Kittens & Gaeilge

[motg]

My 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? ]

Comments

[rhyannonf.livejournal.com]

hehehe... your kittens sound lovely. I've often had to fight off ravening hordes for my cereal in the morning. :-)

[pyrrha17.livejournal.com]

One of our cats was a feral and the other a dumped kitten. After (OMG!) 6 years, Pi (the dumped one) hasn't yet clued on to the fact that we will feed him regularly, and he needn't worry. He could just look in his bowl to find food, but no, he has to whine to us that he's STARVING, he must eat NOW. So we go to the laundry to find plenty of food there, which he then wolfs down.

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 :)

[celsa.livejournal.com]

Of course Sheilagh is Irish.

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.

[beachy-woods.livejournal.com]

Ever read a book The cat who came in from the cold By Deric Longdon? Your kitten paragraph sounds just like Thermal :)

Is dóigh liom é...

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

An raibh tu i gcill alla no caislean a' bharraigh,
 Are you in a foreign[1] church or in a castle locked[2],
Bhfaca tu campai a bhi ag na francaigh?
 Do you see camps which are in France?

Mise 'gus tusa 'gus ruball na muice 'gus bacach shil' andai.
 Me and you and the pig's «ruball»[3] and Shile's beggar indeed[4].

Bhi me i gcill alla is caislean a' bharraigh,
 I was in a foreign church and in a castle locked,
Chonaic me campai bhi ag na francaigh.
 I saw camps which are in France.

Mise 'gus tusa 'gus ruball na muice 'gus bacach shil' andai.

An raibh tu ar a chruach no bhfaca tu slua,
 Are you with the steel[5] or do you see an army[6],
Bhi ar chnoc phadraig, bhi ar chnoc phadraig?
 Was it on Patrick's Hill, on Patrick's Hill?[7]

Mise 'gus tusa 'gus ruball na muice 'gus bacach shil' andai.

A bhi me ar a chruach is chonaic me slua,
 I was with the steel and I saw the army,
A bhi ar chnoc phadraig, bhi ar chnoc phadraig.
 'twas on Patrick's Hill, on Patrick's Hill.

Mise 'gus tusa 'gus ruball na muice 'gus bacach shil' andai.

[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.