Spanning over three centuries of Ulster's past, this anthology is full of comic pleasures. In its pages, country ballads jostle with city satires, songs aimed at children meet jingles advertising bread, and university light verses encounter the folk-poems of the Antrim weavers. Each poem comes with background information about its origins, and each page is illuminated by Hector McDonnell's wonderful, witty drawings.

This book is destined to become a much-thumbed, much-loved companion. The people of Ulster have never been humourless or dour.

Far from it. This anthology sparkles with a variety of rhymes, songs and humorous poems from every tradition of the province.