I mentioned that north Pembrokeshire was one of the areas of
Wales that still had folk songs in the early and mid-twentieth century. Why only North? South Pembrokeshire is an odd place, the one area besides the Gower
peninsula that was settled by the English in the Middle Ages: settled so
thoroughly that it was known as Little England Beyond Wales. The dividing line between Little England and North Pembrokeshire, called the Landsker, ran northwest to
southeast from south of Solva (northwest) to Narberth, more or less, and was
pretty stable until the twentieth century, when Welsh parishes on the
border starting turning to English. Today there’s no thoroughly Welsh-speaking
parish but the Gwaun valley.
The Welsh dialect was very very different from Standard
Welsh and even from the adjoining Welsh areas: so much so that it was joked
about. It was a real backwater in a lot of ways and was maybe the closest thing
to rural Western Ireland in Wales. Some of the more “magical” parts of the
Mabinogion are set there (in Dyfed), and there were perhaps more folk tales
about the Otherworld recorded there than anywhere else in Wales.
Below is a video of a Welsh TV interview with Dic Harris (of
Puncheston?). He tells about odd things he’s seen: second sight and people from
ancient times (?) and fairies, He’s saying that his mother strongly believed
in fairies when the interview peters out. (The interviewer is from the north.
See if you spot the guttural vowels.)
I’m not suggesting there’s any link, but the area was
settled from Munster (Na Déisi) in Ireland in the fifth century and ogam stones
are more common there than anywhere else in Wales. It’s thought that the area
was bilingual Irish/Welsh for centuries, and the ruling Irish dynasty lasted
until the tenth century. St David’s, the important episcopal seat later, was an
Irish monastery to begin.
No one has claimed there’s Irish language influence on the
dialect, but Dyfed/Pembrokeshire (plus a small Cardigan/Carmarthenshire fringe)
was a distinct area for many centuries, within which specific linguistic
processes proceeded or didn’t differently than in surrounding areas.
(Although someone did point out that the dialect follows the
Irish pattern as against the Welsh pattern in saying “There’s no X…”: “Níl aon
X/Does un X as opposed to “Does dim X”.
Waldo Williams was one of the great Welsh poets of the
Twentieth Century: the greatest in my opinion. He was a pacifist/anti-military
and suffered a lot for his beliefs. What’s this got to do with anything? Well,
he and Father Pádraig Ớ Fiannachta from just west of Dingle, (a great scholar
and the man who did more than everybody else combined to try to bring Irish
literature and scholarship to the attention of Gaeltacht people) were good
friends. (Unfortunately, most Gaeltacht people were more interested in what Gay
Byrnes had to say than Irish.)
Below are two Waldo Williams poems, the first recited, the second translated by me into English.
Oherwyd Ein Dyfod Because we have come to the quiet
room,in the timeless cavern that (always)
was,and have gone out to the slender
rootsand to the apples that are like
jewels;have gone out through the dark
roots,out to the light of the hearth,as I followed after that warm heart,which is star of my night, secret of
my day.And a kiss that returns to every
starin the depths of the archipelago;two breasts that renew the earth, two arms that shelter the land;because we have come to the strong
housewhose stillness is the foundation of
our love’s joy,and because the world arrives in the
depths of blessingsaround the sound of the feet of my
beautiful girl.-Waldo
Williams (1904-71)
The first Welsh folk rock singer was Meic Stephens from the
area (Solva) and was wildly popular in the Seventies, Lowri Evans is a contemporary
singer from there and is also good.
(The song contrasts the Little People (native Welsh) to English second-home buyers who drive around in Land Rovers etc. and figure they can buy everything and anything, but..."We don't need your money or your company, not today, thank you.".
So it’s an interesting area, but I wanted to give a few
penillion from other areas that I claim are so good and here they are, a handful out of hundreds:
Penillion 1Oh, were that we were as once we were,with neither love or hate between
us,and were that we had never been bornif now we will have to say farewell.2I have a sprig of rosemaryon the top of Penmaenmawr it’s
growing.When my love does pass it bythen that sprig of rosemary will
bloom.3It’s easier to lift up the sea in a
spoonand put it all inside of an eggshellthan it would be ever to turn my
thoughts,my dear little love, away from you.It’s easier to grind the rock to
powderand put it all inside of a little
boxthan it would be to ever turn my
thoughts,my dearest love, away from you.4Why do you need to be so upsetjust because someone else likes me?Though the wind will shake the
branches,you’d need a pick to get the roots
up.5It’s difficult to braid the river’s
waterinto a basket of green birch twigs.It’s two times more difficult than
thatto come between two who love truly.6The great sea is full of sand and
rock;the egg is full of white and yellow;the wood is full of leaves and
flowers;I am full of the love of a woman.7By the side of the sea there is a
level rockand it's there that I used to speak
with my dear love.and all around this the lily flowers
grow,and here and there a sprig of
rosemary.8My heart is as heavy as a ball of leadthrough love of a young man: I will
not name him.Since I said farewell to that
dearest boy,all food and drink tastes like
wormwood to me.9There is the grove of glorious birch;there is the star of the three
islands;there is the boy with the gentle
glance;there is the breaking of many a
heart.
A
description of penillion singing from Edward Jones' "Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh
Bards", based on the description in Thomas Pennant's ""Journey
to Snowdon", 1781.
"Numbers of persons of both sexes assemble and
sit around the Harp, singing alternately Pennillion, or stanzas, of ancient or
modern composition...The young people usually begin the night with dancing;
and, when they are tired, assume this species of relaxation. They alternately
sing, dance, and drink...Often, like the modern Improvisatori of Italy, they
sing extempore verses...Many have their memories stored with several hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of Pennillion, some of which they have always ready for answers
to every subject that can be proposed; or, if their recollection should ever
fail them, they have invention to compose something pertinent and proper for
the occasion. The subjects afford a great deal of mirth: some of these are
jocular, others satirical, but most of them amorous...They continue singing
without intermission, never repeating the same stanza, (for, that would forfeit
the honour of being held first of the song,) and, like nightingales, support
the contest through the night."
Like I said, they’re still sung today in a concert format,
but as memorized stanzas sung to plodding harp accompaniment.
Interestingly enough, something similar (no harps) still existed in the
original form in the most remote and traditional part of Brittany (Bro Plinn,
ie. Lanrivain, St. Nicodeme, Canihuel, Kerpert, Magoar etc) in the nineteen-seventies.There they were called Kan a Boz (Song with Words). An example is given in the Dastum record and book on Bro Plinn. I
never heard about anything like it anywhere else in Brittany, but Bro Plinn was
then remote and very traditional.
Now nowhere is remote and traditional
anywhere.
This above is not what you'd call traditional, but the stanzas are "penillion" and it's all I can find. Yann-Fanch Kemener, the singer, was from Bro Plinn, and the music is great and so are the dances. Below are some tunes for the dance of the area from one of the original dance bands, "Mountain Devils".
There are thousands of
breathtakingly good songs in the Celtic languages that are also folk songs: that
is, songs made in a traditional idiom whose original maker is no longer know,
and which have passed through many singers before being taken down in print.
(Not as unsanitary a process as it may sound.) Most of them are Irish or
Scottish Gaelic, with Vannetais Breton in second place and Welsh penillion.
In most of Western
Europe, peasant communities were integrated more and more closely into the hegemonic
urban and “official” culture and language during the 19th century,
so that their songs (as recorded mostly late 19th century and after)
are really tin pan alley songs: pop songs written by urban professional and
sold (as broadsheets) for a profit. These songs are mostly pretty bad, or at
least pedestrian and boring. Most are
hackneyed and almost none are heartfelt. They are interesting social history, and
the ones that were accepted into the tradition can tell us a lot about the concerns of
peasants and industrial and other workers in this period of change, but as
songs, well...
I once investigated
the sources fairly thoroughly, and came up with about five good English folk
songs, and that includes Ireland. (Doesn’t include America or Lowland Scotland,
where older ballads kept going, and more “folky” communities continued producing more interesting songs). I’m not sure if I could come up with five good French ones.
German is maybe even worse: there, peasant communities were integrated very
early into mainstream society and produced very boring music, except in a few
fringe communities cut off from mainstream Germany, such as Lorraine. Composed and often “romantic” lieder often entered the folk tradition. Denmark is a bit similar, though there are great earlier ballads.I don’t know Spanish or Italian
songs at all, but I do know that once you get into Slavic territory, you’re back into the good
stuff.
The religious revival
of the early 19th century convulsed Welsh society and reshaped it in
a new form that was vital and vigorous until forty years ago, but if your eyes
are on heaven and the Bible and respectability, you don’t have time for folk
songs. The only places songs stayed vital were in north Pembrokeshire where
the dialect was very aberrant and where the Calvinistic Methodists never were
strong; and also in the mountains between Denbighshire and Merion. The songs that
survive are not that great, to be honest. The best most accessible collection
is in in Kennedy’s Folksongs of Britain and Ireland.
Penillion and
Tribannau (Glamorgan/Gwent) were the great folk lyrics of Wales: single stanzas, sung in apposition to stanzas from other singers, or strung
together in longer forms. They were mostly a northern Welsh thing, plus Glamorgan/Gwent, though, and didn't really survive the religious revival. (Modern concert pennillion are not the same,
but are a light classical exercises using stanzas of poetry sung in
apposition to a different harp tune, usually played in a plodding piano-based
style.)
Here is a song, but not a penill.
Lliw’r Heulwen (The Color of the Sun)The
gleam of the sun on the hillside,the
sheen of the lily on the mountain;when I
leave and go away from here,my
love, remember this.Your
form, your hand, your eye,your
fair ways, girl,your
dear quiet naturehave
taken my love.It's
easy to know the squirrelrunning
along in his haste;it's
easy to know the partridgewhen
they rise in uproar;it's
very easy to know the oakamong
the small clover:alas
for me, it's not so easyto
know a dear pretty girl’s heart.The
mill is obliged to grindwhen
the water turns it;the
smith is obliged to workas
long as the iron is hot;the
sheep is obliged to lovethe
little lamb while it's weak:I am
obliged to lovethe
one who is fated to me.
See my blog entry on
Manx for information on Manx songs. The situation there was similar to England. There is one good song (At the Fiddler’s), a Fenian ballad (Fionn Mac
Cumhail, no very like Irish som=ngst O’Leary!), and lots of ribald or obscene stuff.
No Cornish songs
were ever written down, except one that's in A Celtic Miscellany.
Breton folk songs were
generally ballads used for dancing or for singing, of course (gwerz), and these are often produced broadside
ballads of the late 19th century that probably pushed out older
ballads. Older ballads were published in Barzaz Breiz in 1839 (see also the Pengwern Collection, only recently published). Barzaz Breizh (Poetry of Brittany) was assumed in the 20th century to have been composed by the collector in order to supply an Breton ancient and national literature, but research thirty years ago showed them to be actual folk ballads taken down from
old people in the early 19th century. They are ballads, though, not lyrical songs, which I guess is what I'm focusing on here.
Yann-Fanch Kemener is the great modern (though still dead) singer.
There is a tradition
of lyrical song in Breton (at least in central Brittany in the late 20th
century)that is really not well known.
It may mostly be modern. Very little has been published. I wish I could say
something more intelligent here, but…You see how it is.
The southeastern
Breton province of Gwened/Vannes does have great lyrical songs, though, be it that the song tradition is dying with the language and rest of the culture. The songs are very different from other Breton songs probably because of the extremely aberrant Breton dialect and the distinctive culture. There was a
lot of singing in groups in Vannes while walking, working or just sitting around, so
there were more opportunities for non-dance and non-ballad song than in other provinces.
Diberder is the main
collection (also Herrieu), only actually published in the last few years, and the
tradition belongs really only to “Upper” Gwened (i.e. Pontivy town to Vannes
town to Lorient/Quimperle, and Baud; rather than to the Guemene area (Lower
Gwened) which was a transition to the rest of Brittany.
A song.
E Tan-Me ag er Hoed (I will Go to the Wood)I will go to the wood, my love, to
hear the the nightingale,singing a song there on the top of
the whitethorn tree.He sings, again and again, he says
in his discourse“Those that love never sleep, during
the day or at night.”Those that love never sleep, during
the day or at night;neither their heart or their mind
can find rest.”You speak the truth, little
nightingale, it's true what you say,for since I have come to love, I can
no longer sleep.When I arrived in this village, my
heart leapt(???) up,because in this village lives my
chosen love Marion.“I have come to this village, my love, to know how you
are,I cannot forget you, I think of you
every day.Between your house and my house
there are three leagues?I has taken me barely an hour to
come here to see you.Anyone who saw me coming would think
that I was flying.No, no, I didn’t fly, but I walked a
right good pace.Will you open your door to me, my
love,since it's your dearest beloved that
asks you to open?”“I will not open my door at this
hour of the night,eleven o’clock sounded long ago,
soon it will be midnight.Eleven o’clock sounded long ago,
soon it will be midnight;it's past time for you to go home,
to take your rest.”“I would like for us to go together,
my beloved Mari,before the moon goes to its rest, to
walk in the woods.We’ll hear the rain, the wind
stirring in the branchesand the happy little birds singing
their joys.”“So late to the wood with you,
indeedI will not go.the birds have long since ceased to
sing in the trees.”“I will go home then, my love, but I
cannot sleep,for my mind is troubled, my heart is
bewildered.There are two flowers between your
house and mine;one of them opened, the other did
not.One of them opened, the other did
not.All that shows that you do not love
me, my love.With my poor heart heavy with sorrow
I went home alone.When I rose in the morning, I heard
a bird singing.That bird was singing in glorious
joy on a branch,but I, alas, sighed in anguish at
every note.“Young man, tell me why it is that
you sigh,do you have some sorrow, some pain,
some secret love?”“Sorrow and pain I have, surely, and
unrequited love.I love, little bird, but I am not
loved in return.Since you have wings and feathers,
go now, little red bird,go, fly as fast as you are able to
my love’s window.Tell her, in your song, that I have
money and farm stock,enough to make her happy as long as
she lives.”“That’s enough, young man! Silver
and gold,when love is lacking, will never
bring happiness.”
Irish songs are great.
I’ve written a few blog posts about various aspects, and waxed poetic in those
places, so please go there for more information, or to be inspired.
The first collections
were those made in 1796 by a County Down Irish scholar, O Loinsigh, who was
employed by Bunting (harp music collector) to wander around and collect the
songs that were sung to the harp tunes taken down by Bunting at the Belfast harp
festival.The portions of O Loinsigh’s
notes for Counties Leitrim and Mayo survived, and were published as issues of
the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society. They have been republished
recently, but I don’t have the details. They are be referred to as the Bunting
Collection, and are great.
Other 19th
century collections wereb made by Charlotte Brooks (published as Reliques of Irish Poetry, 1789
), and by Hardiman (published as Irish Minsteltry, 1831 ). Both of these books include
poems, as well as songs. Hardiman also collected a lot of songs that now survive as
manuscripts in the British Museum (Egerton 117: 105 songs entered by Philip
Gibbons and another in phonetic script some time after 1814: in Egerton 151; and also in Egerton 130, which is O’Donovan’s transliteration of the songs from a phonetic spelling into regular
Irish.)
There were also broadsides in
Irish, mostly in a similar English-based phonetic script. A list was published in Eigse years ago,
but I’m too lazy at find it right now.
The text of the Irish original of Donal Og is in Nua-Dhuanaire,
Cuid I, edited by Padraig de Brun, Breandan O Buachalla and Tomas O
Concheannain, and published by Institiud Ardleinn Bhaile Atha Cliath (Dublin
Institute for Higher Studies), in 1975. That is a great anthology of modern
(circa 1500 - 1900) Irish poetry and songs. There are also volumes II and
III, just as good.
Yes, everybody knows this song, but I like it a lot.
My love’s hair is the color of the blackberries,
the color of blackthorn fruit on a fine sunny day,
the color of blackest bilberry that’s on the mountain,
black hair and a shining white body.
My heart is as black as the blackthorn fruit,
black as the black coal that’s burnt in the forge,
black as the track of shoes on white hall floors,
and there’s a great melancholy behind my laugh.
Oh Dónal Óg, you’d be better off with me
than with a proud demanding noblewoman;
I’d milk the cow for you and I’d churn the butter,
and if you were in danger, I’d strike a blow for you.
Late last night the dog was speaking about you,
the snipe was speaking of you deep in the marsh,
that you’re a lonely wanderer through
the wood,
and may you have no mate forever until you take me!
You promised something to me, but you lied to me,
that you’d be waiting there at the sheep-pen for me;
I whistled and I called out twelve times for you,
but there was nothing there for me but the lambs
bleating.
You promised me something that wasn’t easy to do;
golden ships under silver masts,
twelve market towns,
and a fine white palace beside the sea.
Your love was only like a drift of
bright snow,
like a sandbar in the middle of the sea,
like a wind running over the top of the
gardens,
like the torrent of a stream after a rainy day.
My mother told me not to speak to you,
not on any day of the week or on Sunday;
it's a poor time she chose to give me a warning--
like a wall around a garden after it's been plundered.
I denounce love--alas for she who gave it
to yon mother’s son who never understood it;
he left my heart black in the center of chest,
and I can’t see him in the village or any place at
all.
The great Irish
collections start with Hyde’s Love Songs of Connacht (1893), and keep going
into the 1930s. They include O Maille’s Amhrain Chlainne Gaedheal (Connacht); Ceol
na nOilean, O Ceallaigh, 1931 (islands of Conamara): Padraig Breathnach’s various Munster collections
from Fuinn na Smol (1913) on into the 1920s; Freeman’s Ballyvourney collection
(Irish Folk Song Society, 1920-21):Ni
Annagain’s Londubh an Chairn, 1927: and Costello’s Amhrain Muighe Seola, from
the Tuam, Galway area, 1919.
Not forgetting of
course the great Ulster collections: Cead de Cheolta Uladh, and Dha Chead de
Cheoltaibh Uladh, both by O Muirgheasa. The first includes a lot of south
Armagh, south Monaghan songs, and Meath, from 19th century
manuscripts. Amhrain Chuige Uladh, by Muireadhach Meith is mostly from Omeath,
County Louth, and should be read with P Ni Uallachain’s A Hidden Ulster, (2003)
which publishes a lot of songs from the same area collected in the early 20th
century.
Scottish Gaelic also
has thousands of great songs, and they were recorded starting early, thanks to
the fact that the people loved the songs (Scottish Gaelic literature is really
a song/poetry literature), and to the fact that there was a Gaelic “middle class”
(mostly clergymen and minor landlords/clan chiefs) in the late 18th
century who had time and writing apparatus.
The MacLagan
manuscript collection dates from the 1760s on. It has never been published,
except for some songs in issues of Gairm by Derick Thomson, though it is catalogued in
MacKinnon’s Descriptive Catalogue of Gaelic Manuscripts. There are probably two
hundred great lyrical songs there, as well as Fenian ballads, and poems from poets
like Ian Lom, Alasdair Mac Maighistear Alasdair, Robb Donn and so on. Versions
of some of the songs show up in the recently-published MacDiarmid Manuscript Anthology
of 1790(Thomson, 1992), and in the
unpublished MacNicol collection. The first two collectors were from Perthshire;
the last from Argyll.
There are many many
collections in Gaelic published from about 1790 on into the 1930s: too many to
list. The first to include “folk” songs is the Gillies Collection. All were aimed at the literate Gaelic society that existed in those times (thanks
to religion) in the Highlands and in Glasgow and in Cape Breton.
A song.
Faill
Ill O Agus Ho Ro Eile These
are meaningless vocables of the chorus, sung by everyone present when the sung
was sung. (You are excused from this.) Scottish Gaelic songs were traditionally
sometimes known by the pattern of vocables of the chorus, rather than by a
title.Chorus:Faill ill o agus ho ro eile,faill ill o agus ho ro eile,air faill ill o agus ho ro eile,I am sad and weary, going to sleep
and rising.Don’t you think yourselves that I
was wretchedof an Autumn evening on the harvest
field;every woman had her own man by her
side,but my own fine love is away at sea?I would go, I would go, I would go
with you,I’d go far through the leafy woods
with you;when I was young and had little
sense,it was love for you that wounded me.My mother promisedme a golden ring;my father promised me a fold of
cows;though I got those and all the world
too,I’d much prefer to have that young
man’s love.Dear sister, be kind to me,keep the cows and the calves apart;even were I to take up the sack and
go begging,don’t keep me from my choice of
husband.God, if I saw you going past the
cattle fold,I’d smash the pail and toss away the
rope,I’d put my own two arms all around
you,and who, love, would keep you from
me?Primroses flower and grow in the
spring:Apples grow on the tops of the
branches;those things remind me of my lover’s
kiss,every one of them with the taste of
honey.
Aimed at an English
audience were the dubious Songs of the Hebrides (Fraser, Kennedy); Shaw’s
Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist (1955) (great!); J.L Campbell’s three volumes of
Hebridean Folksongs (actually all waulking songs but great!); Francis Tolmie’s really
fascinating collection from Skye, published in the Journal of the Folk Song
Society in Volume, IV, 1910-14. (They are “Songs of Occupation”, which means a
lot of spinning songs, lullabies, waulking songs, etc, but lots of great!):
Gaelic Songs from Cape Breton (I think I have the title right), collected by
MacLeod; Songs Remembered In Exile, from Cape Breton, edited by Shaw; and a few
more recent volumes. The magazine Tochar published a lot over the years, and
the School of Scottish Studies etc. collection of tapes is online at Tobar a
Dualchais – an incredible resource of incredible songs that incredibly shames Ireland,
Wales and Brittany.
(Many of the early (up to about 1900) Scots Gaelic published collections were digitalized and available on the Internet Archive. Not sure if they're still there or if it is.)
If anyone would like to know more, you have only to ask.
Muiris Ó Conchobhair was a shipwright in Cork City and also
wrote some Irish manuscripts. Nothing much is known about him but that.
The following two letters occur in a National Library of
Ireland manuscript, G 351 (Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the National
Library of Ireland, Fasc VIII, cataloged by Nessa ní Shéaghdha and published by
Dublin Institute in 1984. Two other of his manuscripts survive. This one mostly
contains Central and East Cork poetry of the early 18th century.
I started out keeping to his spelling (adding explanations),
but gradually modernized a little when some forms got confusing.
Two rare 18th century letters in Irish and a
charming (I think) glimpse of a man and a time.
“Muna mbeadh go bhfuilid na boithre fluich salach doimhin
do-chshiúbhalta agus na crannaibh (dative plural) agus na cráochaibh ina bhfoilaribh
feoire fiadh-ramhlaidh fásaigh (of wilderness) gan fosga gan fothain (shelter)
agus gan puinn de’n bhfáltas (resorces, ie. money) againn , do bheithmíos
(bheimis, ie. conditional) a tfochuir ( I do fochair: together with you) hoir
seal do’n tsaoírse, gidheadh is leór a fhaid atamaoíd gan tfaicsin (I think it
excessive how long I’ve been without seeing you.), agus an tan (tam) do
dhruidfeadh an ghrian annsa chúrsa sholsmhar the (thé), agus do bheadh na
láthaibh (dative plural) fada geal glé-mhaiseach, an áinla (éanlaithe) glórach
gliúndrach ag cantainn ciúil (genitive of “ceol”) air chrannaibh agus ar
chráochaibh (craobhachaibh), an tan (am) do bheadh libhráe (colours) rógh-shnasda
air na maghaibh (plains) agus air na machairidhibh (machaire, dative plural) go
mor-dhálach agus na féadha (forests) le fórthas ag sgéith a nduileábhair agus a
mbláth, na ród (roads) agus na ráonta (ways) go huile sgriosta sguabhtha gan
súgha (sucking) gan slogadh acht amhuill
(amhail) párlús (parlor) ríoga ró-aluinn,
do ba fhéidir go gcuirfeadhdhís fonn frithir firinneach orainn súil do
thabhairt oruibh a (“in”) i_ gcionn fheil (feile) oirdheirc na blighna .i. an
Chasg.” (D 47)
Letter Two
“A charuid ionmhuin agus a Bharraigh (Vocative of Barrach,
ie. surmame de Barra/Barry) uasail oirdheirc onóraigh ghasda Ghlinn
binn-bhriatharuig, is uaigneach atuirseach aighmhéilleach atáuid re cian daíir
.1. ón uair d’fagbhuis an Chaithirse, Óir (because) níor tharluig (go
firinneach) aon do’d shórd liom o shoin I leith (since then), agus bíodh a
fhios agad, b=da mba mhian leat troitheach (footman) nó taiddiollóir (fear
taisteala) do chur ar feadh Eirionn iaithghlais uille-ánaigh aig iarraidh
tuarasghabhala (tuairisc) dhuine bhoicht bhuarthadh ina aigne, gurab gonuig
(to) mise do ba inreacht (suitable) do, agas sin uim an abhar reimhraighte. Ach
sgeal tairis dúinn go foil (anothrr matter for now), an cuimhin leat gur thárlaógláoch
forsda fearamhail fial de chloinn Chiarmhic ort annsan mbaile re a ráightear
(with that is said/called) Baile na Martara? Is cuimhin gan ámhras. Agus bíodh
a mhairg dhuit no ataimse meallta (and you’re worse for it if I’m not
mistaken), nar gheallais (didn’t you promise) go humhal-chraoídheadh uait féin
do, go ndeanfadh feartlaoi (memorial poem to the dead) , mairbhne (formal
lament poem), nó niígh égin da shord, da mhnaá agus da bhánchele insan am
chéadna: is fíor gur gheallais agus nár chómhlíonais (didn’t fulfill). Ar an
abhar sin, bí go róaireach (very careful) ar do choímead féin air (blank space_
agus go deimin, ní fa (faoi) aoinníh dá raibh eadraibh roimhesi (before), acht
amháin fá (faoi; concerning) gan tusa do chimh lionnadh na geallta thuas, ó, a
dhuine, is truagh mar rugadh thú (Alas you were born. Ie. You’re in trouble!),
acht ní miste a nduramar, má geibhum anois (incomphrhensible word) é. (But all
that I said is no harm/worry, if we get it now). Biadham (let us be) sídhach ,
búidheachas do Dhia, is grod an tsíochain (peace will soon be here) agus
(another unreadable word) tré chónghamh do dheabhfhótuidhe (servant)
bith-dhíleas go bas .i Muiris Camshrónach Ua Conchubhair, December 19th
1764.” (D 45-46).
Heinrich Wagner’s Linguistic Atlas and Survey of Irish
Dialects produced four volumes: one of maps of Ireland plotting vocabulary, and
three approximately three hundred page volumes giving 1175 sentences, phrases
and words for each of the points where he found native Irish speakers in 1960 in Munster, Connacht and Ulster plus some Scottish points and Manx.
They were published by DIAS.
I’m giving a sample here of two sentences: “How did you do
that? (#948) and “There are black clouds in the sky” (#890)
In some cases, the whole phrase was not recorded, or even any
of it.
I’m not including but about half the points.
Underlined means the syllable that takes the word accent.
The entries are written in phonetic symbols. I didn’t try to represent fine
shades of pronounciation here.
After having done this, I’m not sure why I thought it would
be interesting, but it’s done, so I’ll post it.
1)Ring, Waterford sgamaill
dhu(bha) or sgamail dhorcha
C Conas a dhin tú é sin?
2)Rathcormac, east Waterford sgamaill
dhorachairi Conas a rinne tú…
3)Newcastle, south Tipperary sgamailli
/ (ca)Dé an tslí a rinne tú…
4)Ballymacode, east Cork (Youghal) thá
sgamaild du(bha) sa spéir / Conas a dhinis é
5)Ardfield, Cork, near Clonakilty Tá sgamail dubh insan aer. /(#948 As Ballymacoda)
6)Skibbereen Tá
sgamallach du(bha) san aer/948 as (as
Ballymacoda)
7)Bantry Tá
sgamail du(bha) ar an spéir/ (948 as Ballymacoda)
8)Ballyvourney Tá
sgamaill dhu(bha) insan spéir) (As
Ballymacoda)
