Why Irish Needs 32 Words for “Field”
The language of a landscape where magic still lingers.
Manchán Magan never actually met a leprechaun. But when he was 7, he found a leprechaun’s pipe in the garden.
This was no childish fancy. An elderly neighbor identified the fae artifact, which makes sense because years earlier Magan’s own mother had seen a leprechaun cavorting nearby.
Cast off your skepticism — and your monolingualism — and step into a magical book called Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape.
Equal parts memoir, history, and linguistics, Magan’s charming book sings the praises of Irish. Here is a tongue, he reminds us, that may be “the oldest vernacular language in Europe.” It’s been spoken for millennia. But this isn’t a work of nostalgia or archaeology — “it’s a revelry.” He regards Irish as a crystal lens through which we glimpse a realm beyond the dull materiality that most of us consider our natural limit.
Thirty-Two Words for Field is organized as a series of short essays with headings such as “Thresholds,” “Sounds,” and “Winds.” In each one, Magan introduces a few evocative Irish words and phrases like “crithir,” which means “a particle or spark of flame or light.” Or iarmhaireacht, which connotes “the loneliness you feel at cockcrow, when you are the only person awake and experience that existential pang of disconnection, of not belonging.”
Justifying his surprising title, he explains that “geamhar is a field of corn grass, biorrach is a marshy field, buaile is a field for keeping cattle before milking.” One of the words for “field” conveys that something occasionally happened here “but no longer does.”
“To have all this wonder and wisdom bound up within the shell of a single word is remarkable,” he writes, “but it is not exceptional in Irish.”
Still, agricultural categorization — however curious — is not really the point. What makes this discussion so engaging is the way it reveals the Irish language’s fierce attention to subtlety and nuance, the way it allows a speaker to see outside “the claustrophobic parameters of what is known and prescribed.”
Magan, from a family steeped in Ireland’s revolutionary history, first recognized that expansive perception while watching the sunrise with a friend who spoke only English. “I asked him which of the five stages of the sunrise seemed most animated to him and he looked at me as though I were talking gibberish.”
Gibberish, of course, was England’s verdict on Irish for hundreds of years, enforced with derision, law, and even violence.
But within what once struck London as gibberish lies a language exquisitely alert to the geography of this world and the magic that still bleeds into it.
“Since Irish predates our current fixation on reason and rationality and is more in tune with a mythological worldview, it offers a wider sense of reality, a different prism through which to regard existence. If our current globalised mindset and the stifling parameters of accepted orthodoxy feel confining to you, you may appreciate the increased sense of freedom and possibility within this ancient language.”
Magan’s most provocative thesis is that this ancient language anticipates in some novel way the quirky, unsettling revelations of quantum physics. For decades, scientists have been telling us that the solid forms of matter are not as they seem. Irish speakers knew that a thousand years ago.
“The illusion we live by is that our world is composed of heavy matter,” he writes, “but if we dare widen our focus beyond the limited inputs provided by our senses we realise that it is far closer to being built on light.”
As a Christian Scientist descended from Irish stock, I stumbled upon that passage as though it were a pot o’ gold.
Before he died in 2025 at the age of 55, Magan traveled around Ireland performing a show in which he baked sourdough bread and explained Irish words while the audience churned butter.
I want to believe — I need to believe — that if you stop at the edge of a buaile just as the sun rises and take a deep breath, you can still smell that bread baking.
(You can hear a sample of the audiobook, read by Magan’s brother, Ruán Magan, here.)◆
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Keep scrolling: This week’s literary adaptations include Colleen Hoover’s Reminders of Him.
Books Go to the Movies and the Concert Hall
Hollywood — along with millions of readers — is still deeply in love with Colleen Hoover. The latest adaptation, Reminders of Him, opens in theaters today starring Maika Monroe and Tyriq Withers. Co-written by Hoover, the film is based on her 2022 novel about a young mother trying to regain custody of her daughter after serving time for a drunk-driving crash that killed her boyfriend. Can she ever earn forgiveness and find love with a bar owner who used to be an NFL player? Wear waterproof eyeliner.
The seventh season of Virgin River, about the travails of good-looking people in a small Northern California town, began streaming last night on Netflix (trailer). The series, starring Alexandra Breckenridge and Martin Henderson, is based on Robyn Carr’s Virgin River novels — more than 20 books, starting in 2007. (Dawn says if I tell anyone she’s watched the show, she’ll deny it.)
the wealth of nations, by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang, premieres at the New York Philharmonic on March 19. The oratorio, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, is inspired by Adam Smith’s 1776 economic treatise, which celebrates its 250th anniversary this week. When considering tickets — as high as $238 — remember Smith’s words: “The real price of every thing is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”◆
Reading Retreat
If your idea of a good time is camping in the wilderness with people who plot clever murders, I’ve got just the trip for you. (But if you end up bludgeoned to death, don’t say I didn’t warn you.)
For the second year in a row, Hyatt Hotels and Reese’s Book Club are offering Camp Unwritten, a chance for devoted readers to savor the great outdoors with their favorite authors.
At ULUM Moab, a desert retreat in Utah, glampers can enjoy “safari-inspired luxury accommodations” and “immersive wellness experiences” with thriller writers Lauren Ling Brown, author of Society of Lies, and Andrea Bartz, author of We Were Never Here.
During this three-day escape — “Plot Twists in the Desert,” June 8-10 — guests will roast s’mores with the authors around a fire, take a tour of Moab, and dine on a literary-inspired menu. Yoga, massage, and a dead backpacker are extra (from $1,400 per person).
For something more romantic, try “Love Stories Under the Stars,” May 4-6, at Under Canvas Yosemite near Yosemite National Park. The hosts for this palpitating safari are a surprise Reese’s Book Club author and Rainbow Rowell, whose forthcoming novel, Cherry Baby, will be published next month (from $1,200 per person).
A loner like Emily Dickinson would have hated these trips, but she was right: “There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away.”◆
“The only people for me are the mad ones.”
An exhibit devoted to America’s favorite free spirit, Jack Kerouac (1922–1969), is on view at the Grolier Club in New York. (Good news for Beatniks just waking up from celebrating Jack’s birthday yesterday.)
The show, “Running Through Heaven: Visions of Jack Kerouac,” draws from the collection of Jacob Loewentheil. It includes unpublished manuscripts; early editions of his books sporting “sensational marketing copy”; volumes from his personal library, such as a copy of Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed; his first published story, “The Brothers,” in the literary journal of the Horace Mann School for Boys; and a photograph by Allen Ginsberg of Kerouac holding William Burroughs’s cat.
Letters between Kerouac and his friends show him “testing language, exploring autobiography, and beginning to shape the themes that would define his work.”
Loewentheil notes that although Kerouac is known for his “spontaneous prose,” he was, in fact, a careful experimenter who consciously transformed his private experience into a public persona.
Capturing the intensity and diversity of the writer’s spiritual life, the Grolier exhibit contains both Kerouac’s rosary beads and his Buddhist mala beads.
“Kerouac’s writing offers more than a mere chronicle of youthful escapade,” Loewentheil writes. “It is a map of spiritual and personal growth, a detailed rendering of his search for meaning in postwar America.”
“Running Through Heaven” runs through May 16 and is free to the public (details). The catalogue by Loewentheil will be published next week.◆
Picture This
Adored by young readers, admired by their parents, and demonized by censorial prigs, Judy Blume has been a force in American literature for more than 50 years.
This week, Mark Oppenheimer published the first comprehensive biography of Blume — initially with her cooperation. But as Elisabeth Egan reports in The New York Times, Blume cooled on the project after reading a draft and sending Oppenheimer 40 pages of “suggestions, disagreements and assorted thoughts.”
Oppenheimer won’t be appearing at Blume’s bookstore in Key West, Fla., but you can catch him tonight, 500 miles away, at The Lynx, Lauren Groff’s bookstore in Gainesville (full list of tour dates).
Meanwhile, there’s a second new biography of Blume — one that has reportedly earned her approval: It’s a picture-book collection of poems titled Otherwise Known as Judy the Great, written and illustrated by Selina Alko (ages 6-10).
Alko presents little Judy as a dreamy, imaginative girl in a loving family. Judy’s mom, Esther, had a profound influence on the writer she would become:
The very best gift Essie gave to Judy
was letting her read whatever she wanted.And Judy wanted to read
whatever she could get her hands on,
be it cereal boxes
or serial stories —Judy read as much as she could.
The poems about her family listening to news of the Holocaust and sitting shiva for older relatives in America feel appropriate for children. But a two-page spread about three airplane crashes in one year could be a little frightening for some younger readers — and their parents.
Alko’s illustrations in acrylic and collage are bright and energetic, with swooping perspectives that keep the pages lively.
I particularly like a poem about the time Judy wrote a book report on a book she invented. “She got an A!,” Alko writes. “What does that say? / Maybe Judy was on to something.”
This could be the perfect book for a child whose older sibling has already discovered Judy Blume.◆
Book Collecting Contest
Our literary history depends on what’s collected and preserved, which means our literary history depends on who’s collecting and preserving.
Traditionally, books that a certain class of White men deemed significant formed the canon; books they ignored fell into oblivion or, worse, became subjects of ridicule.
Rare book dealers Heather O’Donnell and Rebecca Romney are part of a movement to broaden the field of book collecting with other perspectives. For 10 years, they’ve managed the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize to honor the collections of young women.
The contest is meant to counter the assumption that book collecting is a wealthy man’s game. After all, anybody with $400,000 can buy a signed first edition of The Great Gatsby. But the 2025 winner showed real intellectual creativity by assembling a collection of books, letters, playbills, and prints about 19th-century actresses who played men’s parts in Shakespeare.
Alas, this year’s contest will be the last one, so start scanning your shelves, young women! The prize is $1,000.
According to the contest website, “The winning collection will be more than a reading list of favorite texts: it will be a unique group of printed or manuscript objects, creatively chosen to shine light on one another.”
Even if you have no intention of entering — or aren’t eligible — it’s fun to consider your own collection from this perspective.
Submissions for the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize are open to women in the United States under 31. The deadline is July 1 (details).◆
This week’s poem
The poems in R.A. Villanueva’s rich new collection, A Holy Dread, address what is holy and what is dreadful, such as the lives of children and the terrors that shadow us.
“Despite / every havoc,” he writes, “we still sing of orchids.”
That seems like a thoroughly reasonable response — possibly the only reasonable response.
This dark is the same dark as when you close
your eyes, I whisper to our son while he
catches his breath. It is well past midnight
and he will not describe the face of what
he fights to unsee. By his feet, the greenglow of a nightlight retreats into blue,
slips softly to red. Above his bed: notes
we once had time to tape onto the latch
of his lunchbox, flights of origami
swans, throwing stars and fortune tellers. Whenyour turn comes to lie beside him, this is the bridge he’s set to repeat: Always an angel, never a god — and so you hold him close like a saint shadowed by the axe, cradling her own haloed head in her hands.
“This Dark Is the Same Dark As When You Close,” excerpted from “A Holy Dread,” by R.A. Villanueva (Alice James Books, 2026). Reprinted with permission of the publisher.◆
We Are the Champions
The Olympics may be over, but some awesome athletic feats rocked Washington last Saturday when ping-pong and pickleball players gathered for Paddle Palooza!
The charity tournament — complete with silly team names and even sillier rules — raised almost $35,000 for 826DC, the literary nonprofit that offers free writing programs to hundreds of kids in D.C. (I’m on the board. Our local chapter is part of 826 National, founded by Dave Eggers in San Francisco.)
My wife, our younger daughter, and her friends Katie and Utsav competed as the Totally Hip Paddlers. Their team came in second place, largely by employing a number of strategic “cheats,” like forcing the opposing team to play with their bare hands and wear dark glasses. Hey, it was for a good cause! (WUSA9 video)
Odds & Ends
This week’s book review is Karan Mahajan’s The Complex, one of the most unsettling portraits of family life I’ve ever read (review).
Legendary NPR host Diane Rehm and I talked about Jonathan Miles’s terrific new novella, “Eradication,” on Substack this week (watch).
I had a lovely conversation about job loss and “mattering” with Jim Mora on New Zealand public radio (listen).◆
I really hope I can still read you. I have Parkinson's and can only read ebooks. I subscribed to the Post, but stopped when they massacred the writers, Books, International, etc. I live in the Basque Country of northern Spain (oldest language in Europe, and very difficult, but, hey, I learned Spanish easy enough and can get by in some Basque). I hope I don't miss you if you go to fully paid. I miss your reviews. dwoodmex@gmail.com Take care and know that even those of us far away appreciate you.
Manchán had a traveling ritual in which participants could “adopt” a seldom-used Irish word. You promised to safeguard it and promulgate it in whatever way you chose. I was conferred with “stagún,” which means “a stubborn person (perfect); a frost-bitten potato; a old hag (a significant character in Irish folklore); and an old nag.” With more research I learned that it means “a horse that stops short at the first sign of danger” - which made me wonder if this was the origin of the term “horse sense.” Manchán liked that definition, and added it to his vocabulary list. RIP to a wonderful writer and champion of the language.