Sir, – President Higgins and Olivia O’Leary, among others, informed one and all that the word ceiliuradh has a many-layered depth of meaning, encompassing memory of what is best in our traditions of artistic endeavour and capacity to enjoy ourselves, etc. Dinneen’s dictionary conveys something different. In order, he refers to an act of bidding farewell, to chirping and birdsong, to solemnisation and the celebration of Mass. Treating of the verbal noun and verb, he introduces the rather contradictory notions of greeting and bidding farewell, and of reneging at cards.
Much of this seems to have little to do with the glorious rumpus in the Albert Hall. It does appear that in the sense of "celebration" the word ceiliuradh signifies solemnisation, eg of the Eucharist, rather than of nine minutes of The Auld Thriangle . Perhaps the Gaelic scholars among your readers would care to comment. Just as the word leithreas, meaning a convenient abbreviation in writing, has mistakenly been taken to signify a "convenience" in the sense of a (public) lavatory, might it not be that in the modern era we are running away with ourselves in attributing to reneging at cards the sense of rí rá agus ruaile buaile that the word ceiliuradh possibly never had? Yours, etc,
DAVID NELIGAN,
Silcheater Road,
Glenageary,
Co Dublin