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Hi RM, you have pretty fluent Irish don't you? Do you know what the word for rhubarb is? If it sounds a bit like Purg na manuck, it's the one I mean. Any Irish I know is purely to speak or listen - the written language I'm lost in! Cheers, KB
I'm far from fluent: petrified to open my mouth in the company of Gaeilgeoirí, in fact. But I have a dictionary  I remember the description "the monks' purgative" all right, but my dictionary only gives "biabhóg" for rhubarb. The phrase should be spelt (I think) "purgóid na manach". The first I got by looking up purgative, the rest I remember from where I grew up (Monkstown: Baile na Manach) so I'm pretty confident.
Well, more fluent than me at least! Interesting. So perhaps the monk's purgative was an old poetical version. Or else it wasn't a name for rhubarb, so much as a little after-tag - like how we say a dog is 'man's best friend'? Or maybe it was a quotation from one particular source.
Yup. Is this thread now "Irish Gaelic - the sequel?"
 Sorry if it seems like it. I just brought it up because someone was talking about eating a lot of the purgoids. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F40812?thread=4303509 It's not the purgoids that bother me, it's the inverse. Not that you really wanted to know that! 
Fine. I never did make my mind up about rhubarb, whether I like it or hate it. Put anything in crumble and I'll eat it, though. But that is neither here nor there; it belongs there, if anywhere. 
*follows link* I know what you mean about eating anything if it is covered in crumble. When I was at school they often had Apricot Crumble. No idea why they chose that particular fruit over more standard rhubarb or apple, but that's what they had. I had it every time it was on offer, even though I don't really like apricots!
My experience too. In Austria they eat anything smothered in and inch and a half thick sticky dough: apricot dumplings being a special treat. 
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