In English I've heard a ton of mnemonics for remembering the directions when I was young (clockwise NESW: Never Eat Soggy Waffles, Never Eat Shredded Wheat, Naughty Elephants Squirt Water, Never Eat Slimy Worms)

I was just wondering if anyone has any good ones for the Irish versions? I saw a compass in a map in the beginning of "An Hobad" that used UOEI (Uaidh, Oir, Eas, Iar) and was just wondering if anyone had a clever trick for remembering the order.

Mnemonics?! As a learner, it's all I can do to remember the actual words for each direction!

The problem, of course, is how you express direction changes depending on whether the person is going toward the direction or away from it.

Redwolf

If you look at page 140 - 5. Direction (an treo) in the New Irish Grammar by the Christian Brothers (ISBN 978 07144 1298 6 - CJ Fallon 1999) there's a good diagram that shows the directions in both ways. Following that, on page 141 there's also - 7. Points of the Compass (na hAirde) - below that there is a note that says (concerning adverbs of motion towards the speaker) - the English speak of the direction in which a person is coming. In Irish we speak of the direction from which a person is coming.

Yes, but a sailor trying to set a westward course is going to struggle against a westerly wind, so it's not something entirely alien to the English speaker.

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Right, whether something is coming from the west or going to the west you have to know where west is in relation to north or south in order to have a reference. Really I was just having trouble confusing the basic directions (Uaidh, Iar, Oir, Eas) and trying to find an easy way to remember which is which but by now I think I have it down. Learning whether to use thiar, siar, aniar etc will be the next step. I found the following chart pretty helpful.

http://www.nualeargais.ie/gnag/adverb.htm#richt