Seanchas Chléire ...6-7

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ag ól dí: just pointing out that in Irish, "drinking a drink" sounds just fine, because the word for the act of drinking, ól!/ól, has a different stem from the word for the drink, deoch, genitive dí.

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shuíodar timpeall cláir: note that clár means "table" in this dialect. In Ulster, the word for (dining-)table is tábla, in Connacht and some Munster dialects it is bord, and in peripheral Munster dialects it is clár.

an coitéir ríúil: coitéir can hardly be anything else than a cutter (a kind of boat), in the standard language called cuitéar, noting that it is referred to with a feminine pronoun, as happens with boats and ships. The word ríúil might mean "royal" (ríoga), but also "kingly". My impression (which can be wrong) is that it here means the king's (i.e. the crown's, the state's) cutter.

sunda is the same word as the English sound, it is an originally Scandinavian word for a strait, a narrow water. (It has cognates in the Scandinavian languages I know: sund is the Swedish word for a strait of water, and the Bering Strait is Berings sund in Swedish. The more Gaelic word for a strait is caolas.) 

an úsáid ghránna a bhí ag a chorp á fháil "the cruel treatment which his corpse was getting" (note that the text says that the King's cutter was towing Muirtí Óg's corpse!). Note the word order in bhí ag a chorp á fháil. This is something you only see in Munster. In other dialects, it would be an úsáid ghránna a bhí á fáil ag a chorp (or even better, ...a bhí a chorp a fháil.) But in Munster you often see the ag agent of a progressive passive construction before the verbal noun, and then the verbal noun always takes the third person masculine singular pronoun, even though the pronoun was referring to a feminine (such as úsáid) or to a plural noun.

fada fuíoch (bhí mná an Oileáin ag gol go fada fuíoch): The adjective fuíoch is more commonly written as faíoch, "loud, plaintive", according to Ó Dónaill, who also gives us the example ag gol go faíoch, weeping bitterly. So, the women of the Island were weeping bitterly, and spent a long time weeping. Note the nice f- allitteration.

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.

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ionad coinne is "meeting place".

ag faire ar an stíméir "keeping eye for the steamer", and indeed here we have the nominative form stíméir rather than the official stíméar.

lantaer is obviously a lantern. The official spelling is laindéar, and if you prefer to use a word for "lantern" that does not sound like English, you might want to use lóchrann. Both laindéar and lóchrann are first declension masculines, i.e. they have the genitive-cum-plural forms laindéir and lóchrainn respectively.

dheineadh sé comharthaí sóirt leis an bhfoirinn: The word foirinn is obviously the old dative of foireann "crew", which is feminine. I guess it is used in the dialect instead of the standard nominative, but if the editor wanted to observe the nominative vs. dative distinction, this would be the correct position to use the dative (because it is preceded by the preposition le[is]). Note the typically Munster past habitual form dheineadh "he would usually do", rather than the standard dhéanadh. Note that comharthaí sóirt typically means the distinguishing marks by which something or someone is recognized; here the expression seems simply to refer to gestures or signs (i.e. the difference in meaning between comharthaí and comharthaí sóirt has faded away).

d'acht is d'áirithe - the word áirithe is a feminine noun meaning "certainty", the very word used in the expression cuir!/cur in áirithe "to reserve". The phrase means according to Ó Dónaill's dictionary "ever and always, constantly", and that fits the context.

duine des na fearaibh  - this would be duine de na fir in standard Irish. The use of des na rather than de na is another typical Munster usage. Note that the dialect uses here the plural dative of fear - the -(a)ibh ending is the dative plural ending, but with fear it is typically used as nominative plural.

ag aithris ar an gcléireach ar an gcuma a n-abradh sé é "imitating the clerk, the way he usually said it". Note here that after cuma when used in the meaning "way", we use the indirect relative, and the reason is seen here: with cuma you use the ar preposition. The underlying structure of the indirect relative clause is here similar to the one used with dóigh in Ulster Irish, as I explained previously.

Note also that we here have a dependent form of the verb abair!/rá "to say" that is based on the ab(ai)r- stem. The official standard prefers the déar- and deir- stems even after the particles ní, go, nach, but actually abair- based dependent forms such as abradh or abraíodh in past habitual are common enough in dialects.

díonmhar means here that the tin cans (cannaí stáin) were waterproof, and this is made explicit in the following subordinate clause: sa chás nár bhaol go bhfliuchfaí na páipéir.

chuireadh sé na scéala chun siúil "he would launch the stories/tidings/news, put them into circulation". Interestingly, it seems that scéala is here used as the plural of the masculine singular scéala. 

i gcorp an lae inniu seems simply to be a difficult way to say "today, these days, the way we do it today". Ó Dónaill knows i gcorp an lae in the meaning "in the middle of the day".

Seanchas Chléire 4

Page 4: Lá 'le [= Fhéile] Bríde, leath bídh agus leath tine. Note that bia has even in this dialect the genitive form bídh. Standard Irish recommends bia as both nominative and genitive, but bídh is so widespread in dialects (both Ulster and Munster) that I feel very tempted to recommend biadh as nominative and bídh as genitive.

troighin éisc fish oil. Troighin is basically the dative form of the feminine troighean, which has the genitive form troighne. I know that the dative form has been discarded in the standard language, but as you see historical dative forms of feminine nouns are still common in dialects, and now of course used as nominatives. Sometimes it feels that standardizers, or as Pádraig Ua Maoileoin called them, ligeadóirí agus casadóirí an Chaighdeáin, have no very clear policy as regards whether they should choose the historical dative or nominative as the official nominative.

slige is a melting pot, and usually masculine, but the t- in sa tslige suggests to me that it is feminine in the dialect. The passage says that you used geatairí scamhaite as sráilleog in the slige. As the note in the book itself points out, sráilleog means the same as the more mainstream word buiceas, i.e. the wick of a candle or a similar implement for illumination. Sráilleog is in this meaning known to Niall Ó Dónaill's dictionary. 

As regards geatairí and scamhaite, the first word is a plural form of geataire, a long rush, and scamhaite is the participle form of scamh!/scamhadh, which means "to peel" - even the dictionary mentions ag scamhadh geatairí as the normal wording for "peeling rushes" (to make wicks for rush-candles). 

Note though that scamhaite as a participle of scamh!/scamhadh is mentioned in the dictionary only as a side form - the "official" participle is snafa, because in the standard grammar -mh + -tha yields -fa in the participle form of the word.

polla means obviously "pole", here a telegraph pole.

scéala a thógáil ós na stíméirí: Note the typically Munster way of adding -s to the preposition ó before the plural article. 

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.

Seanchas Chléire 2

Page 2: nuair a aosaíodar in aois pósta literally "when they aged into marriageable age". You would expect pósta to be lenited after the feminine aois, but here it is probably delenited because it is perceived to be the genitive of the verbal noun. Note the verb aosaigh!/aosú "to age, to become older". This book has the orthography nuair a aosaíodar, i.e. the d' of the past tense of a verb beginning with a vowel is omitted after the relative a. I tend to think, though, that this is primarily an orthographic decision, and that nuair do dh'aosaíodar would be a spelling more similar to the actual pronunciation.

Bhí sóinseáil ag teacht sa tsaol "change was coming into life", i.e. life was about to change. Note that sóinseáil does not just mean "change, small money" in Munster, but also "change" in the sense of things changing. The word is originally of Norman-French extraction, and an example of how such words are more typical in Munster (cf. coráiste, coráistiúil, míchoráistiúil in Kerry). The prefix t- in sa tsaol is in my opinion an irregular one, and in Munster you would rather expect s not to change at all after sa, ins an "in the". (In Ulster sa tsaol, ins an tsaol is entirely regular, because there the noun is always lenited after preposition + singular article, and ts- is the lenition of lenitable s- after the singular article.)

Seanchas Chléire 1

Back in the day I needed to buy five (!) copies of Conchúr Ó Síocháin's Seanchas Chléire, so as to finish reading it. The books kept disappearing (one of them probably fell out of my pocket on the train from Helsinki to Turku), but in the end I did have three copies, two of which I gave away. Now I have decided to write a series of notes on the book.

CHAPTER ONE: Mo mhuintir féin ar dtúis; agus dhá eachtra ansan a fuaireas ó na seandaoine.

Page 1: inseann san gur seanstoc tíoraíochais san Oileán is ea sinn. Seanstoc tíoraíochais means that "we" (the story teller's family) were part of the "old stock" that had settled the island to start with, Tíoraíochas is a variant of tíreachas or míntíreachas "settlement, colonization". Note that inis!/insint has here a first conjugation ending. 

in achrann a chéile: this does not necessarily imply any conflict, because in Cape Clear Irish it simply means that the lands were adjacent and in contact.