Hello! I've been on the hunt for a modern Irish translation of the full Deer's Cry/St. Patrick's Breastplate prayer. I ran across a thread on ILF (http://www.irishlanguageforum.com/viewt ... =28&t=5267) that contains a post with the full text, but I had a question about one section of it and my grasp of Irish grammar isn't advanced enough for me to find the answer myself.

The section in question:

Éirím inniú,
Neart Dé dom' stiúradh,
Cumhacht Dé dom' chumhdach,
Críonnacht Dé dom' threorú'
Súil Dé ag faire dom,
Cluas Dé ag éisteacht liom,
Briathar Dé ag labhairt liom,
Lámh Dé dom' chosaint,
Slí Dé dom' tharraingt,
Sciath Dé mar dhídem dom,
Slua Dé dom' chaomhnú

(English:
I arise today, through
God’s strength to pilot me,
God’s power to sustain me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s path to go before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me)

What I'm wondering about: is there a way to make some of the phrasing of the Irish here more symmetrical like it is in the English version? The structure of the first few lines, as far as I can tell, is something like "[Quality] [of God] dom [Verbal Noun]", but it diverges from that pattern in several places, like where it becomes "[Quality] [of God] ag [Verbal Noun] liom" for instance, which messes with the rhythm a bit. So for instance, would "Briathar Dé ag labhairt liom" ("God's word to speak for me") be able to be translated "Briathar Dé dom labhairt" or would that cause a problem?

Also wondering if "Éirím inniu" which appears throughout the prayer as "I arise today" should not instead be "Éirím inniu le" to mean "I arise today through/with" the various powers and qualities listed?

Any help is appreciated!

Dé is always in 2nd position, so kind of symmetrical. You can’t put it first.

All those phrases have either objects in genitive case (in case of mé as possessive adjectives following do -> … do mo / dom’ …)
or objects following the prepositions do, le (in case of mé prepositional pronouns -> ag … dom, ag … liom).
Things you can’t change.

through:
Probably you could (or even should) insert agus here, an all-purpose conjunction denoting any possible circumstance between main clause and the following phrase from "although" to "because" or "while" or "if", including "through" (though literally meaning simply "and"):

Éirim inniu,
Agus neart Dé do mo stiúradh, …

And you could repeat agus in every line to make it more symmetrical.

Éirím inniu,
Agus neart Dé do mo stiúradh,
Agus cumhacht Dé do mo chumhdach,
Agus críonnacht Dé do mo threorú,
Agus Súil Dé ag faire dom,
Agus cluas Dé ag éisteacht liom,
Agus briathar Dé ag labhairt liom,
Agus lámh Dé do mo chosaint,
Agus slí Dé do mo tharraingt,
Agus sciath Dé mar dhídem dom,
Agus slua Dé do mo chaomhnú.

This is a prayer which was originally written in Old Irish. It seems strange to try to reverse translate the modern English into modern Irish (instead of from Old Irish to Modern Irish). Especially, as it's quite a liberal translation from the original Irish into English to begin with, yet the modern Irish translation from English seems very direct.

The Old Irish for this verse in particular is:

Attomriug indiu
neurt Dé dom lúamairecht.
cumachta nDé dom congbáil.
cíall nDé domimthús.
rosc nDé dom imcaisin.
clúas nDé doméistecht.
briathar nDé domerlabrai.
lám nDé domimdegail.
intech nDé domremthechtus.
sciath Dé domimdíten.
sochraiti Dé domanacul.
ar indledaib demna,
ar aslagib dualach,
ar foirmdechaib acnid,
ar cech nduine midúthracair dam
icéin, anoccus
inuathiud isochaidi.

I think you'll find it's already quite symmetrical by comparison to the modern version you have.

More notably, the verb at the beginning, Attomriug, means "I bind to myself", not "I rise" as in the English and modern Irish translations you're working with, hence, "I bind to myself today, the strength of God to guide me, etc." The idea is that the speaker is binding these things to himself for protection, like a breastplate.

I wouldn't recommend adding the conjunction agus to the modern Irish version you have. I don't think it's necessarily wrong, just that it's not necessary, and doesn't really add anything. In the context of the verse I think it's as sensible to read without the conjunction. Consider, for example, this alternative English translation, which is closer to your Irish version:

I rise today,
God's strength guides me,
God's might upholds me,
...
...
...
etc.

I'm more asking whether it's strictly necessary to add a conjunction after "inniu" or whether the meaning is sufficiently clear without it. I'm happy to leave it off if so, I prefer the simplicity that way!


I actually have been using the old Irish as a reference to check the phrasing, but because it's quite different from modern Irish, it doesn't give me enough insight into how a modern version should look, especially as far as the grammar. For example, the old Irish is "clúas nDé dom éistecht", but I don't know if the grammar holds up if I translate it directly as "cluas Dé dom éisteacht". The above modern Irish translation uses "cluas Dé ag éisteacht liom" which suggests to me that there is some reason why "dom éisteacht" doesn't work here, but I can't say for sure because I'm not familiar enough with how the language works. Same thing with "briathar nDé dom erlabrai". I'm tempted to translate this directly as "Briathar Dé dom urlabhra" but again, I don't know if that actually makes sense in modern Irish, hence why I'm asking here.


This depends on whether or not you consider "atomriug" to be a form of "at-reig" meaning "rise", or "ad-rig" meaning "bind". Both Wiktionary and eDIL favor the former, so that's what I've been going with for now.

"do mo chosaint" doesn't mean anything in Irish and is not found in any dialect.

The actual form is "am chosaint". The pronunciation is /m̥ xosinʲtʲ/, i.e.. where "am" is pronounced as a devoiced m.

eDIL does not favour the former. The original entry in the print edition of the dictionary was written at a time when there had been a popular turn towards reading atomriug as a form of at-reig, but Binchy has since argued very convincingly that this is much less likely to be correct than the earlier interpretation of the verb being ad-rig. In fact, eDIL makes a point of referring to this argument as preferable "perh. rather to be referred to ad-rig, see Binchy, Ériu xx 232 - 234".

Very few people today accept that the verb should be "I rise", however, many of the most popular translations of the poem into English use this interpretation as they were created at about the same time as the original DIL entry, and before Binchy made his rebuttal.

Ade, are there any modern words cognate with ad-rig, or has this word disappeared entirely from the language?

Nothing obvious springs to mind, and I don't recall ever reading anything suggesting its continued usage in any modern forms. Possibly it still survives in fossilised phrases like tá sé imithe in agar orm "it is gone in knots/binds on me" expressing "I have confused it in my head".

In the spirit of that very phrase, though, I'd advise taking this possible etymology with a pinch of salt because I may well have muddled the modern word agar with ad-rig in my own mind.

OK, thank you.