Talk:Éistibh, a Luchd an Tighe-se

Not-a-hoax

Since that was my first thought when I saw this article, just wanted to assure you, careful editor, that this isn't a hoax or vandalised entry. I looked into it and found it to be both sourced and notable. The world is just bizarre sometimes. I leave you with this thought: "penis." FlyingToaster 15:55, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

De-Irish-ising

I notice that Ogress did some editing of the Gaelic text after adding it. If the text came from An Leabhar Mòr then editing it devalues the citation. Without the book it’s hard to tell what the intention was, but I suspect it was to show what the spelling represented in modern Gaelic orthography, not to translate it into modern Gaelic. Some of the “Irish” features would probably just have been the conventions of the time. ⚜ Moilleadóir ✍ 02:18, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Any proper edition?

Does anyone know if there’s a “proper” edition trying to reconstruct the original intended text (and not a diplomatic edition of the manuscript) available?

I’ve restored the An Leabhar Mòr spelling (@Moilleadóir:) – the book’s available on academia.edu and also there’s version of its content on Web Archive (added a link to the latter in the footnote). But this version isn’t great:

1. it’s internally inconsistent (scél but scéalaibh; dana for dona/dena; atá, tá, tha are all over the place…),
2. it seems to be missing some parts (eg. Da leneour bod braiwillycht of the original with clear da looks to me rather like dá líonmhaire bod breagh-bhileach ‘however many fine tree-like penises…’ instead of cé líonmhar bod… ‘although many penises…’),
3. it’s not metrical and often misses rhymes, so I doubt that’s actually close to the text as the poet intended it,
4. it’s grammatically faulty (na mbod bríoghmhar is nonsense; na mbod mbríoghmhar would be correct but plural!, singular would need to be an bhuid bhríoghmhair).

I don’t see how the text can be metrical though – but it clearly has features suggesting it was at least close to being metrical – perhaps in the aoi fhreislighe metre:

1. lines a, c generally end in 3-syllables (ti-ghe-se, chri-dhe-se, breagh-bhil-each, chrá-bhaidh-se, ro-rea-mhar…), lines b-d in 2-syllables (bríogh-mhar, seasmhach…),
2. sometimes there’s perfect rhyme between lines a-c (tighe-se : chridhe-se, ro-reamhar : cho-reamhar) – but then I don’t see any rhyme in b-d (?),
3. there’s some imperfect rhyming (comhardadh briste), eg. bríoghmhar : sgríobhadh (assuming that’s the correct reading),
4. most lines have 7 syllables, ie. lines 1c, 2a, 2b, 3b, 3c, 3d, 4a, 4b, 4c, 4d(?)…
5. it has a dúnadh (the éistibh / éistidh repeated at the end). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Silmethule (talk • contribs) 21:27, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

But it lacks alliteration in the very first line and it also necessarily has 8 syllables. Could be that it’s in the style of bardic syllabic poetry but itself not really following the rules.

Could also be some other metre I don’t know about (eg. something similar to séadna and séadna mór; with a-c rhyme and eg. 8³ + 7² syllable structure?) – but I’m not aware of such a metre and that’s why I’d like to see some edition of the poem by someone competent in Classical Gaelic poetry… Silmethule (talk) 21:20, 11 November 2023 (UTC)