So, some of you may have encountered this thing already on Facebook. It's something that's actually going a bit viral.

I've had several people ask me now if there's any truth to it. I can definitely say there's no truth to it as far as contemporary Irish is concerned (I mean, look at the spelling!), and I'm pretty darned sure, from the new agey, semi-shamanistic, definition, if nothing else, that there's no truth to it (or at least, that the truth is very, very stretched) from the Old or Middle Irish standpoint. But I don't know Old Irish, and I want to be absolutely certain that, when I call bullsh*t, it really, truly, is bullsh*t, so I'm asking those here who may know:

1) Is there such a word as "tenalach" in Old (or Middle) Irish?

2) If there, is, could it in any way be interpreted as (and this is a direct quote): "Used to describe a relationship one has with the land, air and water, a deep connection that allows one to literally hear the Earth sing"? (Yes, I'm cringing as I type this. But I want to be thorough, as I'm relatively certain that I will be encountering this in some half-baked church sermon at some point!)

Please put me out of my misery!

Redwolf

Tenalach/Tenlach was the Old Irish word for a fireplace, or by extension a household, i.e. those who shared a fireplace.

Basically equivalent to the English word hearth. It was a completely normal word with no mystical connections.

By the way, I searched every text I have on the early Irish church and there was no mention of the goose being a holy bird either. I suspect that this myth is distortion of a long running joke in the Irish language. Basically if Dia was treated grammatically like any other first declension masculine noun it would have genitive Dé and vocative Dé, however it actually has genitive Dé and vocative Dia. This is to avoid confusion between:

A Dhé = God!
A Ghé = Goose!

So there has been a joke that people were crying out to the holy goose when they said A Ghé!

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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

tendál/tennáil/ te(i)ne dhál : fire,flame, blaze,bonfire,beacon-fire. gs & npl -áile, -ála
tendálach : having fires,fiery, flaming
tendálacht: fieriness
see website eDil of old-Irish and Middle-Irish or the the RIA 'Dictionary of the Irish Language ' page 587, subpage 147 lines 2 ...39
please note that there was no standard spelling in old/middle irish so -nd was often found with -nn and vice versa

Thanks, both of you!

I've recently found that the source for this silliness is a book by John O'Donahue, who already has a bit of a record of murdering the Irish language.

Redwolf

Holy Goose! He seems like he was a nice lad, but he had some funny ideas.

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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

Just like his bullshit books, his wikipage is full of fluff. It won't even say where he grew up only vague wording 'around' this and that. If he thought that 'Anam Cara' (sic) and 'Tenalach' (sic) were right he was obviously no native speaker.

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

Read this:

O'Donohue's last will was held to be invalid by the High Court in December 2011, Mr Justice Gilligan holding that "As a piece of English, the Will is unclear on its face" and that the will was void for uncertainty.[5] The will did not leave anything to his partner Kristine Fleck. In the absence of a valid will his estate devolved on his mother.

He probably had a 6 figure estate (who knows, maybe more) and his Will wasn't even written right. Then again, maybe it was deliberate so as not to leave the partner anything. Maybe it was written like one of his books

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

While I have no interest in spirituality (celtic or otherwise) someone forcibly lent me Anam Chara a few years ago and indeed, there is a buailte above the c in the book's title. At least on the cover of the edition that was forced on me.

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Roibeard

The publishers may have done it knowing it would be mispronounced so got round it by employing the builte

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

You're right. I think there is a copy here somewhere, taken, from my uncle's old house and it has the ponc on it

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___