Clare Past Forum

says a headline in the Irish Times today, January 18, 2025. In an article by Sylvia Thomson, on page 18, she gives a short description of some of the items being sold online by Co. Offaly bookseller, Conor Purcell, including a dictionary part-written by Aodh Buí Mac Crúitín:
A first edition of one of the earliest Irish-English dictionaries, written by Conchúbhar Ó Beaghlaíoch, a priest and private tutor working in Paris, and Aodh Buí Mac Crúitín, a scholar from Co. Clare, is another gem (estimate €800 – €1,600). It was published in Paris in 1732, over 20 years before Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, deemed to be the first modern English dictionary.

Sheila

For a biography of Aodh Buí, see "Aodh Buí Mac Crúitín (c.1680-1755)", by Michael Mac Mahon: https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/cocla ... ruitin.htm

Mac Mahon says that the dictionary includes an introductory poem by Mac Crúitín, in which he exhorts his country men and women not to forsake their language and culture. In "Notes on the Poets of Clare"(https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/cocla ... uirtin.htm), Thomas F. O'Rahilly says: "Aodh Buidhe has thus the distinction of being the only Irish poet during the whole of the eighteenth century who ever saw even a line of his own work in print!" - see Note 3.

Sheila