Motherfoclóir

In a way, a band like the Pogues had to form in London rather than on the island of Ireland itself, where they would’ve been primarily associated with their town or county rather than the entire Irish community, as they are. London’s anarchic punk scene in the late 70s and early 80s created an exciting opportunity for the Irish identity to express itself and Shane McGowan’s band ran with it, creat...

Talent. Does it actually exist, or is it just an invention that takes credit for the cruel mix of hard work and good luck (or good work and hard luck) which decides our fate? Maybe we can find out by watching a talent show. Or maybe we can ask Síomha Ní Ruairc, presenter of TG4’s An Ríl Deal and Réalta agus Gaolta. She tells Peadar and Darach about how Gaeilge opened doors for her on her route to...

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it. That’s a quote attributed to the Roman senator Publius Syrus, who also said that a good reputation is more valuable than money.  We hear a lot on the radio and in the news about how much Irish costs. But what do costs mean outside the context of value? We know that a car or house might be insured for one amount, sell for different figure and...

When we in Ireland think of Irish-America, our minds tend to rush towards rivers died green, New York cops and maybe even a Massachusetts political dynasty. But there’s a lot more to the story than that. In particular, the Appalachian region, crossing multiple states, has its own culture and identity distinct from its neighbours in the South and Midwest, of which Irish music and language have made...

Listen. Sure lookit. Na Daoine Uaisle. The fairy folk.. We wouldn't want to be bothering them. In this week's episode, Gearóidín, Peadar and Darach tiptoe around the delicate business of addressing the folk of the otherworld. What do those beautiful weirdos want? Síofras? Sex? Gold? We also consider which Irish people might actually be from the faerie/sí community. --- Get Kirsten Shiel art prints...

What a year. What a week. What a decade! It’s Christmastime again and Darach, Peadar and Gearóidín have met up to reflect on the passing of time. In this week’s episode they look at the 2010s as the decade when the Irish language and social media became acquainted with each other, starting with the #sneachta hashtag and ending with an election in our neighbouring state that has made hitherto hypot...

If this episode of Motherfoclóir is exactly as long as your psychotherapy session, maybe that’s not a coincidence. Poor old Podcast Dad Darach is on the couch this week, whining like a man-baby about his terrible, afflicted adolescence at a Jesuit school. The experience gave him a lifelong suspicion of the order and their academic output, up to and including the jewel in the crown of the Irish Tex...

After five years of preparation and development, the RIA have released “A History of Ireland in 100 Words” in 2019. The book looks at the stories behind words found in the Academy’s Dictionary of the Irish Language (www.dil.ie) in an accessible way. Naturally, it was ony a matter of time before the Motherfoclóir team hunted them down! In today’s episode, Éimear and Darach chat to Sharon Arbuthnot,...

Maynooth holds a special place in the heart of this show. Two of the core crew - Éimear and Peadar - are Maynooth graduates, and our most popular episode to date is a sensational live show at the Maynooth Students’ Union featuring a difficult rooster. Today we’re considering another aspect of that university’s gift to the world - specifically, its gift to Irish hip hop. Tebi Rex, one of Ireland’s...

It’s Dublin Podcast Festival time again! This year the Motherfoclóir gang appeared as part of a double bill with The Irish Passport at The Button Factory on November 17th. This episode is the live recording of that show, edited for brevity and clarity. In a world where so many TV and movie franchises have grinded to a halt or are on hiatus, Darach wanted to alert Hollywood to the fact that Irish h...

The 2010s will go down as an extremely significant decade in Irish literature in both of our official languages. The bailout and its aftermath affected the country heterogeneously and the literary scream in response to this uneven scourging was delivered in uneven voices: younger, more rural, less aspirational, more accented. While the Celtic Tiger wrote about the recent past with the smugness of...

One of the most talked about, well loved and critically acclaimed TV shows of the past  year has been the second season of Fleabag, with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s titular character finding an unlikely connection with an Irish priest. The pressure put on their mutual attraction by his vow of celibacy is a rich source of comedy and drama. This is not the first time such a topic has been examined by a l...

Welcome to our annual spooky Samhain episode! Darach is joined by Peadar and Gearóidín to share their best Irish haunted house stories. Hear all about Mag from Laois, mischievous Gertrude Curran from Rathfarnham and the terrifying secrets of Lep Castle. Please mind your pets this Hallowe'en. --- Get Kirsten Shiel art prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kirstenshiel/  Order from www.dropche...

It is a lovely morning in the village, and you are a horrible season. That's the view of Motherfoclóir's Clodagh McGinley, who is unimpressed by the golden leaves, soft sweaters and pumpkin spice lattes that mark the autumn months. In today's bonus episode she joins Darach to discuss some autumnal words, plant names and vegetarian vocabulary…. and that annoying ad with the guitarist at the laundre...

This week Darach, Ola and Peadar are joined by bilingual broadcasting superstar Hector Ó hEochagáin. Since his breakout success with the Amú series in the early 2000s, Hector has become one-name-famous and one of Ireland’s best loved broadcasters. In this week’s episode he tells the gang how he found his way into the television world, how TG4 is like a family and the importance of making a simple...

Every few months on the Irish side of the internet, a certain debate pops up about the spelling of a word. The word refers to convivial merriment, especially in an Irish context. But should it be spelled crack or craic? The reason this discussion can withstand multiple rounds of debate hinges on the way that the word and the stories of its origins overlap with other recurring debates: on Irish ide...

The changes in Irish self-identity in the 2010s hinge on the rise of social media, especially how those networks completely altered the way two perennial features of Irish society - emigration and Gaeilge - fed back into the national conversation. A generation of young people who left Ireland after the bank bailout were able to stay in touch with developments and debates in Ireland, culminating in...

Switzerland is one of those countries that doesn’t pop up in the news very often but appears to be ticking along nicely. In this regard it is not unlike Norway, another country that has chosen to keep an arm’s length relationship with the European Union. Now, as Brexit approaches, these two countries are among the models of post-divorce custody being considered by Britain and the EU. But what is S...

It’s a tale as old as time - boy meets girl, boy is married, girl wants to break boy’s wife’s legs. Or maybe it’s the simple story of a girl in love with a cobbler, forbidden to go to the fair and waiting for a fairy godmother who will never come. Or maybe it’s the entirely relatable fable of an utterly livid goat? Hibernophile and occasional Mary Black backing musician Steve Martin once said that...

“Only a game designed by nerds would have charisma as a fantasy power” Gravity Falls A few weeks ago, Orla Ní Dhúill wrote a blogpost that got tongues wagging across the internet. The issue she wanted to address was the phenomenon of the Irish language being used as a kind of public-domain Klingon or Dothraki across fantasy novels and roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons. Naturally, we had...

It is our hundredth episode! We are delighted to still be here and even more thrilled that you, are listeners, are still here. To mark this august occasion, Darach, Clodagh and Peadar have dipped into the mailbag to see what’s vexing ye all this week.  Expect unusual chicken salads, terrified Slovenians, language learning tips and maybe even the occasional non-glottal stop. --- Please visit www.dr...

When German-Morroccan DJ Mousse T recorded the song “Horny” in 1998, he surely had no idea that he was creating a Pompeii-like cultural artefact, one that preserved evidence of what a world was like minutes befoe it changed forever. The local slang of a town or of a neighbourhood is part of its cultural treasury. Are new words - be they loanwords of neologisms - an addition or a subtraction from t...

As the 2010s draw to a close, we’ll be looking back at one of the most significant decades in the Irish history since the Civil War. It is a decade that began and ended with wēijī (crisis-opportunity) moments for Ireland’s relationship with the European Union, as well as two landmark referenda that sparked a wave of activism. So who better to chat about all this with than Lisa Nic An Bhreithimh? L...

The Irish for a Prime Minister is Príomh-Aire; Taoiseach is specifically the title of the Prime Minister of Ireland and it comes from the old word for a tribal chief. This word is still used on the Nuacht on those occasions when an African tribal chief is in the news - older listeners might remember references to “An Taoiseach Bhutelezi”.  This isn’t the only time that Irish and African imaginatio...

The concept of the “silly season” is arguably a dated one in the era of 24 hour news and social media; it dates back to a time when daily newspapers had to fill gaps created by the closure of houses of parliament, higher courts and lulls in the sporting calendar. In some ways, the silly season is all year long now. But in another way, Ireland’s national obsessions with Leaving Cert results, social...