeared after not being hanged in 1721.

Dr James Barry - British army surgeon; trans man, possibly mlm; Cork; 1789-1865

Edward De Lacy Evans - made the news when he was found out to be born a woman; trans man; 1830-1901

Albert D. J. Cashier - American Civil War soldier; trans man; Louth; 1843-1915

Oscar Wilde - poet and playwright; gay; Dublin; 1854-1900

Roger Casement - diplomat and nationalist; gay; Dublin; 1864-1916

Louie Bennett - suffragist and writer; lesbian, partner to Helen Chenevix; Dublin; 1870-1956

Eva Gore-Booth - poet and suffragette; lesbian; Sligo; 1870-1926

Kathleen Lynn - Sinn Féin politician, activist and medical doctor; lesbian, partner to Madeleine ffrench-Mullen; Mayo; 1874-1955

Eileen Gray - architect and artist; bisexual; Wexford; 1878-1976

Madeleine ffrench-Mullen - revolutionary and activist; lesbian, partner to Kathleen Lynn; Dublin; 1880-1944

Elizabeth O'Farrell - nurse and revolutionary; lesbian, partner to Sheila Grenan; Dublin; 1883-1957

Julia/Sheila Grenan - revolutionary and suffragette; lesbian, partner to Elizabeth O'Farrell; Dublin; 1884-1972

Nora O'Keeffe - revolutionary and feminist; lesbian, partner to Margaret Skinnider; Tipperary; 1885-1961

Helen Chenevix - suffragist; lesbian, partner to Louie Bennett; Dublin; 1886-1963

Margaret Skinnider - revolutionary and feminist; lesbian,partner to Nora O'Keeffe; 1892-1971

Francis Bacon - artist; gay; Dublin; 1909-1992

Patrick Hennessy - artist; mlm; Cork; 1915-1980

Gerard Dillon - artist; mlm; Belfast; 1916-1971

Patrick Scott - artist; gay; Cork; 1921-2014

Marie Conmee - actress and activist; lesbian; Sligo; 1933-1994

Nuala O'Faolain - writer; sapphic, partner to Nell McCafferty; Dublin; 1940-2008

Nell McCafferty - writer; Derry; lesbian, partner to Nuala O'Faolain; 1944-2024

Jim Hutton - hairdresser, long term partner of Freddie Mercury; mlm; Carlow; 1949-2010

Michael Dwyer - film critic; gay, partner to Brian Jennings; Kerry; 1951-2010

These lists include LGBT pieces set in Ireland, LGBT pieces with Irish main characters, LGBT pieces as Gaeilge, and LGBT pieces created by Irish people, often they overlap but not always. Feel free to suggest things I ought to add or offer corrections for mistakes I've made.

Please note that the inclusion on this list does not mean I recommend the piece in question - I am familiar with only a few. This is intended as an archive of Irish LGBT+ pieces, not a recommendation of everything included.

Where possible links lead to RTÉ player, TG4 player, YouTube or official sites. Not all links lead to pieces that are available to watch at the time of posting.

Celtic Students blog’s list for multiple languages

Irish

An Foclóir Aiteach

An Foclóir Aiteach (nua)

My Foclóir Aiteach graphics - LGBT, mlm & wlw, demi identities, queer, polyam & Intersex, nonbinary identities, ace, aro, ply & pan

Galway Pride’s helpful leaflet

Primarily derogatory words

Another LGBT+ terminology post

Scots Gaelic

Briathrachas LGDTCE+

Dictionary page

Welsh

Stonewall Cymru’s Glossary of Terms

Amended list by @anarchist-luke (in progress)

As part of what will become the The Medieval Poetic Forms Project, I'm digging into Irish Medieval Poetry Forms. There are many; a lot of the surviving texts are poetry, or at least poetic. I've poked triads before, too.

The form I'm currently looking at is called deibhidhe, which I'd pronounce as "JAY-vid-the", approximately (or "JAY-vee", if you're going for a more Western sound).

It's a quatrain form, with seven syllables per line. The last word of the 1st and 3rd lines must rhyme with the unstressed syllable of the last word of the 2nd and 4th lines. There must be two internal rhymes between lines 3 and 4. Two words in each line must alliterate, and the final words in line 4 must alliterate with the preceding stressed word.

"Rhyme" here is not just sound; there are consonant groups which go with each other:

Group 1: b, g, d

Group 2: c, p, t

Group 3: ch, ph, th

Group 4: bh, gh, dh, l, mh, n, r

Group 5: ll, mm, nn, rr

Group 6: s

These groups rhyme (I think) if the vowel after them is the same, or if there is no vowel.

literally just saying 'he spoke with a Welsh accent'; sure, it's a bit blunt, but it gets the job done in a pinch. "He's completely drunk," he said, his southern drawl lingering on the final syllable as if to highlight the extent of the offence. Y'know, something of that ilk, but not as shit.

learning the specific vocabulary and syntax that someone with that accent might use. Sticking with the Welsh theme, because it's objectively the best accent*, there's a bunch of things that differentiate a colloquial South Walean accent, outside of our famed tendency to elongate a vowel to the point of death. The way we use prepositions (where to by is he?), the vocabulary borrowed from Welsh - saying that someone daft is twp, or something small is dwty - can easily signpost our speech as being from that specific area, without needing to type something like "'e's absolutely 'angin', man, pissed as a faaht 'e is!" Something less jarring, such as "He's absolutely hanging, he is." is just as clear. A character who says "Do you want a cuppa?" is coded or located very differently to one who says "You'll have a cup of tea, so you will."

ditto if there are specific ways that someone from a certain area might refer to a well-known concept. Regional words for mother and father, for example, or words that are class-specific; your character who calls his parents 'mater and pater' is likely inhabiting a different socioeconomic strata than your character who calls them 'mam and dad'. See if there's a colloquial way of saying 'yes' and 'no'; a lot can be signposted if your character says 'nah' rather than 'no', or 'aye' rather than 'yes'. A character saying 'couch' is inherently coded differently to one who says 'sofa'.

The reasons that writing accents phonetically is Generally Ill-Advised, In My Opinion are as follows:

quite simply, you're probably not being as clear in conveying the sounds of the accent as you think you are. Taking JK Rowling's work as the best possible example of this, her attempts at writing a Cockney accent phonetically come across like someone is chewing a mouthful of cheese curds and struggling to contain them. There's no consistency, no proper understanding of how to transcribe syllables into writing in a way that coherently conveys the accent she's trying to portray. I mean this so seriously, but what the flying fuck is: 'Well, 'e 'ad these 'ead pains and 'e was def'nitley nervous. Depressed maybe.' It's a crime, is what it is.

it's just plain hard to read. Trying to wade through sentences full of apostrophes and elision, parsing what's actually being said, gets tiresome. It asks the reader to do work that you're actively making harder for them. And that's not always a bad thing! Making readers Put Some Fucking Effort In can be very fruitful! But do you really want them to be struggling to understand every single thing that your Character B is saying for 350 pages?

which leads me onto the last point, and the most important in my mind: writing out accents like this always, always affects accents that are already in some way Othered. They're either racialised or working class, or associated with certain local regions that have negative stereotypes - think the deep South of the US, or the Welsh Valleys. They're never the 'default'. And this raises thorny questions about what the default is, what the standardised accent is, the accents that do and do not merit differentiation from the norm. You're relegating Character B to being hard to read because he's from, idk, Sunderland. You've decided that he isn't speaking 'properly', and therefore the reader needs to understand that other people think he's speaking weirdly. That, to me, is the principle issue. Because returning to JK Rowling (a sentence I hoped never to type), the only characters who speak like this in her work are working class, or they're from other countries. They're never from, you know, Surrey. Wonder why that is. And it's easy to be glib about it, but I do think it reifies class and regional boundaries in a way that's ultimately harmful.

This isn't to say that there's never a place for eye dialect in writing - Trainspotting, for example, wouldn't be what it is without it, and there's definitely a different conversation to be had when it's your own accent and you're making a deliberate point about identity by differentiating through eye dialect - but I think that the blanket assumption of 'oh shit, my character is from Ireland, I'd better type that out phonetically!' can actually be both damaging to your writing and to your character representation, and I think that instead doing the work to really understand the vocabulary, speech patterns and unique aspects of a language or dialect always makes a work feel more authentic and lived-in.

To wit, less of this shite:

There’s mony a slip, an’ I’m no losin’ sight o’ any o’ my suspectit pairsons, juist yet awhile. (Peter Wimsey, if you were wondering, and yes, that's supposed to be Scottish)

and more of this:

"Are we straight so?" "Aye, we're straight," said Jim. "Straight as a rush, so we are." (Jamie O'Neill, Irish, from At Swim, Two Boys)

The preservation of transgender history is essential to ensuring that the stories and experiences of trans people are not forgotten. The Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) has taken on the vital task of gathering and protecting this history, bringing together documents, images, and materials that reflect the rich and diverse experiences of transgender people across time and place.

By making these resources accessible, the DTA facilitates explorations of the often-hidden or erased narratives of trans communities. From personal stories to institutional records, these materials provide a window into the challenges and triumphs faced by trans individuals, while also celebrating the resilience and diversity of these communities.

Preserving this history is also about ensuring that future generations can learn, understand, and be inspired by the stories of those who came before them.

Explore more about how these efforts are safeguarding trans history, and why it matters, on JSTOR Daily.

I got this little booklet from Galway Pride last year but never got round to captioning it, hence the delay. Galway Pride/Bród na Gaillimhe makes everything available in both English and Irish and in fact it was after attending an Anseo agus Aiteach (Here and Queer) meeting at Teach Solais in Galway that I was inspired to start this page.

Image description: a series of images showing the four pages of a small black paper booklet containing LGBT terms in Irish. The first image is of the front of the booklet - along the right side is the progress pride flag and it says "Gaeilge Aiteach - Queer Irish, by Galway Pride 2020 - le Bród na Gaillimhe." The second image is of the back page which has text at the top and bottom and Galway Pride's logo in the centre (the logo is a small rainbow with three people standing under it).

The top text reads "Bhí an leabhrán seo déanta le tagairtí ó 'An Foclóir Aiteach'. Tuilleadh eolais air anseo: https://usi.ie/focloir-aiteach/ *** This booklet was made with references from 'The Queer Dictionary'. More info on it here: https://usi.ie/focloir-aiteach/."

The bottom text reads "Más mian leat tuiulleadh cleachtú a dhéanamh ar do Ghaeilge, bígí linn ag Anseo agus Aiteach! Tuilleadh eolais ar Facebook 'Teach Solais LGBT+ Resource Centre' *** If you'd like to practice more of your Irish, join us at Anseo agus Aiteach! More info on the 'Teach Solais LGBT+ Resource Centre' Facebook."

The third and fourth images contain the following LGBT+ terms in Irish:

Forainmneacha (fur-ann-um-ugh-ah) - pronouns

siad/iad (sheed/eed) - they/them

sí/í (she/ee) - she/her

sé/é (shay/ay) - he/him

Mar shampla: "Úsáidim siad/iad" (mar hahmp-lah: oo-sawj-um sheed/eed) - For example: "I use they/them"

Gnéasachtaí & Féiniúlachtaí (guh-nay-suck-tee & fay-noo-luck-tee) - Sexualities & Identities

Leispiach (lesh-pee-uck) - lesbian

Aerach (air-uck) - gay

Déghnéasach (jay-guh-nay-suck) - bisexual

Trasinscneach (trass-in-shcuh-nuck) - transgender

Aiteach (atch-uck) - queer

Idirghnéas (ij-urr-guh-nay-suck) - intersex

Éighnéasach (ay-guh-nay-suck) - asexual

Painghnéasach (pan-guh-nay-suck) - pansexual

Neamh-dhénartha (nuh-yav - jay-nawr-ha)- nonbinary

Mar shampla:

"Is leispiach mé" (is lesh-pee-uck may) - I am a lesbian

"Is duine neamh-dhénartha mé" (is dih-nah nuh-yav - jay-nawr-ha may) - I am a nonbinary person