by Tom Birkett
30 Jackson, Aislinge Meic Conglinne, pp. 25–6.
31 Preston-Matto, Aislinge Meic Conglinne, p. 37.
32 Looking at it now I would change ‘delicious’ in the second line of the second stanza listed here to ‘savoury’ to make the alliteration that much stronger.
120
Lahney Preston-Matto
Lodmar isin loech-lestar,
We went into the man-of-war
Laechda in chongaib chonaire
And took the path daringly
Dar bolc-lenna lir,
Over the rough waves;
Cor bensumm na sesbémend
We pulled ourselves – stroke/
stroke/stroke –
Dar muncind in mur-t(h)ráchta
Over the sea expansive
Co tochrad a mur-thorud,
And stirred up the carrageen,
Mur-grian amal mil.33
Honey-colored sand.34
I used a few anachronisms, such as ‘man-of-war’ and ‘meat-jerky’, but I liked how
‘man-of-war’ reflected loech and still got across the idea of a warship in three syl ables. I also researched different three-syl able versions of seaweed and settled on
‘carrageen’. I suppose I could have used dúlamán, but I wanted to avoid the Celtic Woman connection.35 I am very fond of cheese, but my gustatory knowledge did
not extend to the adjective ‘barnyardy’ that applies to a specific grassy, musty odour and flavour that some cheeses, general y goat and sheep, acquire. I am also pleased
with my Joyce theft with ‘riversrun’, which gave me the three syl ables I needed
while simultaneously conveying moving streams of fermented beverages.36 Final y,
I created a number of three-syl able adjectives, such as ‘bacony’ and ‘custardy’, and
general y went with the -y suffix as opposed to ending with -like or -esque because
I did not want to have to hit accents at the end of the line (and I did not want to
make them sound too French). I also hyphenated a lot of words to make them tech-
nical y three syl ables, but the Middle Irish has to do some of that as wel , as with
loech-lestar, gel-chruitnecht and thur-arán, and I was able to pick up on that with my translations of ‘man-of-war’, ‘wheaten-white’ and ‘dried-bannock’.
The last example employs the more usual quatrains but varies metres which I
have matched. Most of the metres require alliteration throughout, as well as B and D
rhyme, which I have tried to replicate, although the B and D rhymes are often sight
rhymes and I was not always able to match the alliteration. Final y, I have replicated dunád, where the poem begins and ends with the same word. There was not as
much room for play here, although I liked the choice of ‘brother’ for scolóc, for the resonance that it has even today for men who address other men as ‘brother’, and
sometimes in a snide way. There are more anachronisms here, such as ‘chutney’ and
‘Kingdom-Come’ but I did not have to create adjectives here, as I did in the poem
referenced immediately above. The Middle Irish is particularly difficult to replicate, especial y in the second and third stanzas: in these, the poet essential y moves the
same three words around in different recombinant forms, which I tried to replicate,
but found extremely difficult. I do wish that I had used ‘paltry’ instead of ‘meager’
33 Jackson, Aislinge Meic Conglinne, p. 14.
34 Preston-Matto, Aislinge Meic Conglinne, p. 21.
35 Dúlamán is a popular Irish folksong that is about gathering the seaweed known as dúlamán. It has been recorded over the years by bands such as Altan and Clannad, but most recently by the Celtic Woman ensemble who follow most directly in the footsteps of the Riverdance juggernaut.
36 James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (New York, 1939), p. 3. ‘Riverrun’ is the first word of Joyce’s novel.
Aislinge Meic Conglinne
121
to at least get some alliteration into that third line of the third stanza. Essential y, I was trying to transmit some of the difficulty of the Middle Irish without making
it too difficult for a Modern English reader, but also get across Mac Conglinne’s
righteous indignation and anger, which he then channels into an attack on Cork’s
main shortcoming, its food.
Conclusion
Overal , what I hoped to accomplish with the translation of this text was a wider
English-reading audience for it, as it is a medieval treasure. What I discovered along the way, as all translators do, were multiple questions about how closely I should
translate, whether I should use anachronisms or other techniques that would allow
the reader easier access to a medieval text, and whether I could help the reader
distinguish between what seemed odd in the text simply because it was odd, or
because it was from a different time period, or a different culture. I wanted to keep
some of the strangeness from the original text, but not so much that a reader would
be put off. As all translators know, in translating any text, it is a good idea not to alienate your reader too much. This is particularly true for the audience I imagined for my translation, a general audience that is interested in, but not necessarily familiar with, medieval Ireland. More specifical y, my translation was intended
for the use of American undergraduates, who as a general population do not have
experience with languages other than English or with medieval literature. I wanted
the audience to be interested in the issues explored in the text, such as interactions between religion and politics, the place of poetry in a society, and the function of
food as fantasy, rather than distracted by the language itself. So I did not translate using the passive voice, for instance, although much of the original text is passive,
nor did I use archaisms to lend a sense of its age, as American undergraduates
certainly do not need either of those as a model for their writing (they are far too
apt to employ these already!). Instead, I kept the ‘strangeness’ of the time period and the culture, and tried to make the language slightly easier for them. It is far better to be hospitable, as Mac Conglinne stresses to the monks of Cork, a lesson from the
text I have tried to take to heart.
8
Translating Find and the Phantoms
into Modern Irish1
Tadhg Ó Síocháin
La traduction est un duel à mort où périt inévitablement celui qui traduit ou celui qui est traduit.2
In this chapter, I will argue that the translation into Modern Irish of litera-
ture from the Old and Middle Irish periods can offer advantages that do not
always accrue from translations of such texts into English and other languages.3
I should, of course, point out immediately that translations into languages with
a broad global reach have played a major role in bringing this literature to an
international readership and in gaining for it a prestigious place in international
scholarship.4 So my proposal is for Modern Irish translations in addition to rather than instead of translations into other languages. In the Appendix to this chapter, I present a Modern Irish translation of a medieval Irish poem, beginning ‘Oenach
1 I am grateful to Kevin Murray of the Department of Early and Medieval Irish,
University College Cork, who kindly read a draft of this chapter and made a number of
corrections as well as many helpful suggestions. However, any remaining errors or weaknesses are attributable to me alone.
2 ‘Translation is a duel to the death where either the one who translates or the one who is translated inevitably perishes.’ Friedrich von Schlegel, quoted in Edmond Cary
, Comment faut-il traduire? (Lille, 1985), p. 25.
3 Kim McCone, ‘An tSean-Ghaeilge agus a Réamhstair’, in Stair na Gaeilge in ómós do Pádraig Ó Fiannachta, ed. Kim McCone et al. (Maigh Nuad, 1994), pp. 61–219, at p. 63, follows David Greene, ‘Archaic Irish’, in Indogermanisch und Keltisch, ed. K. H. Schmidt (Wiesbaden, 1977), pp. 11–33, at p. 12 in applying the term ‘Early Old Irish’ to the language as it existed in the seventh century. He uses the term ‘Classical Old Irish’ to refer to the language as used in the eighth and ninth centuries. Liam Breatnach, ‘An Mheán-Ghaeilge’, in Stair na Gaeilge, ed. Kim McCone et al., 221–333 assigns Middle Irish roughly to the period 900 to 1200. I use the term ‘Medieval Irish’ to refer to the language during the Old and Middle Irish periods.
‘Early Modern Irish’ refers to the period roughly from 1200 to 1650. I use the term ‘Modern Irish’ to describe the language of the present day as well as that found in literature roughly from the late seventeenth century on, which would be fairly readily understood by competent present-day speakers and readers.
4 See for example, A. Dooley and H. Roe, Tales of the Elders of Ireland (Acal am na Senórach) (Oxford, 1999) and Thomas Kinsel a, The Tain: Translated from the Irish Epic Tain Bo Cuailnge (Dublin, 1969; rpt. Oxford, 1979).
Find and the Phantoms
123
indiu luid in rí’, known general y under the English title of ‘Find and the Phantoms’
given to it by Whitley Stokes, which is reprinted following the Modern Irish transla-
tion.5 The poem tel s of a terrifying encounter between the hero, Find Mac Cumail ,
his son Oisín and his foster-son Caílte, and a collection of aggressive phantoms in a
house in a remote glen where they go to seek shelter one night.6 Due mainly to the
prowess of Find, the three survive their gruesome ordeal until morning when, as
the sun rises, all are mysteriously overcome by sleep. When Find and his compan-
ions awake, the ghostly house and its phantoms have vanished and all three are
unscathed. At the outset, I will provide some contextual information about the text
chosen for translation. I will outline my aims and overall approach to the task and
discuss some general theoretical questions as well as practical issues that influenced my approach. As translators always have to choose between possible alternatives,
I will then try to explain some of the choices that I have made and discuss some
problems that I encountered.
Source Text and Its Place within Fiannaíocht7
My source text is a poem taken from the twelfth-century Book of Leinster (Dublin, Trinity College MS 1339, fols 206b–207b),8 and published by Whitley Stokes with an
English translation in 1886. The poem, which has been tentatively dated to the elev-
enth century,9 is narrated by Find’s son, Oisín, also called Guaire, who inexplicably
survived along with Find’s foster-son, Caílte, and some followers long enough to
meet St Patrick in the fifth century.10 Another version of the same narrative is found in verse form in Duanaire Finn,11 where the English version has the title, The Headless Phantoms. That poem has been assigned a date before the second half of the 5 Whitley Stokes, ‘Find and the Phantoms’, Revue Celtique 7 (1886), 289–307.
6 In my translation, and when referring to the later Fiannaíocht tradition, I use the modern spelling: ‘Fionn Mac Cumhail ’, ‘Oisín’ and ‘Caoilte’.
7 The term Fiannaíocht refers to the corpus of literature both oral and written dealing with the exploits of Find (Fionn) Mac Cum(h)aill and his warrior band. The earliest surviving examples have been dated to the seventh century; see, for example, Gerard Murphy, Duanaire Finn: The Book of the Lays of Fionn, vol. 3 (Dublin, 1953), p. lv. However, dating of early material can be problematic, especial y where one has to rely solely or mainly on linguistic criteria and it is almost certain that the beginning of the tradition predates the earliest written witnesses available. See Kevin Murray, ‘Interpreting the Evidence: Problems with Dating the Early Fianaigecht Corpus’, in The Gaelic Finn Tradition, ed. Sharon J. Arbuthnot and Geraldine Parsons (Dublin, 2012), pp. 31–49.
8 R. I. Best and M. A. O’Brien, eds, The Book of Leinster formerly Lebor na Núachongbála, vol. 4 (Dublin, 1965), lines 29089–29280.
9 Kuno Meyer, ed. and trans. Fianaigecht: Being a Col ection of Hitherto Inedited Irish Poems and Tales Relating to Finn and his Fiana, with English Translation, Todd Lecture Series 16 (Dublin, 1910), p. xxv.
10 This device allows the creation of a particular role for Oisín and Caílte as raconteurs and interpreters of the exploits of Find and his band for Patrick and later generations.
11 Eoin MacNeil , ed., Duanaire Finn: The Book of the Lays of Fionn, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1908), pp. 28–30 and 127–30.
124
Tadhg Ó Síocháin
twelfth century by Gerard Murphy.12 An acephalous Middle Irish prose version of
the story was published in 1892 by Ludwig Christian Stern.13 A prose version of the
adventure and a version in verse are found in Ní Shéaghdha’s Agal amh na Seanórach dated by her to the fourteenth or fifteenth century.14 We can deduce from the existence of these versions that the story was considered important by medieval scribes
and storytellers. Fiannaíocht tradition flourished down through the centuries as is evident from many surviving works dating from the Middle Irish and Early Modern
periods,15 and the popularity of Fiannaíocht tales in folklore in Ireland can be seen from examples collected in recent times;16 its influence on modern literature is not
inconsiderable.17 Indeed one can still hear in the Gaeltacht a few storytellers who
recount the adventures of Fionn (the later version of Find’s name) and his warrior
band, not to mention the many children’s story books in Irish and English that deal
with the fianna and may be found on the shelves of even small bookshops. There is also a rich vein of Fiannaíocht literature in Scottish Gaelic.18
Why Modern Irish Translation?
The quality and variety of Fiannaíocht, which stretches back well over a thou-
sand years and which is still today a living tradition, would be enough to justify
12 Murphy, Duanaire Finn 3, pp. 24–5. However, see John Carey, ‘Remarks on Dating’, in Duanaire Finn: Reassessments, Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series 13, ed. John Carey (London, 2003), pp. 1–18, where it is argued that, in some cases, dates proposed by Murphy for the poems in Duanaire Finn may be too late.
13 L. C. Stern, ‘Le manuscrit irlandais de Leide’, Revue Celtique 13 (1892), 1–31.
14 Agal amh na Seanórach, 3 vols, ed. N. Ní Shéaghdha (Baile Átha Cliath, 1942–1945; reprinted, London, 2014), pp. 168–82. For a discussion of the source and date of these versions, see Ní Shéaghdha ed., Agal amh na Seanórach, 3rd vol., pp. xxiv–xxxiv. See also Douglas Hyde, ‘The Reeves Manuscript of the Agal amh na Senorach’, Revue Celtique 38 (1920–21), 289–95 and M. van Kranenburg, ‘ Oenach indiu luid in rí: An Edition of the Three Known Versions of “Today the King went to a Fair” or Finn and the Phantoms with Translation and Textual Notes’ (unpublished MA thesis, University of Utrecht, 2008).
15 See, for example, W. H. Stokes, ed. and partial trans., ‘Acal amh na Senórach’, in Irische Texte 1, ed. W. H. Stokes and E. Windisch (Leipzig, 1900), pp. 1–438; N. Shéaghdha, ed., Agal amh na Seanórach and ed. and trans., Tóruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne: The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Gráinne, Irish Texts Society 48 (Dublin, 1967); S. Céitinn, Foras Feasa ar Éirinn: the History of Ireland by Geoffrey Keating, D. D. , 4 vols, Irish Texts Society 4, 8, 9, 15, ed. D. Comyn and P. S. Dinneen (London, 1902–14); and Pádraic Mac Piarais, ed., Bruidhean Chaorthainn: Sgéal Fiannaidheachta (Baile Átha Cliath, 1908).
16 See, for example, ‘Céadach Mac Rí na gCor as Éirinn’ and ‘Urchar an Daill faoi Ab
hal ’, in Éamon a Búrc: Scéalta, ed. Peadar Ó Ceannabháin (Baile Átha Cliath, 1983), pp. 44–61
and 62–6; An Sgeuluidhe Gaedhealach (Sgéalta as Connachta), ed. Dubhglas de hÍde (Baile Átha Cliath, 1933) (items 16, 22, 27 and 28) and Seanchas Amhlaoibh Í Luínse, ed. Donncha Ó
Cróinín (Baile Átha Cliath, 1980), pp. 251–3.
17 See, for example, Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (New York, 1939) and Máire Mhac an tSaoi, ‘Gráinne’ and ‘Suantraí Ghráinne’, in Margadh na Saoire (Dublin, 1956), pp. 41–2 and p. 45.
18 See, for example, Neil Ross, Heroic Poetry from the Book of the Dean of Lismore (Edinburgh, 1939) and J. F. Campbel , Leabhar na Feinne: Heroic Gaelic Bal ads Col ected in Scotland Chiefly from 1512 to 1871 (London, 1872; facsimile reprint, Shannon, 1972). See also J.
J. Flahive, The Fenian Cycle in Irish and Scots-Gaelic Literature (Cork, 2017).
Find and the Phantoms
125
the translation into Modern Irish of the older witnesses. But there are two other
important considerations. Firstly, I believe that an intralingual (or diachronic) rather than an interlingual translation makes it somewhat easier to remain close to the
feel and spirit of the original. This, I believe, helps the translator to avoid one of the pitfal s associated by Michael Cronin with the widespread practice of translating
medieval Irish originals into English. In advocating the translation of older Irish
texts into Modern Irish, Cronin has argued – perhaps a little harshly – that the
translations available in English are often philological y-based and do scant justice
to the aesthetic quality of the originals, while the somewhat awkward and archaising
language sometimes used by translators creates an image of Irish as a language that
is out of date. He has called accordingly for a major initiative aimed at making early Irish literature available through translation into Modern Irish.19 On the other hand, Pádraig Ó Fiannachta has drawn attention to echoes of the style of the old texts that
come through in Modern Irish despite lexical and syntactic differences.20 This puts
intralingual (or diachronic) translation in a more advantageous position and offers
