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O mbeannaí Dia daoibh, a chairde and welcome to the Bluffer's Guide to Irish.
The Bluffer spent a fruitful day at Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich on Saturday, having a great lunch at Bia before going into the Dánlann - the gallery named after Gerard Dillon for a talk on a wonderful find at the Linenhall Library.
The Linenhall is well-known as the city's most famous leabharlann - library which is celebrating its 225th anniversary this year.
The library has been collecting ábhair Ghaeilge - Irish materials since it was set up in 1788.
Amongst its committee members was one Robert Shipboy McAdam, tionsclaí mór-le-rá - a leading Belfast industrialist who owned, with his brother James, a world-famous teilgcheárta - foundry in Townsend Street.
He patented a design for a tuirbín gaile - a steam turbine and sold his products as far afield as Egypt, learning Arabic in the process. McAdam is known to have spoken and written at least thirteen.
But Robert, of course, was a great champion of the Irish language and he arranged for and paid Irish speakers to travel the country copying lámhscríbhinní - manuscripts that would otherwise be lost.
That is quite íorónta -
ironic however, in that recently, the Librarian, John Killen, came across a number of imleabhair - volumes which turned out to be a foclóir compráideach - a comparitive lexicon with Irish ceannfhocail - headwords and the same words in up to 25 other languages, the Celtic, Romance and Teutonic languages as well as Turkish, Eabhrais - Hebrew and Aaraibis -Arabic and even back as far as Sanskrit and .... Despite not being an Irish-speaker, John realised a thábhachtaí is atá na himleabhair - the importance of the volumes and with the help of Jake Mac Siacais from Forbairt Feirste and Dr Charlie Dillon of Queen's University in Belfast, we now know more about the lexicon but also about Robert Shipboy (his mother's maiden name) McAdam himself.
There are 13,000 Irish headwords translated into the various other languages which must have taken McAdam years to compile while he was also working at his Soho Foundry and involved in many of the city's institutions.
We have an idea of when McAdam was working on the lexicon as there is a letter to him asking him to attend a cruinniú - meeting of the Board of the Linenhall Library dated November 1888 on the back of which he has written some notes in Irish.
McAdam would have
written the Irish headwords first and then filled in the other columns in the 28 or so other languages de réir a chéile - little by little.
As well as the lexicon, McAdam also wrote notes on sanasaíocht -etymology of Irish words with comparisons to other languages, from Anglo-Saxon to Scots and words used in Belfast over 125 years ago.
Until John Killen came across them, the books hadn't been opened in over a century. In one of them, they found a shaving from one of McAdam's pencils, a touching material connection to this giant of Irish scholarship.