This book looks at popular print culture in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Ireland, and how its stories of knights and heroes, highwaymen and cattle stealers were read and understood. They were absorbed into a culture which was vibrant and diverse and O Ciosain's analysis touches on topics as varied as the origins of modern Orange ritual, the relationship between literacy, printing and languages, and Gaelic religious songs.

He ends by considering the ways in which ordinary people at the time saw their world, as well as the ways in which modern scholars have described and interpreted the cultures of those people.

The author takes an interdisciplinary approach to a little-known area of Irish history and literature, pursuing comparisons with other regions and cultures. By addressing questions such as language shift and the unusual social configuration of Ireland in this period, it adds a new dimension to the growing body of studies of popular print in Europe.