Colm O'Regan: Solving a minor family mystery thanks to a Ballyhoura writer

A small word links a book about Ballyhoura, broth bits in Croom, and a scribble on the inside cover of a 70-year-old dictionary — and I couldn't be more pleased to find this connection

A small word that links a book about Ballyhoura, broth bits in Croom, and a scribble on the inside cover of a 70-year-old dictionary — a scribble made by a man who would have been 95 last Thursday — is hardly a Rosetta Stone connection. But I couldn’t be more chuffed...

The mysterious sentence was written on the inside cover of my father’s most used book. The blue Virtue’s English Illustrated Dictionary from 1950-something. He would encounter a word on telly or in the paper and say: “I must look that word up now” — and come back newly armed.