in the edition of Country Magazine which covered Northern Ireland"; or from 1955, "The Duke had been sitting on top of Kelly's gate watching the crack." At this time the word was, in Ireland, associated with Ulster dialects: in 1964 linguist John Braidwood said of the term, "perhaps one of the most seemingly native Ulster words is crack.... In fact the word is of English and Scots origin." It can frequently be found in the work of 20th century Ulster writers such as Flann O'Brien (1966) "You say you'd like a joke or two for a bit of crack." and Brian Friel (1980): "You never saw such crack in your life, boys". Crack was borrowed into the Irish language with the Gaelicized spelling craic. It has been used in Irish since at least 1968, and was popularised in the catchphrase Beidh ceol, caint agus craic againn ("We'll have music, chat and craic"), used by Seán Bán Breathnach for his Irish-language chatshow SBB ina Shuí, broadcast on RTÉ from 1976 to 1982. The Irish spelling was soon reborrowed into English, and is attested in publications from the 1970s and 1980s. Craic has also been used in Scottish Gaelic since at least the early 1990s, though it is unknown if it was borrowed directly from Irish or from English. At first the craic form was uncommon outside Irish, even in an Irish context. Barney Rush's 1960s song "The Crack Was Ninety in the Isle of Man" does not use the Irish-language spelling, neither is it used in Christy Moore's 1978 version. However, The Dubliners' 2006 version adopts the Irish spelling. The title of Four to the Bar's 1994 concert album, Craic on the Road, uses the Irish-language spelling as an English-language pun, as does Irish comedian Dara Ó Briain's 2012 show Craic Dealer. Now, 'craic' is interpreted as a specifically and quintessentially Irish form of fun. The adoption of the Gaelic spelling has reinforced the sense that this is an independent word (homophone) rather than a separate sense of the original word (polysemy). Frank McNally of The Irish Times has said of the word, "[m]ost Irish people now have no idea it's foreign." Criticism of spelling The craic spelling has attracted criticism when used in English. English-language specialist Diarmaid Ó Muirithe wrote in his Irish Times column "The Words We Use" that "the constant Gaelicisation of the good old English-Scottish dialect word