I'm currently looking at one of the manuscript sources for the story of Eochaid, the King with the Horse's Ears. I've got a copy of the original text (Royal Irish Academy MS D iv 2 - it starts on folio 50 verso - first column line 10) and the transcription/translation by Kuno Meyer - (Stories and Songs from Irish Manuscripts - VII - King Eochaid has Horse's Ears). But trying to find the individual words on Dil.ie is a nightmare and I just haven't been able to find them there.
The title starts - Inní diátá cuslinn Brighde..... which is translated as - Whence is Brigid's pipe.....cuslinn is written with an extra sign which means - 'er', which doesn't seem to fit in with the transcription at all, but as I can't find them in the dictionary, I'm not sure which of these first words correspond to the English ones, apart from Brighde/Brigid's of course. Is there a specialised forum for Old and Middle Irish or perhaps an academic out there whom I could ask ? You can't crosscheck words on Dil either.

franc, there seem to be a lot of resources for Old Irish and people who could help you if you send them an email. I've tried to study it but got really frustrated with the "lack of standardization" in the old language. Or maybe just my ignorance as to how it works. It seems to be a very difficult undertaking to study it.

As far as I can tell, the only word I could intelligently guess the meaning of is "cuslinn" because on one Old Irish dictionary site, "cuisle" has one possible meaning of "pipe"; "in" can be "the"; "dia" can mean "when". https://www3.smo.uhi.ac.uk/sengoidelc/d ... glish.html

I think the form "cuslinn" here is genitive. It seems it's written "c" with the "us" shorthand then an "l" followed by an "i" with a line over it and a squiggle on top of that - I don't think that's shorthand for "er".

"Inní díatá" seems to be an inflected form requiring a genitive after it. "The ? when ? of Brigid's pipe" . . .

I'll keep looking for any information. Let us know if you find something out.

Cheers,

Tim

Hi Franc!

It has been a while!

Tiomluasocein has made a valiant effort. Old Irish / Middle Irish is about as impossible to learn on your own as it gets.

Inní is the deictic (feminine) particle / pronoun, referring to the feminine noun, cuislinn (i.e. cuisli[o]nn, i.e. cuisle [see below]). If you have Old Irish Workbook, see pgs. 88-90.

diatá is a combination of the prep. di / de + substantive verb, denoting 'origin, descent, native place' (http://www.dil.ie/14787 , XXVII After the subst. verb., [a] and [c]).

The nominative case should follow inní diatá--not the genitive as suggested above.

As regards cuislinn, my interpretation would be that there are a number of orthographic and language developments at play here.

First, cuislinn, as mentioned by Tiomluasocein, is from cuisle, an n-stem noun, meaning '(musical) pipe, flute' (http://www.dil.ie/13704); also cuisle in Modern Irish (https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fgb/cuisle).

Cuislinn, orthographically, looks like the dative or accusative singular form of the noun as it terminates in a palatal double nasal; the doubling of the nasal is because of Mac Neill's Law.

However, one would expect the nominative, i.e. cuisle, in the sentence here, not the accusative or dative case, as cuislinn looks to be, nor the genitive as suggested above.

So let me explain how cuislinn is actually a nominative variant of cuisle:

We know that it was not always clear whether a noun was palatal or broad based on Medieval Irish orthographic conventions: e.g. the genitive sing. and pl. of velar-(g-)stem noun rí 'king' is ríg, which looks palatal, but was probably broad based on the later spelling of ríg as ríogh in the genitive; but more convincing is the fact that all other velar-stem nouns end in broad velars in the genitive: e.g. cathrach (cathair) 'stone fort', airech (aire) 'noble', liach (lie / lia) 'stone'.

The difficulty with differentiating palatal and broad consonants is especially true in the case of u-stem nouns. For example, even though the u-stem nouns gním and fid ('wood') orthographically look palatal, they were probably broad because they are broad in Modern Irish. Nevertheless, there is a large degree of fluctuation between palatal and broad u-quality (later o-quality) terminations in the nominative singular of u-stem endings: e.g. you get Modern Irish bior, 'spit', written as bir and biur in the nominative; whereas bith, 'world', always looks palatal in the nom., but the dative sing. is biuth; bith of course survives in Modern Irish in the idiom 'ar bith', which is always palatal.

Returning to cuislinn, connected with the foregoing, is the rather annoying (in my opinion) late-Middle-Irish orthographic convention of representing the termination -end / -enn as -i(o)nn / i(o)nd (remember the sounds end / enn fall together within Old Irish itself). I think this orthographic convention may have arisen because the -iu-/-io- colouring of masculine o-stem and u-stem nouns in the dative, e.g. nom. fe(a)r, dat. sing. fior / fiur ('man'), began to weaken; so io- just became another means of representing a broad ending, instead of the usual -e(a).

So you get instances of Érenn, for example, represented as É(i)rionn / É(i)riond (which isn't so bad, because the ending is evidently broad), but also as É(i)rinn / É(i)rind, which of course, appears to be palatal, exactly like the dative and a variant accusative form.

Let's look at the following examples of Ériu / Éire in the genitive taken from the DIL which utilises this spelling convention:

cóic hurrunda Érind ('the five parts of Ireland') (dil.ie/2156)
bainṡenchas Erind ('woman-lore of Ireland') (dil.ie/5644)
for firu Erind ('by / on the men of Ireland') (dil.ie/17216)
lendan (= lennán) fhileadh fhóid Eiriond ('the lover / darling of the poet of the land of Ireland / Éire') (dil.ie/29923)
sed (=séd < sét) buadha ogbhan Eiriond ('a choice object of the women of Ireland') [used metaph.] (dil.ie/37323).

So by extension, cuislinn is probably cuislionn, i.e.. cuisle(a)nn, which of course looks like the genitive sing. / plural of cuisle.

However, a feature of some n-stem nouns, during the transition from Old to Middle Irish, was for the genitive sing. to supplant the nom. sing. especially when the nom. terminated in a vowel: e.g. gobae > gobann, arú > árann. This phenomenon was extremely common with n-stem names: e.g. Eithliu > Eithle(a)nn, Bricriu > Bricre(a)nn, Cúalu > Cúalann, Anu > Anann.

If you look at the entry for cuisle in the DIL itself, there is precedent for the gen. form supplanting the nom. sing., i.e. cuisle > cuislenn / cuislend, in 'LL' (although, the nom. is strictly cuisle in Modern Irish): 'n n, f. c.¤ f., g s. -end, -inde, IGT Decl. § 145 (cf. n s. cuslend, LL 18574)'.

'LL' is a common siglum for Lebor Laignech / Lebor na Nuachongabhála, i.e. the 'Book of Leinster', compiled between 1151-1224.

So to cut a long story short: cuislinn = Cuislionn / Cuislenn = cuisle, in the nominative.

Cian

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Beautiful. I am speechless.

Just one thing to add and this is reflected in some of the comments you made on corrections. There was a comment made on a site I was looking at, and this was also noted by Kuno Meyer, that the person who wrote down these stories was fairly sloppy at it. Dr Meyer had to make many corrections and it's possible he may have passed over a few things for whatever reason. Also, like I mentioned above, spelling was not always standardized and it did depend on what period you're talking about.

So franc, maybe Cian can teach you what you need to know. His comment above will keep me going for a few weeks.

Old / Middle Irish =



I've looked at the manuscript and it seems Franc is correct. That little superscript 'squiggle' is usually the nod for 'er'.

See the following entry in Tionscadal na Nod: https://www.vanhamel.nl/codecs/Er_(vertical_tilde)

The rest of the title, which is a colophon written in later (but by the same scribe), reads:

Inní diatá cuslin(er) Brighde 7 Aidhed Mic Dhíchoime 'Whence (is) Brigit's pipe and the slaying of Díchoím's son’

ISOS, in the description of the contents of the MS, has inverted the order of the title, but I don't see a cenn fo eite to indicate that the clauses ought to be inverted.

Interestingly, initial 'B' is absent in the first line of the text, indicating that an ornamental 'B' was intended to be added to the MS later to mark the beginning of the story.

The first line reads:

[B]aí rí amra (subscript) for hib Failgi fecht n-aill .i. Eochaid a ainm.

'One upon a time there was a wonderful / marvelous king of Uí Fhailge (who have given their name to county Offaly), i.e. Eochaid was his name'.

It mentions Eochaid's having horse's ears in the next line:

Bui ainim mor for sin righ .i. da n[-]oo eich (subscript: pill) fair 'There was a great blemish on the king, i.e. two horse's ears on him'.

ainim (/ ainem) = blemish (http://dil.ie/1400), written ainimh in Modern Irish. Orthographically, lenition of 'm' is not marked in early MSS.

oo = ó (< *au) is an archaic poetic term for 'ear' (http://dil.ie/33366), cf. English cognate 'aural'; it is originally a neuter s-stem, hence the nasalisation following the dual dá. The use of the neuter seems to provide a terminus ante quem, suggesting pre-1000 AD as the date of composition. The neuter is thought to have fallen out of use by that date, except of course for petrified phrases and heightened poetic diction. Obviously you would need to look at the text as a whole to better determine the date of composition.

As well as ech (= each), the usual word for a horse, the text also gives pell, which is usually confined to poetry (http://dil.ie/34262). Marc, of course, is another word for horse which predominantly survives in the words marcach 'horse rider' and marcaíocht 'horse-riding'.

After playing around with the title, I found the story in question on the Van Hamel website: https://www.vanhamel.nl/codecs/Inn%C3%A ... ho%C3%ADme


Cian

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Thank you very much both of you. Yes of course I've been using the Nodanna reference section on the CODECS/van Hamel website. What surprises me is that following the work published by Kuno Meyer, (thank God for Internet Archive) very little work seems to have been done on it since then. I've had to write out my own 'diplomatic' version of the whole story, something that hasn't been done up until now, as far as I can see. Luckily there's an overlap between the two transcriptions by Kuno Meyer and Rudolf Thurneysen, which I've also managed to get hold of. The other version I have is by Tristano Bolleli in 'Due Studi Irlandesi' and of course there's the article 'Reconstructing the Medieval Irish Bookshelf: A Case Study of Fingal Rónáin and the Horse-Eared Kings' by Michael Clarke - (it's on Academia), but he doesn't have much to say about the actual text itself. What would really be useful would be a word for word translation/transcription of these manuscripts so that those of us who have access to them could gain a better understanding of them. Of course I realise that quite often the vocabulary that you find in the manuscripts is a matter for discussion by the specialists. For example the last word in 'Messe 7 Pangur Bán' which fits in with the 'dúnad' scheme of things - I was under the impression that it was the same word with the same meaning, apparently that's not the case, so I'm still not sure of what it means exactly. Obviously I'm not even a paid-up student in this field, I'm only a 'tourist'.

I've just had a look at the article by R. Thurneysen and in fact he says this concerning the word 'cuslinn' -

'cusli mit n-Strich über i und darúber noch ein zweites Abkürzungszeichen. Im text heifst der NSG meistens cuisli oder cuisle.'

Marc'h of course is the Breton word for a horse and there is a very similar story in Breton about le Roi Marc aux Oreilles de Cheval. The name of Eochaid also has included in it the word for a horse - ech, (a noble steed) which reminds me of the Latin equus versus caballus (capall).

I have finally managed to get hold of a copy of the 'Old Irish Workbook' as mentioned above and I've also done a search for the feminine deictic particle/pronoun.
So would this be correct as a literal or word for word transcription ? Inní - Of the - di-átá - from that is - the pipe of Brigid....

Oh man, I wish I had known you wanted that book. I want to get rid of mine.

Actually, I did look in it for clues to help you but got a headache after about 5 minutes.
But good on you for working that out.

That "cuislinn" problem is concerning. On my reading through comments about this passage (and I may
have mentioned this before) some scholars say the copying of this story was rather sloppily done. It could
just be a simple careless mistake. But why wouldn't Kuno Meyer have noted that? The mystery continues . . .