I am enjoying listening to An Triail le Máiréad Ní Ghráda on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgZsZO5YgwA) and reading the text as I listen to the performance.

But I have come across a grammatical construction that I don't understand. I'd appreciate help. At the end of Radharc 6, on page 33 of my volume,Pádraig says to Máire:

"Féach, a Mháire, bainfidh mé an fáinne seo de mo mhéar agus cuirfidh mé ar do mhéarsa é."

Obviously "mo mhéar" is my finger and "do mhéarsa" is your finger, but why is the "sa" at the end of mhéarsa? I've looked at all the online resources that I have and I can't find an explanation. I don't have a teacher to ask.

The answer is probably obvious to anybody with a decent amount of Irish. But, as of yet, I am only at the "tá cúpla focal agam" stage.

On that. On the internet I see people saying "Cúpla focail agam". I thought that in Irish a noun after a number more that one normally remains in the singular? I accept that cúpla is not exactly a number like trí or cúig, so does it not follow the normal number convention or is there something else that I am missing?

Thanks.

This is an emphatic suffix. It's used to emphasise the person or thing being spoken about.

English does not do this lexically as in Irish, but you do often hear people stressing nouns, proper nouns or pronouns to achieve the same effect. Essentially what's happening here is that Pádraig is telling Máire "Look, Máire, I'll take this ring off my finger and I'll put it on YOUR finger".

Thank you. That is helpful.

I'd add to that that the term "emphatic" might actually not be strong enough. I can't say for sure whether this goes for Irish, but in Scottish Gaelic, this pattern is called emphatic but as far as I can tell is essentially mandatory in this sort of structure wherever there is any sort of contrast going on. Here, for example, you've got a choice of emphasing as per above or actually emphasising both ("I'll take it off my finger and put it on your finger.") or indeed on just using the possessive pronoun yours, with or without emphatic stress ("I'll take it off my finger and put it on yours.")
Neither Irish nor Scottish Gaelic has possessive pronouns such as "yours", and the nearest option is to say something like "your one". I don't know for sure the Irish way of doing this, but in Scottish Gaelic my gut doesn't like it with the inalienable possession do/mo, only the alienable "agam/agad" possession.

And if that seems wordy, that's me trying to get things straight in my own head!!

Anyway, the thing is that this:
"Féach, a Mháire, bainfidh mé an fáinne seo de mo mhéar agus cuirfidh mé ar do mhéarsa é."
doesn't translate cleanly to English. but without the so-called "emphatic" it would
"Féach, a Mháire, bainfidh mé an fáinne seo de mo mhéar agus cuirfidh mé ar do mhéar é."
because that would translate to Ade's translation without the voice stress
"Look, Máire, I'll take this ring off my finger and I'll put it on your finger"

That would be a very odd sentence in English, wouldn't it? Hardly anyone would say anything other than "...and I'll put it on yours." Repeating the word "finger" is totally redundant, but we don't really have that option in Irish, so basically the so-called emphatic "sa" is doing the sae job as English does by dropping the noun entirely.
To me, dropping the English noun is pretty far from emphasis, so describing "sa" as "emphatic" is kind of problematic...

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Thank you for the additional explanation, Niall. Your point about the lack of personal pronouns in Irish an Scottish Gaelic is interesting.

It's for contrast as Niall said above.

Emphasis without contrast is done in a few different ways in Irish, but none of them involve -sa. So if you see -sa you know there is a contrast being made. Just note that the contrast might be implied and not explicitly stated like here.
For example:

Beadsa leat, a chréatúir! = I will be with you, poor thing!

Here the speaker would be saying in contrast to/unlike the others they will be there.

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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

Thank you for the further explanation.

You're right - it should be 'cúpla focal'. The noun following 'cúpla' is in the nominative singular and not the genitive (sing. or plural) or nominative plural. It has nothing to do with the rules regarding numbers though.

Thank you for the clarification. Shockingly sites supposed to be teaching Irish are getting it wrong. FluentIrish.com, for example, see: https://fluentirish.com/cupla-focail-ireland/