Sir William Ridgeway (1858-1926) was a prominent classical scholar, archaeologist and anthropologist who was appointed to the Disney Chair for Archaeology in 1892. Originally published in 1913, this volume was created in honour of his sixtieth birthday. It provides essays and studies by various contributors covering three broad areas: classics and ancient archaeology; medieval literature and history; anthropology and comparative religion. Abundant illustrations are also contained within the text. This is a wide-ranging book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the numerous topics covered.

Originally published in 1906, this study by E. C. Quiggin was, as its author put it, 'the first serious attempt at a scientific description of a northern dialect of Irish'. Quiggin maintained that collecting linguistic data from the people who were born before the famine was of immediate concern because their particular grasp of the vernacular would help shed much-needed light on the mysteries of Old and Middle Irish orthography. Drawn primarily from evidence of the speech found in a hamlet called Meenawannia near Donegal, this volume represents a fascinating case study of the Irish language at the beginning of the twentieth century.