Ok, I'm an author, writing a series that is heavily Celtic. Irish Bard comes to deliver some bad news to the governess he's dating and the child she cares for. The child is not his, but he is known to her. The line is: "I'm sorry, little one." (he is telling her of a death). I want him to say little one in Irish, cause it's a habit of his to sprinkle phrases in, especially endearments. Most of the ones I've seen on this forum have been terms for your own children, and she is not.

I think a stóirín should work fine for your translation of "little one" in this context.

I must say I'm very confused by this scenario, though. It seems completely at odds with historical and cultural reality. Being a governesses was predominantly a British occupation, which I don't believe preceded the 17th century, but in any case did not become very popular until the Victorian era. In the 17th and 18th centuries it would have only been aristocratic families who would have had a governess, and the governess herself would have been from a middle class background typically. This type of class structure simply didn't exist in Gaelic societies of any comparable era. Few such aristocratic families would have settled in Ireland, though conceivably some would have had a governess. It's a safe bet, however, that both the family and the governess would have been English in the majority of cases, if not all, at least before the Victorian period.

By contrast, the closest thing to occur in Gaelic society would have been the tradition of fosterage, whereby powerful families would raise each other's children in order to cement political relationships between their families. The last vestiges of this practice seem to have been breaking down in the western isles of Scotland in the mid-late 1700s. More importantly, though, the system of education and patronage that underpinned the professional bardic schools fell into decline from about 1601 on, after the battle of Kinsale. The contention of the bards (1616-1624) is generally considered to mark the end of the historical bardic tradition in Ireland. Patronage for bardic poets dried up throughout the 17th century as English power became predominant in Ireland and Gaelic power diminished.

The point is, it is very unlikely that a Gaelic bard and a governess would have existed in the same place and at the same time. The very limited historical and geographical overlap of the two professions may even make it impossible. Even two such characters did happen to encounter each other, however, it would have had to occur in a period where Gaelic culture, including the patronage of bards, had already been put under pressure and seriously eroded for about a century by the very people who would employ such a governess. She, in turn, would not be at all likely to even interact with a Gaelic bard.

All of this is aside from the fact that "dating" is a completely anachronistic notion in such a historical context, especially as a governess typically had to be an unmarried woman, so any attempt at courtship would signal the eminent end of her tenure. Even if your bard were courting a governess, the British aristocratic family who employed her would probably be less than pleased that she was entertaining somebody, especially someone from a Gaelic background.

All great points, Ade, reflecting historical and cultural knowledge.

LOL, Yes, well... Ok, so the character is question was Victorian. Irish specifically. She knew how to read and write from the nuns, so when she was thrown off her families land (land they'd been farming for generations before the English came and took it) when her parents died, she needed a vocation. Because she could read, she thought she'd try governessing first. She was VERY surprised to find an advertisement for a governess: three children, Irish preferred. She knew that might be a trap, but decided to take the chance (she was desperate), and it was: a faery trap. She was a governess in Tír na nÓg for 150 years before she left.

Now in the current story, she's gotten a 'governessing' job with an American family (an au pair sort of. Even the family isn't sure what's going on, but there is faery magic at play making them ok with the situation whenever anything feels off. Their daughter needs special protections). The faery survivors community she's a part of has a Bard, as in old school, and no telling how old he really is. He's been around the child in question, and has started dating the MC who's the governess. The child's magic teacher was just murderer by mobsters, which is what he's come to tell her.

So, yes. the Anachronisms are there on purpose. She's a walking anachronism, a blend of her Victorian ways, her Irish heritage and the modern adjustments she's had to make.

And thank you for trying to make sure I was historically correct. I'm something of a stickler for that, too.

oh, quick question: Does the a mean my? Cause she's not his and he has a geas preventing him from telling a lie.

No, it's the vocative particle used to address people.

I grant you that some suspension of disbelief is permissible if you're writing a fantasy novel, at least with regard to the chances of your characters interacting with each other. I'm still not sure this plot makes a lot of sense, though. If she's Victorian, then the setting is much too late for the plantations, when Irish families were systematically disenfranchised by British settlers. Presumably, then, you mean that either during or in the aftermath of the Great Famine they lost the land their family had been renting. While this was a great tragedy of the time, what we're talking about by this period is mass evictions by landlords, not being thrown off what was your own family's own land. Granted, this distinction may seem pedantic from the perspective of the person losing the land, but it actually tells us something important about her family, that they were peasant, tenant farmers, and she is seriously unlikely to have had the quality of education that might enable her to take a post as a governess.

The Presentation Sisters, the Sisters of Mercy, and other religious congregations began establishing schools for girls and the poor, focusing on literacy, religious education, and vocational skills in the 1830s and 1840s. They catered primarily for girls from poor families, orphans, abandoned children, and other young women who would have had no vocational skills. With few exceptions, schools run by nuns served the most vulnerable and marginalized in Irish society at this time. While a young girl from a tenant farming family could conceivably have attended one of these schools, the majority would likely have been kept home to help with work. Those who would have attended school could likely only attend school intermittently as work at home and on the farm allowed. The convents' mission to serve the poor helped make basic education a possibility, but the kinds of subjects a governess might have been expected to have mastered, like Greek and Latin, would be more advanced than what would be taught at most of these schools. Any girl like your character would most likely not have attended school, at least, before her family's eviction. Even if she did, because convent schools' mission and resources typically didn’t align with the preparation required for governess positions, she would hardly have achieved nearly the quality of education which would have qualified her for such a position.

This is to entirely set aside the issues of class and background. No affluent family would have entertained the notion of having a governess from not merely a working-class background, but from a Gaelic, tenant-farming one. Equally, no such person would have presumed to apply for such a position, especially if she didn't have the advanced level education which was expected of a governess. Class structure was extremely rigid at this point in time, particularly for the likes of Irish tenant farmers as the process of Catholic emancipation was only just beginning to repeal the penal laws, and test acts.



I would add to this that, even in English, using "my" wouldn't mean that he was lying. The word I gave you stóirín, means something like "little darling" or "little dear". Nobody would interpret that you were asserting that a child was your own just because you called them something like "my little darling".

Thank you