So well known did he become for this pioneering novel that people would point to Máirtín Ó Cadhain and say, ‘There goes Cré na Cille!'

Ó Cadhain (1906 -1970), from a family of talented story-tellers, broke the mould with this earthy novel which much later would be made into a successful film. Unusually, the novel is set in a graveyard and the squabbling characters are all dead.

Their language, however, is far from dead. Ó Cadhain's novel displays linguistic pyrotechnics which may never be surpassed, and both the stage version and radio adaptation thrilled their respective audiences like nothing else before or since

Pages 336