Old Irish Linguistics

[Beith]

Hi

I returned last night from a few days away hoping to re-join an excellent conversation on linguistics and old Irish which I see has been locked. [I question locking a thread because it goes on a tangent to original point - heck if that was the rule the entire board would be at a standstill!] So I'd like to contribute to the discussion here as I cannot do it on the original  thread.

Firstly- Megli is entirely correct in everything he has written as regards old Irish forms, translations, linguistics, dating techniques and period and I am really thankful to you Megli for the efforts you made in very clearly explaining your discussion points and posting the actual textual piece and your translation in the final post. That was wonderful and your college students are incredibly lucky to have such a good teacher.

Secondly just to add to the original question you asked of me - whether the "Adze-head" piece is understandable to a speaker of modern Irish. I'd say "to a degree" - because today we do not have the complex verbal forms as per the Old Irish period (such as fris-gérat) and certainly the orthography as well as language has changed considerably over time - so a fluent speaker of modern Irish could make a good stab at translation of it but would come a cropper on some of the old verbal forms, infixed pronouns and adjectival or descriptive language and context...actually Ecne would be a good person to ask as his level of nuaGhaeilge is much higher than mine and he's 'líofa' (fluent). [Biniamin - má tá tú ag léamh an ríomhphost thíos anseo- faoin teideal "Awen is a she" - an bhfuil féidir leat an dán sin sa chéad phost a aistrigh? Ceart, tá an dán scríobhaithe sa Seanghaeilge ach b'féidir go mbeidh sé léir duitse? ...Táim ábalta é a thuiscint mar tá beagán seanghaeilge agam agus nuaghaeilge freisin ach tá do chuid NG níos fearr ná mo chuid féin!][here I'm just asking Ecne if he can read it easily as a fluent Irish speaker]

But one cannot apply modern Irish entirely to derive exact translations of language from a much much earlier period. Too much has changed in the time between- grammatically, orthographically and even the words used -as there's alot of attrition of words as we pass from era to era (just as in changes from Anglo-Saxon to Old English as compared to modern). If one wants to look up an Old Ir. word in a dictionary, then it would need to be a dictionary of Old Irish because words fell out of use, their forms alter and the language changed over hundreds of years. Very often. looking for an old Irish word in a modern Irish dictionary is barking up the wrong tree -  some survive if conserved in the language but more often than not, others don't and are changed with time (which is why we have similar problems with ogam letter name translations) or new words and borrowings take their place. Old Irish is very well characterized with continuous scholarship rather than a purely "reconstructed" language. It's really tough to learn but it's incredibly intricate and beautiful.

on that note I'll finish with gloss Wb12c9 is oc precept soscéli attó !!
[It's preaching gospel that I am!)

dea guí,
Beith

[Megli]

Three cheers to that, beith. Thanks for that expert discussion (Gods, we're becoming a dreadful mutual admiration society aren't we?!).

Old Irish is infernally complicated, and even when you (just about) think you understand the grammar it can be difficult to explain to other people. As I'm currently finding, teaching Old Irish to someone who knows Middle Welsh well - which doesn't help as much as i'd hoped. The sheer degree of counter-intuitiveness in the language can be boggling. (Beith - try explaining relative clauses to an intelligent adult - everyone involved just glazes over.) Very wisely, Irish speakers decided to have a general clear-out after about 900AD, and the language started simplifying, which for a time made it harder because the forms were all over the place.

Old Irish is kind of stuck between being two different types of language: between being a language rather like Latin, or Greek, with case-endings and a complex morphology, and being a language rather like French - i.e. much simplified. The problem is Old Irish manages to go halfway and gets awkwardly stuck, and then a grammar of terrible, baroque complexity is necessary in order for things to be expressed clearly. This language was clearly very 'high status' - used by the nobles (perhaps) and the men of art, the aes dana: the 'mandarin class of litterateurs' who give us Old Irish Literature.  Everyone else, scholars suspect, would have trundled into speaking Middle Irish much more quickly; indeed 'middle irish' forms appear occasionally even in the oldest old irish texts we have, which shows the writers were deliberately writin a rather more high-falutin' language than they spoke.

Old Irish is a great, fascinating language - scholars love it because it's so WIERD. Archaic in some ways, tremedously innovative in others. Beith, we could give some examples, if anyone's interested?

M/|\

[Beith]

LOL Megli, I know exactly what you mean. I am still trying to get to grips with even basics myself. I'm far behind you in my state of learning of the language and have a fair way to go to catch up with you! As you say just when you think you grasp it, another level of complexity pops up. Yes I agree with you that what we see in the manuscripts is "higher register" language (or indeed "high Falutin" - that made me smile, I never heard anyone outside of Ireland use that expression!) than the more colloquial uses that probably occurred between non-literate persons. Just as we all use slang expressions today in conversation but "proper English" when writing a text. Also it's how we can learn to understand older forms and newer ones, when a scribe slips into his usual vernacular during copying an older text and uses a more modern word than he should have done. That gives clues to language period and change.

RE: Old - Middle Irish transition -I haven't yet touched middle Irish in my learning yet, other than seeing the simplification of some Old Ir verbal forms and the hyper-correction of others to mimic Old Ir but overdoing it!and the modification of second elements in deuterotonic verbs with new endings to follow a prototonic verbal structure (have I explained that right?). Mix ups galore for the student anyway... I'm guessing they knew what they were doing!. I'm aware that middle Irish forms crop up as early as in late 9th and 10th C texts intermingled with the older language. If anything it serves to remind us that it's hard to draw exact language boundaries as there's no "ok from this date we're going to use this form" cut-off point. It really comes down to painstaking correlation of variant forms of a word and statistics then doesn't it? if 95% of text is in Old Irish and 5% Middle, one assigns to the earlier class noting the scribal corrections or mistakes therein - being able to tell then, that a monk or brehon was writing in a later period than the text was originally composed.

Personally I think it's a shame the language changed at all from the old form - it was indeed highly complex but rather beautiful and very very clever I think. I like the deuterotonic verbs, the clever infixing of pronouns, etc. (oh God that reveals a level of nerdiness I would never ordinarily admit to!) . Having said that, modern Irish is alot easier to learn (by far) especially since the Caighdeán standardization was brought in to regularize spelling and grammatical rules...although alas we lost our beautiful old script by use of standard roman letters (the old "celtic font"was much nicer wasn't it? - with the graceful letter forms for g, r,s, d, t and the buailte (punctum delens) to indicate lenition. Many older people still write in that copperplate writing style as it's how they would have learned it at school until around 1958 (I think that's when the caighdeán Irish came into being).

What amazes me, is the rapidity of the change in the lingo from 'primitive Irish' ogam period to early and Old then into Middle and beyond - the huge changes brought about by apocape and syncope in the space of 50 to 100 years always strikes me. What also amazes me is the huge sound change between old and modern Irish. When I started learning the former (having had the latter from my school days) I was astonished at how different it sounds. I had no idea for example, that in Old Ir one has defined lenited dentals "th" and "dh" , because in mod Ir. these have slipped to "h" and "y" or "g" sounds (eg. Thaitin sé liom - "hahin shay lum" and Ni dhearna mé -"nee yarna may" and dhún sé "ghoon shay")  (In middle Ir - does the sound reflect Old or Mod Pronunciation of lenited dentals?)

Re: giving examples as you suggest above, I am thinking that most folks here would not be interested in detailed grammatical structure and forms (though I would be interested to discuss with you, but maybe should do that by email?) but folks here might be interested to see certain pieces from Old Irish hymns with "pagan" undertones or charms or pieces from myth tales that describe something "druidic" or about "the gods" or such.  Maybe from time to time we can post such things? Otherwise I'd suggest getting together some time to work on preparing a small booklet of such, maybe down the line?

Right - I need to finish a ton of work and then get down to some revision as I'm "cold" on the studies for a while.

Stay in touch! It's great to talk to you about such things.

Beith

[Art]

This is a fascinating and obviously quite complex subject. (He says as he glazes over.) I tend to think a "small booklet" as suggested by Beith would be quite popular. I would however suggest that this thread would find a more focused home in the Irish Language sub-forum. If you have no objections, I would be delighted to move it for you.

[Beith]

sure Art, feel free to move, thanks - that makes more sense to post it there [in fact I thought I had posted it in there! ...that's what you get when doing too much at once! ]

good wishes to you!
Beith

[madpoet]

Great thread!  I am very interested in this, even if it does make my eyes cross.  My Irish teacher learned Irish prior to 1958, his daughter writes in the old font when she writes in Irish, note taking and such.  I've been looking over her shoulder (working with her) and getting myself familar with it. I like to think that it makes it easier for me to deal with the séimhiú, having the dots rather than a 'h'.

Well I vote that you two write as much as you like on the subject in public - but will understand if you don't.  Can I pre-order the booklet? hehe

Honor and luck with you!
~MP

[Beith]

LOL MP! I was just throwing out an idea to Megli...maybe in a year or so!

Maybe we post some pieces with translations here of interest to druid-themes and discuss here from time to time.
Yes the older form of writing was much nicer I think> the 'h's though for séimhiú are legit though. If you want something that'll really bend your head how about this:

the h is used as a letter separator in old irish for short strings of words beginning with say "i" or to indicate h-mutation on a word beginning with a vowel depending on ending of the word preceding the vowel.  And as a rule - you don't pronounce the 'h' when it's written but you do pronouce it when it's not written (as is gen the case) on words that begin with vowels affected by h-mutation from a previous article or word causing h-mutation !!!

eg. inna echu (the horses, accusative tense) is pronounced "inna hecku" but where h is written before a vowel - say í (hí) you don't pronouce!

Megli can correct me on this if not well put.
The buailte dot standing for the lenition (h after consonant) was a later invention. Originally it seems the dot served rather to indicate a mistake made in transcribing a word (eg. a wrong letter in spelling) which would be corrected with a dot over it meaning "don't pronounce this", and this was then later applied to lenition meaning "don't pronounce this as a hard consonant - but as a lenited one", but the h after a consonant is sometimes also seen in Old Irish and is a perfectly valid character. It's just not a letter in it's own right, but either to indicate lenition or a leniting relative clause or to separate vowel-words.

Mind melt. I know.

grin!
B

[Megli]

Bloody hell - that was quite right Beith about the h- thing. Christ!
It's like doing linguistic su-doku.

I like this idea of discussing bits of text, with kind of bits of grammar thrown in. My friend Kestrel is currently learning Old Irish using stories written about her and for her. I'd post one here but it's rather scurrilous.

Beith - thanks for you PM. I think the book thing idea is marvellous. Kestrel and I were planning something along that line as a collaboration. Wd you like to work with me on the Irish stuff while Kes and I work on the Welsh? It wd be great, for example, to put together all the early material about Lugh, explaining current thinking about the meaning and provenance of the texts. Also for Brighid, the Morrigan, the representation of Druids in saints' Lives etc...? All those interesting things like the tarb feis and imbas for-osnai?

But on here....let's think of a good bit. Forbuis Dromma Damhghaire is great for Mog Ruith as a portrait of a druid, but why don't we start by wittering about Cath Maige Tuired and the Leabhar Gabhala tradition? It wd be good to talk about the Tuatha De and how they are represented, and more importantly what the authors of the sagas are doing with them. I get the feeling the 'New Orthodoxy' of the Kim McCone/Donnchadh O Coran school hasn't penetrated far into Druidry. Perhaps we cd start with that? Or alternatively look at an individual god?

What do you think? What wd people be most interested in?
/|\M

[Beith]

"Atmu" Megli!


This is what I had in mind, as per pm earlier. But I would have to look at it as a downstream project as am juggling a few too many at present!
But ad interim, yes - why not discuss various themes and stories, characters or extracts from poems here...then everyone can join in as they'd be familiar with modern english translations of the material and might be interested to contribute their thoughts.

I posted a link to Cath Maige Tuired in the this forum I think (Elizabeth Gray translation) so one could look at that to begin with or choose another as you wish!

Am going to be away on business for a while but I'll join in when back!
cheerio!
B

[Megli]

http://www.cs.ru.nl/~bsmelik/keltische_ ... -draak.htm

This  is a joy...go here and you can download the first chapter of a brand new introduction to Old Irish by Peter Schrijver (very nice man, big expert on celtic historical linguistics) which gives you a little taste of the language and it's barmy complexity.

Have fun!! I shall be getting a copy.

M/|\

[wyeuro]

g'day,
i've just found this.

do you want me in on it again? i've got lots more to say.  is it legitimate to lift quotes from a locked thread to comment on them here in a new thread?  i understand the thread was locked because it had drifted from the awen topic - but this one is general enough to include what i have to say, which is specifically about the taillcend faistine.

tá suil agam go raibh an chraic maith agat ag an deireadh seachtaine, a bheith!

wyverne /|\

[Megli]

I think we've killed that one off Vyv. We must try not to bore everyone else to total tears.

Let's start a new one!

M /|\

[wyeuro]

i disagree entirely - i haven't yet begun.  

what does beith think?  anyone else consider that another opinion is possible?  

keeping closely to the topic on a point by point basis would surely be the best way of proving the point one way or the other, since generalisations about the right way to read old irish haven't done it.  

to my way of thinking, since you were no better than i at identifying the source of this rather famous passage right from the start, nearly everything you said about that which indicated its date became invalid, since you dated it according to the linguistic features of a much altered relatively modern version, features which do not occur in the original.  i have seen a number of faults in your method of dating to point out.  give me an evening alone with them!  

happy equinox!

wyverne  /|\

[Eoin Dubh]

Hi Beith,

Wonderful commentary. I just ordered Peter Schrijver's book on Old Irish as that is probably pretty close to what the language would have been in the Scottish periods I am interested in. A lot of the Irish is really close to the Scots Gaelic and would be even closer if I really understood the language. Or if someone comes out with a dictionary that actually gives all the varient spellings of the words. There are two mantras in our class, "You just have to learn it by heart." and "It never gets any harder than this". But of course it always does!

[Megli]

Hi Eoin - yeah Scots Gaelic is really an offshoot of Old Irish that went off in some directions of its own. Until the late medieval period irish and gaidhlig can't really be distinguised as separate languages. Good luck!
M/|\

[Megli]

to my way of thinking, since you were no better than i at identifying the source of this rather famous passage right from the start, nearly everything you said about that which indicated its date became invalid, since you dated it according to the linguistic features of a much altered relatively modern version, features which do not occur in the original.  i have seen a number of faults in your method of dating to point out.  give me an evening alone with them!

 

Oh vyv. I knew it was a prophecy from the one of the Patrician lives, I couldn't remember which one straight off. It took ten seconds to find the text.
The essential dating features are VERBAL (infixed pronouns, long e-futures, deuterotonic verbs: do you understand these terms?) See Beith's posts. They were not updated in your version, for the good reason the forms would radically change. You've obviously found a version which someone has put into modern irish orthography to help modern speakers read it and pronounce a bit of their ancient literature: no wonder as the tripartite life is an important and interesting text, and one which is commonly anthologised: I remembered it because it's the first or almost the first poem in the current Oxford Book of Irish Verse.  The verbal dating elements are unchanged, because that would destroy the metre and syllabics.

And second, the original manuscript text which i provided bears out my original dating. You can't contend that the text i provided is the original of the 'updated' version you did. You can read it in the manuscript. You have argued this poem has been misinterpreted as being a prophecy of patrick and his people singing amen amen, instead of some mysterious dignitary with his people singing a welsh word to greet him, as you argued on zero evidence. I have shown that the poem is from a famous Life of Patrick, composed in good Old Irish, where the narrative context clearly indicates that is is a prophecy of Patrick's coming. Further it is typical of the other bits over verse scattered through any Old Irish narrative text you care to name. I have also shown that it says 'amen amen', with the standard symbol, and that your 'awen' suggestion is quite impossible.

Please, please, try and think logically! You really have been trounced on this, and need to let it go. We're all bored of it, I expect.

M

[Megli]

On that note, here's a bit from the text 'Togail Bruidne Da Derga', 'The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel.' It described the men of Ireland enacting a pagan rite to see the future king, by means of a bull-sacrifice. I give first the text then my translation.

A full translation is to be found in Jeffrey Gantz' Early Irish Myths and Sagas, and the text is available to download here:

http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/G301017/index.html


The Bull Sleep

Marb in rí íarum .i. Eterscéle. Con-grenar
tairbfeis la firu h-Érenn .i. no marbad tarb leó & no ithead
oenfear a sáith de & no ibead a enbruithi & no chanta ór
fírindi fair ina ligiu. Fer at-chichead ina chotlad is
é bad rí, & at-baildis a beóil in tan ad-beiread gaí.

'After that, the King dies, namely, Eterscele. A Bull-Sleep was convened by the men of Ireland, i.e. a bull was killed by them and one man used to eat of its flesh and drink its broth and an incantation of truth used to be sung over him where he lay. The man whom he used to see in his sleep, is he who used to be the king, and his mouth would die when[ever] he used to utter untruth.'

What to people make of this? The word 'or' 'incantation' is very odd. It also occurs in 'The Wasting Sickness of Cu Chulainn' where the scribe has glossed it with the Latin word 'oratio', 'speech', pesumably because he knew 'or' was some kind of speech word and 'oratio' began with the same letters. But the very fact he glossed it shows he was stumped too - which suggests a genuinely ancient and esoteric word.

M/|\

[wyeuro]

dia dhuibh a ‘chuile dhuine,

tá bronn orm go bhfuil muid ag plé le na céisteanna seo faoi seanghaeilge ar an liosta seo.  bhíodh sé graoiúil is suimhneach i gcónaí, áit a raibh duine ar bith in ann tíocht ag caint in éindi sa gaeilge faoi abhair aoibhinne.  is deas é an liosta seo gan clampar is fuadar abhíonns ag comhrá faoin seanghaeilge.  

chuns a bhíonns daoine ag rá nach bhféidir ach an t-aon thuarim amháin faoi céist ar bith faoi seanghaeilge, agus chuns a bhítear ag éiri cantalach nuair nach mbíonn duine ar bith ag aontú leis faoin céisteanna uilig, beidh saraíocht ann anois agus aríst, agus beidh aifeal orm má bheadh clampar mar sin ann anseo,  ar líosta a bhí dhá thoigeail sa gcaoi go mbeadh comhráite compóirteach sa gaeilge ag daoine atá ag foghlaim an teanga.  

b’fhéidir go mbeadh se níos féarr má bheadh líosta eile ann ag na céisteanna seo – ag seanghaeilge i féin.

cuirfidh mé an chéist seo ar Art, sol má a cuirfidh mé ceo eile faoi seanghaeilge ar an liosta seo!  

slán

wyverne

p.s. haven't had time to check my irish so forgive my mistakes!!

and no, megli - the question of whether taillcend/t/alcheann might reasonably be translated as chief of parliament not adzehead, and better sense obtained, with less disparagement of irish poets was not one on which either could be trounced.  and nobody replied to my valid criticism of the dil as tautologically derived, eclectic to the point of uselessness and very often downright wrong - which is why texts interpreted by it depict irish poets as strenously twisted after silly distortions and mostly malicious with it.  without it one obtains translations depicting the kind of gracious, dignified, high intelligence that characterises irish intellectuals in our times.  anyway, i believe these discussions don't really belong on this friendly nuaghaeilge list , so i'll see what art thinks about opening one specially for it.

[wyeuro]

Tiocfa tálcheann tar muir mercheann
a thí thollcheann a chrann crommcheann.
Canfaid míchrábhud a mhias (mheas) i n-airthair a thige,
fris-géarat a mhuinter uile "amháin amháin".

Ticfai taillcend tar muir meircend
a bratt toillcend, a crand crom-cend
a mias a n-airthiur a thige
friscerut a munter uli amen amen.

Ticfai taillcend tar muir meircend
a bratt toillcend, a crand crom-cend
a mias a n-airthiur a thige
friscerut a munter uli amen amen.

hallo.
megli has said he won the discussion ensuing from my questions concerning this poem. since i’m only asking questions, the idea that anyone won or lost is rather strange.  the point to me is that he did not answer all the questions i asked, and such answers as he gave were far from conclusive, and one or two of them were actually wrong.  

megli gave his idea of a possible date of ‘c. 750+ at the very earliest’ for the version i quotes of this fáistine based on
“linguistic features which came into existence circa 600-700” and other features which he listed on the ‘awen’ is a she thread, in his 3rd post on that thread.  

i’d like to look at these features as he listed them, one at a time.  please understand that i am asking questions in order to learn, not asking for a fight, and would like straight answers, without being berated. if someone gives me answers that don't satisfy me, surely i should say so. if you are confident of your knowledge you need not fear my questions and need not bully or brow-beat me or try to intimidate me into silence.  if you bully and brow-beat me and try to intimidate me into silence you only convince me that you have no confidence in your ability to answer and this impression is strengthened by your failures to answer my questions as simply, lucidly and politely as i have asked them.  


the ms context tells us that the manuscript from which this was copied in the late 14th century is now lost, and so its age can’t now be determined by any means.  the embedded fáistine must be older than the original text because it was embedded in it as it is a quote.  but how much older can’t be ascertained.  the text may have been copied from texts many centuries older, or from relatively recent ones – there is not now any way of knowing, and there is no way of knowing how much the 14th century scribes updated the language of their material or even translated it from other dialects or even languages.  

class a infixed pronouns: I know what infixed pronouns are in cornish, but can’t detect one here.  show me one, le do thoil.  

long e future?  do you mean fris-géarat?  tocfa and canfaid are translated as futures, despite differences in endings which might suggest they are different tenses.  wouldn’t tocfa, if lenited be a conditional – ‘tálcheann would come’?   why, having used the almost modern –fidh in the modernised, and  –fai in the older versions to denote the future tense is there suddenly this switch to a form that has disappeared entirely from modern irish (correct me if i’m wrong)? can you tell me about when this feature disappeared?

meter and alliteration:  since we don’t know the date of it, how can we know that other texts with the same meter and alliteration, which are also not datable,  are of the same date?  meter and other poetic features are very persistent in english, german etc, with poets (and especially song-writers) writing in the 21st century still using metres and verse forms that were second nature to poets and song-writers centuries ago.  

the meaning itself: see my objections to the use of the dil to translate texts like this one, which incidentally no one has responded to.  to make it easier, i’ll quote them here:
i said:
i'm totally unconvinced about the meaning of this poem, the dating of it, and the title it has been given - since all of these are determined with reference to the dictionary of the irish language, which as you know i believe is very often howlingly wrong, and i'm not alone in this.  

the scholarship that produced it is more than a century old, texts dubiously translated have had their vocabularies entered into it (along with those of many well-translated texts, certainly) and these are then used tautologically to translate other texts with inevitably disastrous results - most of them nasty, and this one in particular.  the falsehood is then 'ratified' tautologically and therefore invalidly, and the ancient and mediaeval irish are misrepresented as superstitious cruel sorcerers, who delighted in bizarre puns and obscure twists of meaning. i mention this so that others reading this thread will know which two view points are diametrically opposed here - megli's and beith’s, that the dil is a sound authority, and mine that it isn't.  (naturally you don't expect an instant resolution of this conflict - it's a lot older than any of us! )

(i need to qualify this now.  i had accepted megli’s assertion that he had dated it accurately according to linguistic features he described, although he has since discovered that he was in error, having at last discovered - by means of a belated web search – what he had not known at the time of writing the post concerned - that this poem comes not from any 8th century manuscript but from a late 14th century manuscript copied from earlier sources now lost, so it’s original can’t be dated, and its linguistic features can’t be known.

what he has said in effect is that the same features that indicate an eighth century text can occur in 14th century texts and are also found practically unchanged in a very much more recent modernisation of that text.  this would indicate that they are not very useful features for dating a manuscript.  this becomes even more apparent when it turns out that the faistine concerned, as megli at last discovered, and rightly added that a truly competent scholar would have ascertained that straight away before the discussion developed.)

also, no one answered my question about who gave the modernised version i originally quoted its name “


lenition across word boundaries:  far from being evident in both older and modernised versions, except apparently anomalously in the phrase ‘a thige’ these occur only in the modernised version. does this date this 14th century text to pre-6th century or have i misunderstood?

lenition intervocalically: i can’t find a single example of it in the older version.


the reduction of unstressed syllables: wouldn’t this have varied with locality as well as with time, some usages persisting in some dialects longer and others appearing earlier from place to place?


vowel affection to mark case endings: as you say this feature alone doesn’t date the text, but only places it later than 600, but since we already know that the copies we have of it are 14th century,

anyway, as i’ve already said we don’t know what linguistic features the original fáistine quoted in the copied text might have had – and you have not responded to that objection to your claim that it could be dated to ‘probably’ the 8th century.

in fact, megli, you have shown yourself so incompetent at identifying, let alone dating what you have shown me is a very significant passage from a very well-known text, that i can hardly expect you to proffer a scholarly opinion on the possible date of this modernisation.  

but can anyone tell me who gave it the ‘Fáistine Teachta Phádraig’ and when?  

wyverne /|\

 





[/b]

[Megli]

the ms context tells us that the manuscript from which this was copied in the late 14th century is now lost, and so its age can’t now be determined by any means.  the embedded fáistine must be older than the original text because it was embedded in it as it is a quote.  but how much older can’t be ascertained.  the text may have been copied from texts many centuries older, or from relatively recent ones – there is not now any way of knowing, and there is no way of knowing how much the 14th century scribes updated the language of their material or even translated it from other dialects or even languages.

 

OK Vyv. Here goes. One of the problems with this is it takes me a long time to explain detailed and complex things to someone who is not interested in listening to them, which is boring, time-consuming and unrewarding. I have a job, and a life. The age of the texts can be determined by the linguistic features there in. Vyvyan you would need to learn a bit about how Irish MSS work - lots of texts of varying periods all gathered together. There is no doubt that the Tripartite Life is in Old Irish, so pre-900AD: on other evidence I'd say about 800 or so. The language f the 'quote' is identical to that of the surviving texts. Most medieval irish narrative texts are in a form called 'prosimetrum', a mixture of prose with verse for bit of high emotion or speech - exactly as we have here. There is nothing to suggest this is a quote rather than a very common stylistic feature - slipping little bits of verse into a prose narrative. If you don't see that I can only presume you've never read any old or middle irish text, even in translation.

class a infixed pronouns: I know what infixed pronouns are in cornish,

The system in cornish/middle welsh is VASTLY simpler than the OIr one.

but can’t detect one here.  show me one, le do thoil.  

the -s- of fris-gerat is a 3 sing masculine infixed pronoun. they start phasing them out after 900 - the neuter ones occassionally get fossilised onto the preverb, altering the stem of the verb in Middle Irish.

long e future?  do you mean fris-géarat?

Yep - well done.

tocfa and canfaid are translated as futures, despite differences in endings which might suggest they are different tenses.

No!! THEY COME FROM DIFFERENT VERB CLASSES, of which Old Irish has at least five including deponents in some classes, strong verbs, and weak verbs. And so they have differing endings in the tenses. You clearly don't know anything about the system: so don't presume that because you haven't researched it, it doesn't exist, and isn't understood. You need Green's Old Irish Verbs and Vocabulary, or to look at Thurneysen's Grammar.

wouldn’t tocfa, if lenited be a conditional – ‘tálcheann would come’?   why, having used the almost modern –fidh in the modernised, and  –fai in the older versions to denote the future tense is there suddenly this switch to a form that has disappeared entirely from modern irish (correct me if i’m wrong)? can you tell me about when this feature disappeared?

Yes, I can. Old Irish had several ways of making the future, depending on the verb class. Some lengthened the stem-vowel, usually -e- (as in fris-gerat), some had an ending with -f-, and some did various other things such as reduplication of the root consonant and the insertion of an -a-. Some also insert an -s- (mainly ''strong' verbs). Then they cleared this up so that the Modern Irish system which you are familiar with has lost for example its absolute/conjunct distinctions, the active/deponent distinction, plus the strong verbs have been ironed out, only remaining as traces in a handful of irregulars. You can't look from Mod Irish back - you have to look from Old Irish forward to make sense of things. These features were well on the way before 1200 for your info Vyv (as I can tell you from having read and taught a number of Middle Irish texts.)

meter and alliteration:  since we don’t know the date of it, how can we know that other texts with the same meter and alliteration, which are also not datable,  are of the same date?

The language dates it, as i keep telling you. That you choose not to believe it is not my problem. Besides, this pattern of highly rhythmic, alliterative, syllabic verse is very very Old Irish (usually called a roscad or a retoiric)....by the Middle Irish period they are usuing more complex schemes of rhyming quatrains, usually the metres of deibhidhe or rainnagheacht. Are you familliar with the meanings of these terms?

meter and other poetic features are very persistent in english, german etc, with poets (and especially song-writers) writing in the 21st century still using metres and verse forms that were second nature to poets and song-writers centuries ago.  

English and German are not Irish. Styles also go out of fashion. Roscad was one of the ones that did (people still write poetry in deibhide and so on) - but roscad is earlier, and characteristically Old Irish.

i'm totally unconvinced about the meaning of this poem, the dating of it, and the title it has been given - since all of these are determined with reference to the dictionary of the irish language, which as you know i believe is very often howlingly wrong, and i'm not alone in this.  

I heard you. I see no evidence whatsoever for what you say. None. I think the term 'howlingly wrong' has been misapplied. And you are actually alone in this.

the scholarship that produced it is more than a century old, texts dubiously translated

We were lucky a undred years ago to have an immensely gifted generation of translators, such as Whitely Stokes. Sure, when I translate a text I sometimes find places where they got it wrong - but not often. And all these texts have been retranslated since then. The schlarship of a hundred years ago is strong and very sound (though even Thurneysen occassionally got it wrong!)

Vyv I imagine you're sitting in your house. I don't expect you have shelves of Old Irish texts, Grammars, Stair na Gaeilge, the paradigms and glosses. I don't imagine you've ever actually read a text through either conscientiously on your own or with a skilled teacher. This is why you aren't seeing things clearly and are labouring under disabling misapprehensions. You just haven't done the work. A working knowledge of Modern Irish does not an Old Irish scholar make.

superstitious cruel sorcerers, who delighted in bizarre puns and obscure twists of meaning.

Ever read Finnegans Wake?! Or indeed any Irish literature? Love of word-play has always been characteristic of the Irish genius from the earliest days to Paul Muldoon. And as for cruel sorcerers - the texts are full of ultra-violence and magic. It's not a misrepresentation. It's your projections that would distort it into being otherwise.

 

i had accepted megli’s assertion that he had dated it accurately according to linguistic features he described, although he has since discovered that he was in error, having at last discovered - by means of a belated web search – what he had not known at the time of writing the post concerned - that this poem comes not from any 8th century manuscript but from a late 14th century manuscript copied from earlier sources now lost, so it’s original can’t be dated, and its linguistic features can’t be known.

Vyv - there are no 8th century Irish MSS - it had not crossed my mind that the MS would be early tha 1150.  (Well there's the Book of Armagh, but that's mainly in latin with a few little bits in old irish.) But the language of the text is Old Irish, so pre-900. I was not in error. You would like to make it so by twisting things, as always. Its linguistic features MUST be between 750 and 900. (pre-750 you wd expect suffixed pronouns. Know what they are? Thought not.) On that basis I dated it quite accurately from the start.

what he has said in effect is that the same features that indicate an eighth century text can occur in 14th century texts and are also found practically unchanged in a very much more recent modernisation of that text.  

My goodness you twist little a little eel!! The update is clearly 20th century, done by someone who knows OIr. So that doesn't count. And yes, old irish texts are almost all contained in MSS that date from 1150-1400: but we can date the language using the Glosses (know what they are?)
To put it it layman's terms: Irish monks, speaking old irish, glossed bibles in old irish in the 6th and 7th centuries, in continental monasteries. These are numerous enough to enable us to give a complete description of the language. At the same time, or a hundred or so years later, narrative texts were being composed in ireland in the same language. These have been copied and recopied, ending up in MSS dating from 1150-1400, but clearly in the same form of the language as those 7th century glossators were using - Old Irish.

this becomes even more apparent when it turns out that the faistine concerned, as megli at last discovered, and rightly added that a truly competent scholar would have ascertained that straight away before the discussion developed.

You've missed a clause out in that sentence. It doesn't make sense. try checking your work.


Right I have to go to work - will reply more to this later.

/|\M