Well, I can finally get through the Macallai Irish language column in the Irish Echo newspaper, now that I took Dennis King's advice and got a copy of the -old- TYI book by Dillon and Ó Cróinín. Thank you Dennis! For the verbs, Barra uses a lot of non-Standard synthetic forms which really frustrated me until I got the old TYI book.

AND I got a real bonus from the old TYI. In addition to getting these synthetic verb forms, I found that it has a lot of very useful grammatical explanations and connections that simply aren't given or pointed out in the Christian Brother's grammar book or in any other book that I've found so far.

I suppose I should add that, as Denis said, the old TYI is written entirely for the Munster dialect. I was also told that the Macallaí column is written heavily in the Munster dialect, and my experience reading it with the aid of the old TYI bears that out.

Nevertheless it has lots of very interesting linquistic comments that seem to apply generally and make various aspects (even oddities) of grammar more understandable. For example, the comments about the "do" before verbs, where they comment that it is often left out in speaking but never before a vowel where it is changed to d'. To me this is an interesting connection which explains the d' before vowels in the past tense of standard Irish but not elsewhere.

I also needed such a book on the Munster dialect because I am trying to read various texts from the Cúill Aodhe (Coolea) gaeltacht in West Cork since that region is where the one ancestor, my ggf, whose origin I can pinpoint in Ireland came from. Particularly, I am trying to read a book about the poets of the region by (Rev.) Patrick Twohig, who grew up in Baile Mhuirne (Ballyvourney) and who incidentally has the same surname as my ggf, William Twohig.
(Everywhere else in Ireland, even a few miles away in Kerry, Twohig would be Touhey.)

Just wanted to agree with Thomas on the value of Dillon
and O Croinin's TYI. It was the the first Irish grammar book
I ever had, and is still my favorite. It is, as Thomas said, very complete with verb forms and sheds
much light on topics not covered elsewhere. My poor old
copy is falling apart. Too bad it's (I assume) out of
print. Maybe someone will re-publish it!
P.S. This is coming from an American who has never
got closer to Ireland than Boston, MA, but...
When you read this old TYI, you really feel like you're
in the Gaeltacht!