From Oliver Plunkett’s mummified head to the Lough Ree monster – meet the TikToker shining a light on ‘Weird Ireland’

When Brinsley MacNamara’s novel The Valley of the Squinting Windows was published in 1918, the inhabitants of his local village in Delvin, Co Westmeath, revolted. The book was a take-down of provincial Irish life, set in the fictional village of Garradrimna. But, to most people who picked it up, it was clearly Delvin, and a depiction of the people living there.

As the title suggests, it was not a flattering portrayal. In the book, the people were united by one attribute — “thickness..

. a quality particular to the hush of grassy places”..