Seanchas Chléire 6...

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San am sin is ea a chónaigh Diarmaid Ó Donnabháin Rosach sa Sciobairín: The verb cónaigh!/cónaí when used like this can mean just "to stop" (in the sense of stopping overnight, for instance), but here it probably refers to a longer stay, because O'Donovan Rosa lived in Skibbereen long enough to take up the trade of a shopkeeper.

chualaig gach éinne thairis: This obviously means "everybody has heard about it". Chualaig could be just chualaigh, because everybody already knows that a final -igh/-idh is pronounced as -ig in Munster, and it does also occur in other dialects that chuala "heard, has heard, had heard" often has an extra -igh pronounced. Gach éinne is common as a Munster way to write and pronounce gach aon duine (in Connacht, it is more like chaon duine, and in Ulster, obviously, achan duine) "everybody". But the really interesting thing here is the use of thairis.

"I have heard about it" can be, among other things, chuala mé faoi, chuala mé air, chuala mé fá dtaobh de, chuala mé iomrá air, chuala mé trácht air (the two last ones meaning "I heard mention of it, I heard it mentioned"). But how does thar "over" enter it?

I tend to see behind this the way how tar!/teacht thar..., which is used in the sense "to mention, to discuss, to refer to", has influenced other phrases used in the same sense.

To start with, under the influence of teacht thar..., the usual verb used in the meaning "to mention", i.e. trácht!/trácht, has in Munster started to govern the preposition thar, i.e. trácht thar... rather than the trácht ar... construction of more mainstream dialects.

So, I guess that the construction chuala gach aon duine thairis is basically a truncated variant of chuala gach aon duine trácht thairis.

ós scéal trís na scéalta é: this would obviously be ós scéal trí na scéalta é in the standard language, without the extra -s of Munster dialects. But what does it mean - scéal trí na scéalta? "A story through the stories"? I guess it is the same as scéal scéil, i.e. "a story of a story", something heard from somebody else and told further, hearsay.

go raibh sé achtaithe ar nach aon stróinséarach véarsa nó rann éigin a dhéanamh do Ghaisceanán... To start with, nach aon means here gach aon, as it often does in Munster. Stróinséarach means obviously the same as strainséir - the forms with ó such as stróinséir and stróinséarach are in my opinion typically Munster Irish. But achtaithe ar...? It means that every stranger or blow-in was basically supposed or required to author a verse about Gaisceanán (a rock between Cape Clear and Inis Arcáin, i.e. Sherkin Island).

srúill in the poem means more or less the same as sruth, i.e. river, current, movement of water in nature. Note that it is feminine: an tsrúill, na srúille. 

tláth is a variant of the adjective tláith and means here "mild, gentle" - fan go tláith means something like "wait nicely" - but can also mean weak or pale.

gnáthach is the same as gnách "usual", typically used after a copula form.

I already noted that teacht thar... means "to mention" in southern Irish, and now have a look at this delightfully southern sentence:

Ach an fear so go bhfuilim ag teacht thairis, an bád go raibh sé ag iascach inti, shéid sé ina ghála orthu. 

We have two indirect relative clauses here:

an fear so go bhfuilim ag teacht thairis "this man whom I am mentioning, referring to". In Munster, the seo part of an...seo becomes so after a broad consonant. That is why anseo "here" is anso in Munster Irish, and similarly an fear so rather than an fear seo. Moreover, the indirect relative clause takes the go particle of the generally subordinate sentence rather than the eclipsing a of the indirect relative (but then, I guess that a has been a go historically) - this is another Munster trait. So, in the standard language this would be an fear seo a bhfuilim ag teacht thairis (and in my own "standard", I would prefer an fear seo a bhfuil mé ag trácht air, obviously).

The very same structure we see in an bád go raibh sé ag iascach inti "the boat he was fishing in". In a more standard language, this would be an bád a raibh sé ag iascach inti. Note that while bád, boat, is grammatically masculine (an bád mór, an bháid mhóir, na mbáid mhóra, na mbád mór), the pronouns referring to it are typically feminine. The same applies to other vehicles and even books. I guess (and if my memory serves, Mícheál Ó Siadhail has in his book about the grammatical structure and dialectal variation of Irish guessed the same) that this is, or has originally been, a way of individualizing a particular vehicle or a particular book, giving it an individual, personal identity distinct from other boats or other books.

chaitheadar rith ”they had to run”. The verb caith!/caitheamh, when used in the meaning ”must”, has in Connacht and Ulster only the future form caithfidh, the conditional form chaithfeadh, and the present caitheann when preceded by má (má chaitheann). In Munster though, it is a full verb even in this meaning.

Nuair a chuadar ar dtír [! - i dtír would be more standard] bhíodar fliuch fuar... Note the nice allitteration fliuch fuar. And note also that it says bhíodar fliuch fuar ”they were wet and cold” (another thing you should note: there is no equivalent for ”and” in the original – you shouldn’t put agus between two adjectives like that without a good reason!). Now, purists tend to suggest that for the English ”he was cold” (feeling cold) you should use bhí fuacht air rather than bhí sé fuar, and I would myself indeed prefer to use bhí fuacht air, but this example suggests that tá sé fuar in this sense has a Gaeltacht pedigree.

If you are interested: the words for ”perished with cold” I can think of are préachta and conáilte, but neither is Munster Irish. Préachta is something I have learnt from Máirtín Ó Cadhain, and conáilte is an Ulster word that Séamus ”Máire” Ó Grianna would use.