"Twenty Years A-Growing," first published in 1933 can be found in your local library. A young Irish fisherman, then in the Dublin police force, sat down one day to write a book to entertain his friends on the remote little islands, the Blaskets, in the extreme SW corner of Ireland off the coast of Kerry, where he had grown up. He had never written anything before, had not had any schooling to speak of, and had no idea that what he was to write about the simple and familiar things that had been part of everyday life - dances, singing, story-telling, brawls, fairs, funerals, fishing, hunting - would be translated from old Irish into English and be read by millions around the world in numerous editions for at least the next 30 years. An excerpt -- "Would you like to go up to the hill with me?" said my grandfather, putting the straddle on the ass to bring home a load of turf. It was a fine, calm, sunny day. My father had gone at the sparrow's chirp lobster-fishing to Inish-vick-illaun in the west and was not to return till Saturday. We went up the road, my grandfather with a stick in one hand, the other holding his pipe in his mouth for lack of teeth. When we reached the top of the road, we had a fine view between us and the horizon to the south - the Great Skellig and Skellig Michael clearly to be seen, Iveragh stretching out in the sunshine to the south-east, not a puff of air nor a cloud in the sky, herring-gulls in hundreds around the trawlers which were fishing out in the bay, larks warbling sweetly over the heather, young lambs dancing and playing tricks on one another like school children let out in the middle of the day. We walked on until we reached Hill Head: "Look where your father is lobster-fishing," said my grandfather, pointing west towards the Inish. " Oh, it is grand to be up in that island on such a day as this. Do you see the house?" I stopped and looked. "I do not," said I." "Look carefully at the middle of the island and you will see the sun sparking on something." "Oh! Is that it? I dare say you were often there." "My sorrow, I spent a great part of my life going out to it, and it is little the shoe or stocking was worn in those days, not even a drop of tea to be had, nor any thought of it... Indian meal, oatmeal, potatoes and fine fish from the sea; and they left their mark on the people. Little sickness or infection came to them. Arra, man, it is the way with them now, they have shoes on them as soon as they can crawl, not to mention all the clothes they wear, and for all that they are weak, and will be. Would you believe that it is many a day I left the house at sunrise, myself and Stephen O'Donlevy, Pad Mor and Shaun O'Carna, for we were the crew of the one boat, dear God bless their souls, they are all on the way of truth now." As he spoke, the tears fell from the old man and he stopped for a while as if to put from him the catch at his heart. "Well," he said, drawing a long sigh, "would you believe it, we would have nothing on leaving the house but five or six cold potatoes and we would not come home until the blackness and blindness of the night? Where is the man who would stand such hardship now? Upon my word there is none."