techt do róim

[Beith]

Techt do Róim
Mor saido, becc torbai
In Rí a chondaigi hifoss
ma nimbera lat, ni fogbai

...just feeling like that today..but could substitute "work" or "perseverance" for seeking the King!
argh!

Beith

[Megli]

me too!!
M

[Megli]

me too!!
M

[Abhaill]

I'm too rusty to work this out.  Could you translate it for me, please?

~ Abhaill

[Megli]

Sure!

Techt do Róim
Mor saido, becc torbai
In Rí a chondaigi hifoss
ma ni:mbera lat, ni fogbai

Going to Rome -
huge effort, little profit.
The King whom you search for there -
if you don't take Him with you, you'll not find [Him.]


One nice leniting relative clause (a CHondaigi) and a nice infixed class A 3rd sing masc pronoun, nasalising (ni:mbera).
Holler if i've gone wrong!
M /|\

[Beith]

HI Megli...indeed you are right you girlie swot! Mr "fancy-leniting&nazalising-relative-clause-pants"- Grin!! Actually I like that you did that very much - it's something we should all do - point out the grammar features or constructions of a piece we post. That would be really useful for all of us I think.

Hi Abhaill, sorry. ...I just posted quickly in a flurry of frustration and forgot to include translation.
In this verse, an Irish bishop writes a nice little quatrain on how effort is wasted if you try to force something you don't already have in you in the first place.
[ie. if you don't have God in your heart, you're not going to find him even if you make the effort to go on a pilgrimage to Rome.]
Wise words from the 8th or 9th century! I am feeling like that about work all day...can't get the enthusiam for it ...can't get it done....therefore stuck here with a feck-load of it still to do....argh!

someone post something inspirational!

Beith

[Abhaill]

Thank you both!  I got: "_ to Rome/Great (would have guessed 'work' or something similar) little profit/The King..." and then I gave up, realizing I'd have to remind myself of the bane of my existence - that is the VERBS - and thought I'd just ask instead.   I apologize for my laziness!  I very much like those points of grammar being pointed out because it helps to make sense of things when I can see each tiny piece of the puzzle.  Especially when infixed pronouns come calling, and disturbing their neighbours.  

I also enjoy the knowledge that it is highly unlikely I may sneak any bad scholarship past either of you without being stoutly challenged.  All hail, Challenge!  I am sorely out of practice with both my Modern and Old Irish, but come January I'll have to dust my memories off in order to shine (or at the very least, keep my head above water)!

~ Abhaill

[Beith]

Ná bí buartha Abhaill - táimid go léir ag foghlaim le chéile (Don't be worried A, we're all learning together!)

as for bad scholarship...jeepers there are holes in my Irish (Sean agus Nua) you could fly a plane through!  But practice makes perfect and some discussion is always good with like-minded souls.

I think it's a good idea to do as Megli did and point out the grammar stuff indeed. It will help us all in terms of revision and translation and learning new things entirely.
Good luck with your studies (just as I need luck with mine!)
Beith

[Megli]

I also enjoy the knowledge that it is highly unlikely I may sneak any bad scholarship past either of you without being stoutly challenged.

People try!  :grin:  That said, I made some right clangers today.

Inspirational...inspirational....hmmm....I shall have a think!

M /|\[/quote]

[wyeuro]

g'day

i googled the first line of Techt do Róim, trying to find  something as close as i could get to the manuscript version(s), and had no luck.  but i found this slightly different version of it at  http://sedulia.blogs.com/sedulias_translations/irish/index.html with a slightly different translation as well.

Techt do Róim,
mór saítho, becc torbai;
in Rí con-daigi i foss,
manim bera latt ní fhogbai.  

To go to Rome
is little profit, endless pain;
the master that you seek in Rome
you find at home or seek in vain.

it's an epigram an Irish scholar  Sedulius of Liège, scribbled in the margin of a 9th century manuscript in Europe. this translation is by Frank O'Connor (1903-1966), under the pseudonym of Michael O'Donovan, in A Short History of Irish Literature.

i'd consider these differences important and want to look more closely at them.  

can anyone tell me where i can find the original, or if it can't be seen on- line, can someone who has access to a copy of the ms version (and the time and inclination - know you're all busy!!) tell me which version of these two is nearest to the original and what if any word divisions were made in the original? also, how can i find out who made the various different versions and/or when they first appeared?

wyverne /|\

[Beith]

Hi Wyv,

the spelling differences are just different orthographic convention really..
eg/
L2.  
mór / mor: Very often in manuscripts the length marks on vowels are omitted (eg. mor/ mór = same thing in this sense of "big")
- saido can also be written saitho.. eg. convention that 'th' at the end of a word is usually written "d" but intervocalicly it can be written "th" . Here it's expressing the same sound and the word is same whether saido or saitho.

L3
- In Rí a chondaigi / in Rí con-daigi
In the version you posted, the transcriber has omitted the marker of the leniting relative clause. (ie. the relative is given in The King THAT/WHICH you seek ) - as I transcribed it, you see it (the lenition marked on the con by Chon).

- hifoss / i foss
h is used by scribes as a prefix to short words or single letter words beginning in a vowel. such as 'i' ( the preposition meaning "in") to indicate that this is a word in its own right. Scribes often write short words together so the h is a separation mark (not a "h" sound in itself, except in some circumstances I won't go into now as it'll confuse entirely!)
I ran the words together in my version (using h to separate the 'i' of i foss from the terminal 'i' of chon-daigi), your version has them separated omitting the 'h' - both are fine.

L4 ma nimbera lat/ manim bera latt
again - just orthography. I wrote the má (if) separate to the "you do not take him with you"
your transcriber wrote the if you do not in one run and then "bera" separately.  

the 'latt' in your version is to emphasize that the terminal "t" is in fact a 't' and not a 'd' sound (duplication of a consonant in Old Irish period indicates non lenition..though in primitive Irish (ogam) even lenited intervocalic consonants can be doubled (go figure!). Both mean the same: "with you", just that I omitted the duplication of the "t" as contextually it's clear the word is "lat" (leat in mod Ir) not "lad".

- ni fogbai/nifhogbai
firstly, in Old Ir, you don't see lenition usually indicated has 'h' after an f (that's a middle Irish/mod Irish adaptation) and I think it should not be here anyway because as far as I'm aware(megli correct me if wrong!) that ní does not lenite in Old Irish (but it does certainly in Modern Irish eg. Ní fhaca mé).Therefore I don't think that lenition belongs here.

General point:
Lenition in Old Irish is only shown by 'h' after voiceless stops or "plosives" - c,t,p.

You don't see it marked on the 'voiced stops' - b, d, g but it is there (just unmarked) when they are either intervocalic/ end of word/or initial letters undergoing certain mutations depending on the end of the preceding word. In later MSS you see lenition marked by the buaillte (punctum delens) on the top of all lenited letters. Originally the dot meant "mistake! don't pronouce this letter" (ie. was a means for a scribe to "delete" and error) but was later adapted to use as a lenition marker - but not really seen on these consonants in Old Irish. [You do see lenition in Old Ir marked sometimes with the dot over an s or f].

I forget which MS this quatrain is in but I will look it up and get back to you.

Both versions are pretty consistent with Old IR but I think that in the version you posted the lenition marking on the f is not "correct" in ní fhogbai (I would use ní fogbai) and I would tend to show the lenition on the leniting relative clause In Rí a chondaigi hi foss (on the chon) because this voiceless stop (c) can show lenition. I would also use the "h" separator between the 'i' of chondaigi and the 'i' of i Foss, but that's not a mandate, just that you often see it used as a means to show the correct word divisions when scribes write multiple words together.

best wishes
Beith

[Beith]

ps. I would also use the correct translation of "king" for "Rí" because this is what Rí means, rather than "master" which is more "ollam" in Irish (and usually in reference to "chief poet/ master poet"...but we use ollamh in mod Irish for Professor/master ~ as in a teacher).  The scribe is referring to THE KING as in God...in that if you don't have him inside you already, you ain't gonna find him in Rome!

[Megli]

spot on with all that Beith, afaik. i think ni doesn't lenite in OiR because welsh ny(t) comes from older common celtic *nit which would aspirate in primitive welsh but cause no mutation in primitive irish, which is precisely the situation that obtains. Then the spread of lenition after ni would be either a) by analogy with lots of other leniting little preverbs in the Middle irish period or possibly b) that there's a fossilised infixed pronoun, leniting, in there.

M /|\

[Beith]

Hi Megli,

Thanks for the reply!
as far as I know the lenition following Ní comes in in Mid.Ir and we have it today in Mod Irish. I will have to look into the foss. IP. You're probably right. There must be a reason for it somewhere - either by analogy with other words in the way that other features spread by analogy in Mid IR (eg. creating new verbal absolute verbs based on prototonic of Old Ir).

Thanks very much with the Welsh and CC * words. Nice to learn a few comparatives!
best wishes
B l-

[wyeuro]

thanks very much, beith!  i still haven't found the earliest transcriptions or seen a ms but i've had a lot of fun searching!! incidentally, do you know if  this is where the INRI associated with the roman catholic depictions of the crucifixion comes from - old irish, i mean, not this poem specifically?  if so, does anyone know why they adopted a goidelic rather than a roman title?  or is this considered to be pure coincidence?
wyverne  /|\

[Selene]

Wyverne,

INRI is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase "Iesvs Nazarenvs Rex Ivdaeorvm," or "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews" (there is no J in Latin, and at the time V was used instead of U). According to John 19:19, Pontius Pilate placed this title on the cross above Jesus's head at the crucifixion.

[Megli]

Thank you selene!! quite so, of course. In 33 AD (or thereabouts) Old Irish didn't exist yet. The earlier form of 'in ri' 'the king' was *sindos rigs in Primitve Irish. The same incription was pinned up in Hebrew and Greek, which meant that this trio of languages were given great status in Medieval culture as the three 'sacred' languages (which later became part of the argument against making the Bible available to everyone in the vernacular.)

So yes it is just co-incidence!

m /|\

[wyeuro]

thank you selene and megli,

i, of course , want to get (respectfully) critical here, which i hope will be taken in good part!  (i mean well!!! )

In 33 AD (or thereabouts) Old Irish didn't exist yet. The earlier form of 'in ri' 'the king' was *sindos rigs in Primitve Irish.

megli, do you derive this belief from the study of texts only - corpus etymology?  surely you're aware that this is considered, rightly i think, to be very misleading.  

not only is arriving at an accurate chronology for very old texts difficult and current chronologies tentative and inconclusive, especially when based on linguistic forms used in otherwise undatable texts, such as those of most of those referred to as proto- or primitive are, but even if you have a sequence of accurately dated texts from older to more recent, it is probably impossible in most instances to prove that the language of later texts represents a direct evolution from the language of older texts.  

for example, throughout the gaulish speaking world at the time of the roman expansion there must have been many different dialects from galatia, through galilee, cisalpine gaul, france, spain, and britain to ireland, and there must already have been considerable diversity.

the texts which have survived the destructions of texts that used to be a routine part of conquest are fragmentary and few and many have fetched up far from home, with the result that their histories including their exact ages and even country of origin, are now not known.

so the language of a text currently classified as 'old irish' is not necessarily a direct evolution of the texts currently classified as proto or primitive.  it might have evolved from a concurrent language easily recognisable as old irish as which has left us no textual examples but was widely spoken.  

what i'm trying to say is that while examples of texts are classified as primitive irish because they differ greatly in specific ways from texts deemed to be older, the vast mass of spoken language can no longer be consulted. but they should always be kept in mind.  old irish might be as old as ancient greek, ancient hebrew, ancient latin, with the few fragmentary texts you call primitive irish representing not an ancestral form of irish but (a) now extinct contemporary sibling language/s that differ/s not becaue of chronological but because of geographical and/or demographical factors.

i don't believe you can fairly say more than that we know of no examples of old irish that can be dated with any certainty to the 1st century, while acknowledging that very little is known about ancient languages outside of texts - and not that we know that it didn't exist.  what languages were the irish people who left no texts speaking at the time?  only one?  only the one we have textual traces of?  maybe, maybe not.  i don't believe you can make such an assertion.

le meas

wyverne  /|\

[Beith]

Hi Vyv,

I think you need to understand some of the terminology and background regarding language classification that Megli and I are using here, because that will clear up some of your questions in the above.

What Megli is saying is that by 33AD, "Old Irish"  is not found, as this is a chronological term for the language of late 7-9th C AD, but that earlier forms of the language would have been in existence.  He is not saying that Irish language did not exist at this time!  

To use a term like "Old Irish" you need to understand the era it represents.  "Early Old Irish" (late 6th/mainly 7th C), "Classical Old Irish"(8-9th C). These are the earliest periods of language in which manuscripts are found. Before then, Irish is defined as being Archaic Irish and Primitive Irish - these being language forms of Irish attested by stone records (ogam stones) which are datable to different periods from about 5th C AD onwards, based on language features and comparison of Irish language features with Welsh ogam stones that also bear latin inscriptions together with the ogam script.

The texts we have in the Old Irish era are accurately chronologically dated because we have author names and dates on many of them, and so the language features of those without dates can be validated against those with dates - and where they match up  they can be accurately identified as belonging to this period. This involves very detailed survey work of all language features of each word in each text - verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, cases, endings, contraction marks, comments, glosses, even punctuation. It's a huge job of painstaking, scientific method -  not a guess. It is an established, verified and accurate means of dating texts.


Where you have multiple copies of a tract in different manuscripts, you can compare all the versions available and survey the language features across each one, enabling you to normalise the language form to re-create the older master text from which the various texts are copied.

On the note of Dialect, you don't really see dialects in early texts, for the reason that the monks/legal scribes used a very conservative higher-register language for the puroposes of copying/authoring books of importance (gospels, psalters, legal texts). You can distinguish at times the slippage of the scribe from higher-register to lower-register or even modernization or hyper-correction of a word, so at times you can say "aha! this is what he spoke but that is what they wrote!" (eg. when you see Middle Irish forms creeping into Old Irish texts, you know that the language is already evolving).

You need to remember that in the periods we are discussing, the preserve of written language was in the learned classes, likewise the finance and resources to enable them to prepare vellum and inks. The educated elite were using a very conservative language for writing (in the manner one may write in "the Queen's English" today as opposed to colloquial man-on-the-street terminology).

Dialect is something that becomes more apparent in writing later on, when written language was more widely available. With the spread of writing over centuries, you then see dialectic differences because the people writing are not using the conservative scribal languages or verse forms, but rather copying texts or writing their own in the later middle ages, in the manner in which they spoke enabling dialectical differences to be seen. The exception there would be the bardic poets and lawyers, who maintained highly conservative language/poetic forms in their work.


So hopefully that helps to explain a bit!

Best wishes
Beith

[wyeuro]

thanks beith,

but i worry when megli says things like:

The earlier form of 'in ri' 'the king' was *sindos rigs in Primitve Irish.

'the earlier form' instead of 'a hypothetical earlier form'.  even if it ever did exist, and there's no proof that it did, my objection that there's no indication whatsoever of the course of evolution of this language into that of the old irish mss is unanswered.

that the genuine ancient language traces megli refers to as primitive irish, quite apart from hypothetical reconstructions, are actually ancestral to the language of texts called old irish, is not established and cannot be established - not by the most meticulous use of developed techniques.

it's more than a quibble.  

So yes it is just co-incidence!

and since selene's explanation of the use of inri on crucifixions is an iteration of church belief, and the origins of church belief are lost in the mists of antiquity, all anyone can say with accuracy - and surely punctilious accuracy is a hallmark of scholarship - is that it is believed by the church, indeed, is official church dogma, so the decided tone of megli's remark quoted above is inappropriate.  

wyverne /|\