Kittens & Gaeilge
Jan. 15th, 2009 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
motgMy kittens have decided to play nice. Mostly. They aren't scratching me very much at all, they have decided that purring and snuggles are the way to go at bedtime and they are putting on weight as fast as I can shovel food into them. They are hardly even trying to steal each other's food any more. Although this morning.....
"You've got WEET-BIX!" quoth Shadow. "Look, it's very simple. It's MY Weetbix now. All you have to do is just sit there and let me plunge my little adorable nose into your bowl and everything's just gonna be fine. Look, stop picking me up and snuggling me. Yeah that's good too but it's not the real issue at stake here. What do you mean it's yours???? We can work this out, OK? Just because you're suddenly trying to eat standing up isn't going to make a difference here. I can climb up your arm and - look, just turn your back, close your eyes, count to ten and it won't be a problem any more. Oh, OK. So if I let you eat most of it you'll put the rest on the floor for me? All right. Without prejudice, we can close on that one. This time. But I warn you: I'm a very tough negotiator."
I think she was a feral kitten born hungry, and still hasn't worked out about there being food next time. But she is slowly getting the idea.
On another issue entirely, I'm listening to Cran Ull while I do Maths today. I have always loved that song Bacach Shile Andai and have always wondered what the title meant. I mean OK, Bacach means lame and Shile will be an oblique case of Sile (Sheila*) which is the Irish form of Julia. Andai???? What is this? Her surname?
Looked up on Google and found all the lyrics, but no English translation. Nobody has ever done one. Um, OK. Is this Secret Business?????
[* OK, all you Aussie blokes and sheilas. Did you know that Sheila is actually Irish? ]
"You've got WEET-BIX!" quoth Shadow. "Look, it's very simple. It's MY Weetbix now. All you have to do is just sit there and let me plunge my little adorable nose into your bowl and everything's just gonna be fine. Look, stop picking me up and snuggling me. Yeah that's good too but it's not the real issue at stake here. What do you mean it's yours???? We can work this out, OK? Just because you're suddenly trying to eat standing up isn't going to make a difference here. I can climb up your arm and - look, just turn your back, close your eyes, count to ten and it won't be a problem any more. Oh, OK. So if I let you eat most of it you'll put the rest on the floor for me? All right. Without prejudice, we can close on that one. This time. But I warn you: I'm a very tough negotiator."
I think she was a feral kitten born hungry, and still hasn't worked out about there being food next time. But she is slowly getting the idea.
On another issue entirely, I'm listening to Cran Ull while I do Maths today. I have always loved that song Bacach Shile Andai and have always wondered what the title meant. I mean OK, Bacach means lame and Shile will be an oblique case of Sile (Sheila*) which is the Irish form of Julia. Andai???? What is this? Her surname?
Looked up on Google and found all the lyrics, but no English translation. Nobody has ever done one. Um, OK. Is this Secret Business?????
[* OK, all you Aussie blokes and sheilas. Did you know that Sheila is actually Irish? ]
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-15 05:03 am (UTC)Ravening Hordes?
Date: 2009-01-15 05:12 am (UTC)Re: Ravening Hordes?
Date: 2009-01-15 05:20 am (UTC)Re: Ravening Hordes?
Date: 2009-01-15 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-15 05:44 am (UTC)He's a massive solid cat now. He's not terribly smart, quite irrational really. His appetite is part of the reason for his name - we thought he was going to become quite round. Also that I'm somewhat of a maths nerd :)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-15 06:34 am (UTC)I once boarded with a lady who named a kitten "Velcro" because he so loved my aroma when I came home from fishing that his ravenously clinging, possessively growling form had to be peeled off me ...like velcro.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-15 06:34 am (UTC)No, But I Will Hunt For It
Date: 2009-01-15 01:07 pm (UTC)Hope you are going OK. Just wanted you to know at this point.... Been there. Worn the T-shirt. Not Your Fault. Nobody else who hasn't been there has any idea at all. Good luck, girl!
Is dóigh liom é...
Date: 2009-01-15 10:05 am (UTC)[1] alla could be ‘foreign’ or ‘famous’. I think ‘foreign’ makes more sense in context.
[2] bharraigh isn't in any dictionary I have, not even Dineen, but it could be a form of barra ‘barred, prevented from movement’, in a subordinate clause. I think. This is getting into some fairly advanced stunt grammar, and I'm flying without instuments.
[3] I have no idea what ruball means, or even from where it is derived. Though there is “rubhaim: I cut, cut down, slay”. I can't figure out how to get from there to here.
[4] Dineen: “Andaidh! Andaoi! Andaigh! interj., really! indeed!.” Which I think may answer the question you were asking.
[5] I think. I think it is a circumlocution for ‘armed’.
[6] slua literally means ‘host’, but is a common word for army: a host of warriors.
[7] This redoubled sentence has no subject as far as I can tell. There is a form called the impersonal tense for this sort of situation, but it doesn't seem to have been used here. Unless I'm wrong, of course.
As far as I can tell it's a trad. piece, as a dialogue between a girl and her departed soldier boyfriend on campaign.
Clannad is also from from deep in the Gaeltacht, and reportedly didn't even learn English until relatively late in life. Many of their songs, especially the trad. ones are in their home dialect, and even for a fluent speaker, deciphering some of the dialects can be stunt grammar without a net.
Re: Is dóigh liom é...
Date: 2009-01-15 01:20 pm (UTC)That is a brilliant piece of work. And your gloss of Andai/ doubtless explains why my dictionaries don't have it. Bloody hard work whichever way you slice it. I have only 2 suggestions to add to your superb scholarship:
[2] Is there a Castle Barry anywhere near Gaothdobhair? Cos if there is, then Bharraigh might well be the name Barry.
And is it possible that we are looking at a red pig here?? I would be willing to hazard that the word we now know as Rua once had a medial bh. But where the hell in that case the -ll came from is anyone's guess. And it may be red for - well, I don't need to spell that out, do I?
OK, that's a long shot. The use of mise and tusa rather than mi and tu is a bit emphatic. But I may be entirely silly reading more into that than I need to.
Sometime the Irish are AWFULLY gnomic. Do you know, I rode a motor-bike through Gaothdobhair once. Alas, it was before I realized that it was their home-town. *Sigh* Had I known I would have stopped and paid my respects.
The Pig's Tail
Date: 2009-01-15 01:40 pm (UTC)Meaning??? I think we'll have to write this one up as.....
You Had To be There......
On your point 7, I don't think there's anything special in the doubled sentence. It's just an echo to make up the numbers. But it's fairly clear to me that the Q is OK, so there's an army there. Is it here????
Re: Is dóigh liom é...
Date: 2009-01-15 09:32 pm (UTC)the a' usually is a contraction of ag, in which case this makes sense as a verbal noun construction, such as Tá mé ag dul. Drop the verb (as it is all the way at the beginning of the line), and you get [subject] ag/a' [verbal noun]. That would make the original verb barrach, barraim, which would be under my analysis “I bar”.
The trouble is the lack of any particle, unless it is the i back at the start of the line, which would then carry across both clauses.
(And after a little more investigation, there are words like barracht , meaning glue or mortar, which lends to the idea that the root barra has to do with holding (something) fast.
Verbal Nouns
Date: 2009-01-16 08:06 am (UTC)BTW the ruball = tail is straight off the web. I never knew that....
Re: Verbal Nouns
Date: 2009-01-20 10:41 pm (UTC)Diminutive, maybe?
Makes sense, now just needs some evidence.
Re: Verbal Nouns
Date: 2009-01-21 12:27 am (UTC)Re: Is dóigh liom é...
Date: 2009-01-15 10:09 pm (UTC)And this is entirely consistent with it being cognate with ‘red’, ‘ruddy’, ‘rauðr’, ,rot‘, &c. via IE. “reudh-”.
There was an IE word “ereb(h)” with similar meaning (thus ruby, rubricate, &c), but in this case the older texts are entirely consistent with the theory that rua is derived from ‘reudh-’.