Seanchas Chléire 3

Page 3: lasán is what we would today call a cipín, i.e. a match for lighting a fire. (The English loanword meaits also exists in the language: Pádraig Ó Buachalla, the "Tailor" of "The Tailor and Ansty", would certainly say meaits. He was from Cúil Aodha - Múscraí Gaeltacht, so his dialect was quite close to the Irish of Cape Clear.)

Note that in this dialect they use adhaintigh!/adhaintiú for "to light, to kindle, to ignite (a fire)". The more standardized form of that verb is adhain!/adhaint, with the present form adhnaíonn. The page includes the forms a adhainteodh tine "which would kindle a fire" - you would except a d'adhainteodh tine here - and the verbal noun construction tine d'adhaintiú "to kindle a fire", where you would expect tine a adhaintiú. What I think is, that it is a dh' or do dh' in pronunciation in both cases.

Dúirt sé gurbh é an tslí a dheinidís... Note that after slí in the meaning "way, manner, method" southern dialects have a direct relative clause, which at least to me feels vaguely wrong (because Ulster would say Dúirt sé gurbh é an dóigh a ndéanaidís... with an indirect relative clause). The reason for this is, that slí to start with refers to "way" in the meaning of route, and when used in that sense the words for "way" are treated as a kind of "extra accusative objects" and take no preposition: in more northern dialects bealach is treated the same way (tháinig sé an bealach seo "he came this way"). A similar usage of slí has in Munster (yes, I have the impression that this is not just a Cape Clear or Cork Irish thing) been generalized to the abstract meaning of the word for "way", and this is why an tslí used in the meaning "how" is followed by a direct relative clause.

As I said, in Ulster we would say an dóigh rather than an tslí, and this is followed by the indirect relative. This is because an dóigh exclusively means "manner, method", but it is not used for "way" in the sense of a concrete route or path. Also, it is typically preceded by a preposition, ar, rather than being used as an "extra object": ar an dóigh seo a rinne Máirtín é "this is how Martin did it". So, the underlying structure of the relative clause would have a prepositional pronoun: *an dóigh a ndearna Máirtín é uirthi, but the prepositional pronoun is not used anymore, and we say an dóigh a ndearna Máirtín é "how Martin did it, the way Martin did it".

d'iarraidh spré den tine "asking for a spark/ember of the fire". For a glowing ember, we also have the words sméaróid and smeachóid, as well as the very northern aibhleog. But as you see, spré is just fine. Note the d' before the verbal noun, when used after the verb tar!/teacht: thiocfadh duine thall agus duine abhus d'iarraidh spré den tine.  This is reminiscent of the "Ulster infinitive of purpose", using do (written as leniting a or a dh') before the verbal noun, when followed by téigh!/dul, tar!/teacht or tosaigh!/tosú (actually toisigh!/toiseacht or túsaigh!/túsú in Ulster, but let's not speak about that here). In the standard language, ag is written here ("thiocfadh duine thall agus duine abhus ag iarraidh spré den tine"), but the fact that the editor of this book has preferred d' suggests that it is not felt to be ag by the speakers of the dialect.