 Ó Maolchathaigh lived in a remote mountainous area of the Knockmealdowns in which Irish survived as a spoken language until the 1940s.The book depicts life of rural Ireland at the turn of the 20th century, including the customs, folklore, and historical aspects before the language became sparsely spoken.The dialect of Tipperary was predominantly spoken in this Irish county for nearly five hundred years until it slowly dwindled to extinction in the early twentieth century.