I don't know if Tomás Ó Crohan even spoke English.

Anyway the word-for-word translation was Myles na Gopaleen's, one of a few passages included in an anthology called The Best of Myles na Gopaleen, published by Picador.

The other one I quoted from is by Robin Flower, in an edition published by the Oxford University Press, a very nice edition, with some great pictures. P>

I can't tell how good Flower's translation is, since I haven't the Irish. It reads well anyway - but looking at Myles literal word for word transposition of the Irish into English, I think the tidied up version must lose a lot of flavour.

I don't know too much about contemporary books in Irish - but anybody who gets with reaching distance of Tomás Ó'Crohan, or Maurice O'Sullivan (Twenty Years a-growing) would be far far better than 90 per cent of the books written in English any year.