Heroic Romances of Ireland Part 33

Lines 5, 6 of dialogue. "O Cuchulain! who art a breeder of wounds"

(lit. "pregnant with wounds"); "O true warrior! O true" (?accent probably omitted) "champion!"

Lines 7, 8. "There is need for some one" (i.e. himself) "to go to the sod where his final resting-place shall be." The Irish of line 7 is is eicen do neoch a thecht, which O'Curry translates "a man is constrained to come," and he is followed by Douglas Hyde, who renders the two lines:

Fate constrains each one to stir, Moving towards his sepulchre.

But do neoch cannot possibly mean "every man," it means "some man;"

usually the person in question is obvious. Compare page 125 of this romance, line 3, which is literally: "There will be some one who shall have sickness on that account," biaid nech diamba galar, meaning, as here, Ferdia.

The line is an explanation of Ferdia's appearance, and is not a moral reflection.

Line 29. "O Cuchulain! with floods of deeds of valour," or "br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with deeds, &c."

PAGE 141

Line 9. "Four jewels of carbuncle." This is the reading of H. 2, 17; T.C.D; which O'Curry quotes as an alternative to "forty" of the Book of Leinster. "Each one of them fit to adorn it" is by O'Curry translated "in each compartment." The Irish is a cach aen chumtach: apparently "for each one adornment."

PAGE 144

Line 8 of poem. "Alas for the departing of my ghost."

PAGE 146

Lines 1, 2. "Though he had struck off the half of my leg that is sound, though he had smitten off half my arm."

PAGE 148

Line 5. "Since he whom Aife bore me," literally "Never until now have I met, since I slew Aife's only son, thy like in deeds of battle, never have I found it, O Ferdia." This is O'Curry's rendering; if it is correct, and it seems to be so substantially, the pa.s.sage raises a difficulty. Aife's only son is, according to other records, Conlaoch, son of Cuchulain and Aife, killed by his father, who did not at the time know who Conlaoch was. This battle is usually represented as having taken place at the end of Cuchulain's life; but here it is represented as preceding the War of Cualgne, in which Cuchulain himself is represented to be a youth. The allusion certainly indicates an early date for the fight with Conlaoch, and if we are to lay stress on the age of Cuchulain at the time of the War, as recorded in the Book of Leinster, of whose version this incident is a part, the "Son of Aife"

would not have been a son of Cuchulain at all in the mind of the writer of this verse. It is possible that there was an early legend of a fight with the son of Aife which was developed afterwards by making him the son of Cuchulain; the oldest version of this incident, that in the Yellow Book of Lecan, reconciles the difficulty by making Conlaoch only seven years old when he took up arms; this could hardly have been the original version.

Line 23 of poem is literally: "It is like thrusting a spear into sand or against the sun."

The metre of the poem "Ah that brooch of gold," and of that on page 144, commencing "Hound, of feats so fair," are unique in this collection, and so far as I know do not occur elsewhere. Both have been reproduced in the original metre, and the rather complicated rhyme-system has also been followed in that on page 148. The first verse of the Irish of this is

Dursan, a eo oir a Fhirdiad na n-dam a belc bemnig buain ba buadach do lamh.

The last syllable of the third line has no rhyme beyond the echo in the second syllable of the next line; oir, "gold," has no rhyme till the word is repeated in the third line of the third verse, rhymed in the second line of the fourth, and finally repeated at the end. The second verse has two final words echoed, bra.s.s and maeth; it runs thus

Do barr bude bra.s.s ba ca.s.s, ba cain set; do chriss duillech maeth immut taeb gu t-ec.

The rhymes in the last two verses are exactly those of the reproduction, they are cain sair, main, laim, chain, the other three end rhymes being oir, choir, and oir.

Line 3 of this poem is "O hero of strong-striking blows."

Line 4. "Triumphant was thine arm."

PAGE 149

Lines 11 and 12 of the poem. "Go ye all to the swift battle that shall come to you from German the green-terrible" (? of the terrible green spear).

PAGE 150

Line 12. The Torrian Sea is the Mediterranean.

PAGE 151

Line 15. Literally: "Thou in death, I alive and nimble."

Line 23. "Wars were gay, &c." Cluchi cach, gaine cach, "Each was a game, each was little," taking gaine as gainne, the known derivative of gand, "scanty." O'Curry gives the meaning as "sport," and has been followed by subsequent translators, but there does not seem any confirmation of this rendering.

PAGE 153

Line 10. Banba is one of the names of Ireland.

END OF VOL. I.

VOL. II

@@{Redactors Note: In the original book the 'Literal Translation' is printed on facing pages to the poetic translation. In this etext the literal translation portions have been collated after the poetic translation, for the sake of readability. Hence the page numbers are not sequential--JBH}

PREFACE TO VOL. II