A post on the Old Irish L mailing list reminded me of this. Songs of the Scribe is a short collection
of readings/songs of Old Irish poems. I bought it myself a good while ago and the pronunciation of Old Irish
is quite good, it's interesting to listen to.

Just in case anybody finds this interesting:
Songs of the Scribe

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Oh, that seems interesting. I'll definitely give it a listen. Funnily, I was just thinking about how a passage from the Cath Maige Tuired might make for a good song chorus; it is spoken by Badb, CMT 166: "Sith co nem. Nem co doman. Doman fo ním, nert hi cach, án forlann, lan do mil, mid co saith." (Peace to sky, sky to earth, earth under sky, strength in both, a full cup, mead enough.)

...Hm. Now I wonder what that'd be in modern Irish, actually. Opinions?

My attempt at putting it into modern Irish and keeping as close to the original as possible;

Síth go neamh, neamh go domhan, domhan faoi niomh, neart i gcách (mbeirt), forlann án, lán de mhil, meá go sáith.

I'm not sure of any of it but I am particularly not sure of the phrase in italics.

I'd wager that "gach" is actually the direct descendant of OI cach, so maybe "neart i ngach" would fit better? I'm don't even think that cách can be used this way, seeing how it mostly means "everybody". As for "án forlann", the translation to "a full cup" might not be literal, or the words have long since become extinct. The rest might be archaic and poetic, but it translates well enough and it's epic poetry we're talking about, so that's expected.

Now, would anybody know about "án forlann"?

*1 Sith= síoth/síodh (Dineen pg. 1004)

*2 Neamh is feminine and is feminine in the Old Irish version also, niomh would be the masculine dative singular of the o-stems.

*3 I don't think cách is wrong here at all and cách may have evolved from cach just as gach did.[/b]

*4 án (Old irish for drinking Vessel, eDIL), a word án does exist in modern Irish but it means noble, pure, pleseant, elegent; an t-aos áine/án the fairies (Dineen, pg. 42). Án would therefore not be suitable, maybe corn could be used instead?

*5 forlann in eDIL: "superiority; strength; numbers; odds; thronged; rich; unfair; domination; oppression; ill-; treatment". However, Dineen on page 481 has forlann: force majeuere, violence, spite, grudge, venom, acute pain, ba forlann dó é (he was too much or more than a match for him) but more importantly Dineen lists excess as a translation- án forlann cup of excess (i do not understand why its not in the genetive case in the old Irish version). Dineen has the genitive as masculine "lainn" that seems odd for an "lann" termination, they are usually always feminine with genitive "lainne" endings and having "lainn" as their dative singular.

*6 Lán do mil means full of honey, "m" formed one of the DNTLS of Old Irish and therefore cannot be aspirated in written form but may have been pronounced. I would question the use of the preposition do here in the Old Irish version, di is the more ubiquitous form for "of" "from". Whereas, do tended to mean "to" "for".

*7 miodh/meadh/meádh/méadh all variants found for Mead in Dineen pg. 723 and 745

*8 Sáith Dineen pg. 933 sufficiency, a sufficient quantity, enough of, what satisfies or suits, satiety, treasure, store.

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Please wait for corrections/ more input from other forum members before acting on advice

Ah yeah I was a bit lost on that "án forlann" phrase, I even put it the wrong way around.
I thought the dative of "neamh" in modern Irish was "niomh" from the expression "A Dhia i niomh".
Or does that change because it's preceded by a noun in the vocative?

I was wrong, just did a quick check; nemh was a neutral, S-stem* word in Old Irish, not feminine. Although by looking at the genitive of modern day equivalent "neimhe" in the CO and the dative as it was presented in Cath Mag Tuired "nimh" I thought it was feminine Á-stem. When the neuter fell out of the language the words that were neutral became either masculine or feminine in different dialects (in the case of ainm; masculine in Connachta and Uladh, feminine in Mumha) or some words adopted a mixed gender such as talamh that can be interchangeably masculine (gen. s: talaimh) and feminine (gen. s: talún/ tal(a)mhan- steming from the old genitive talman)

In the case of S-stems, taking "tech" as an example, the dative can be "tigh" or "taigh". However, my mini-old Irish dictionary only lists nimh as the dative. In light of the treatment of neuter words as they collapsed into other genders "niomh" just be correct as well. Actually, what dialect was the source written in? If niomh was the dative, than nimh should be the genitive in that source as well, as "neamh" is treated as if it were an O-stem or first declension noun.

*stem is like the modern day díochlaonadh/ declension.

We kinda hijacked your post Lon Dubh, we did a few of those poems for Irish. They are beautifully written, depicting beautiful imagery with the dánta díthreabhaigh and the Dánta Dúlra (hermit poetry, nature poetry) nearly always being obsessed with the Lon Dubh and its "yellow, joyous" beak. Unfortunately, I'm not a major fan of poetry in general though! Its a shame because some of them like the Caillech Bhéirre are as complex in allegory and style than any poetry of any era in any country.

Cian

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No problem, I really enjoy the technical details of Old Irish! I'm nowhere near being able to read it myself unaided, but I've gotten some good use out of Sengoídelc by David Stifter and SeanGhaeilge gan Dua by Pádraig Ó Fiannachta. Actually a load of really good textbooks on Old Irish have come out in the last three-four years (A Student's Companion to Old Irish Grammar, by Ranke de Vries and others), pity there's never been a textbook on Classical Irish!

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

I have Old-Irish paradigms by John Strachan, edited by Osborn Bergin (4th edition 1949, reprinted 2003) and E. G. Quin's accompanying Old Irish Workbook 1975. Strachan's Old Irish Paradigms is very badly layed out, the layout of the verbs is especially disastrous. Its not very user-friendly; I would have found it impossible to understand it on my own, luckily we did as a module. I might have a look at the other books available, thanks for the suggestions. Yeah, Classical Irish seems to get past over alright, a textbook is badly needed.

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Please wait for corrections/ more input from other forum members before acting on advice

I've seen Strachan, very much in the "old" style of textbooks for classical languages, i.e. virtually unreadable.

SeanGhaeilge gan Dua is very helpful because Ó Fiannachta draws connections to Modern Irish and it has to
be said a lot of details in Old Irish are much easier to understand when you realise that they're just slightly different of stuff
in Modern Irish. (Well slightly I say, for the nouns maybe, but the verbs it's like another planet! The horror that is the Old Irish verb! )

Sengoídelc's advantage is that it's written like a textbook for a modern (i.e. currently spoken) language, friendly, funny and with very interesting notes on etymology, e.t.c. It's actually just fun to read!

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal