Literature- sounds and patterns over the centuries-
The Sound and Lyric of it All
Official poetry of an oral tradition encouraged the development of rhyme which was a song in language later used by the monks.
Monastic
Anonymous
Early 9th Century
Messe ocus Pangur Bán
Cechtar natar, fria saindán
Bith a mennmasam fri seilgg
Mu menma céin im saincheirdd
Caraimse fos, ferr cac clú
Oc mu lebrán léir ingnu
Ni foirmtech frimm Pangur bán
Caraid cesin a macedán
Ó ru biam, scél cen scis,
Innar tegdais, ar n-óendis
Táithiunn, dichrichide clus,
Ni fris tarddam ar n-áhius / The Scholar and his Cat
I and white Pangur practice each of us his special art his mind is set on hunting my mind on my special craft
I love (it is better than all fame) to be quiet beside my book, diligently pursuing knowledge White Pangur does not envy me he loves his childish craft
When the two of us (this tale never wearies us) are alone together in our house, we have something to which we may apply our skill, an endless sport.
-trans Murphy
Rhyme and Literal translations…..music and content
The Viking ThreatIs aicher in gáeth in-nocht
The wind tonight is biter,
It tousles the sea’s white hair
I have no fear that gentle seas
Will bring fierce warriors from Norway / Bitter is the wind tonight
It flings the froth-sea foam-white
No fear soothing seas today
Speed wild warriors of Norway
A Splendid Sword
Luin oc elaih
Blackbirds to swans
Ounces to heavy weights,
Forms of common women
To splendid queens
Kings to Donnall
A drone to choral music,
A rushlight to a candle
Swords to my sword
Trans:
Ruth Lehman / Wren to eagle,
Ounce to quintal
Course peasant women
To crowned queens simple
Czars to Donnall
Drone to clamor,
Candle to gleamingglaives to my glaive’s glamor
Imagry of the Epic
Political ancient tract
Abstraction and shape shifting
Values, road maps, multidimensional
The Quarrel of the Two Pig-Keepers and How the Bulls were Begotten
From The Táin (Kinsella Trans.) Ulster Cycle
What caused the two pig-keepers to quarrel?
It is soon told.
There was bad blood between Ochall Ochne, the king of the sid in Connacht, and Bodb, king of the Munster sid. (Bodb’s sid is the Sid ar Femen, the sid on Femen Plain; Ochall’s is the sid at Cruchan.} They had two pig-keepers, called Fruich, after a boar’s bristle, and Rucht, after its grunt. Fruich was Bodb’s pig-keeper, Rucht was Ocahall’s, and they were good friends. They were both practised in the pagan arts and could form themselves into any shape, like Mongán mach Fiachna.
The two pig-keepers were on such good terms that the one from the north would bring his pigs down with him when there was a mast of oak and beech nuts in Munster.
If the mast fell in the north the pig-keeper from the south would travel northward.
There were some who tried to make trouble between them. People in Connacht said their pig-keeper had the greater power, while others in Munster said it was theirs who had greater power. A great mast fell in Munster one year, and the pig-keeper from the north came southward with his pigs. His friend made him welcome.
Is it you? He said. They are trying to cause trouble between us Men here say your power is greater than mine.
It is no less anyway, Ochall’s pig-keeper said.
That’s something we can test, Bodb’s pig-keeper said. I’ll cast a spell over your pigs. Even though they eat this mast they won’t grow fat, while mine will.
And that is what happened. Ochall’s pig-keeper had to bring his pigs away with him so lean and wretched that they hardly reached home. Everybody laughed at him as he entered his country.
It was a bad day you set out, they said. Your friend has greater power than you.
It proves nothing, he said. We’ll have mast here in our own turn and I’ll play the same trick on him.
This also happened. Bodb’s pig keeper came northward the same time next year into the country of Connacht bringing his lean pigs with him, and Ochall’s pig-keeper did the same to them and they withered. Everybody said then tat they had equal power. Bodb’s pig-keeper came back from the north with his lean pigs and Bodb dismissed him from pig-keeping. His friend in the north was also dismissed.
After this they spent two full years in the shape of birds of prey, the first year at the fort of Cruchan, in north Connacht, and the second at the sid on Femen Plain. One day the men of Munster had collected together at this place.
Those birds are making a terrible babble over there they said. They have been quarrelling and behaving like this for a full year now.
As they were talking they saw Fuidell mac Fiadmire.Ochall’s steward coming toward them up the hill and they made him welcome.
Those birds are making a great babble over there he said. You would swear they were the same two birds we had back north last year. They kept this up for a whole year.
Then they saw the two birds of prey turn suddenly into human shape and become the two pig-keepers. They made them welcome.
You can spare your welcome, Bodbh’s pig keeper said. We bring you only war-wailing and a fullness of friends corpses.
What have you been doing? Bodb said.
Nothing good, he said. From the day we left until today we spent two full years together in the shape of birds. You saw what we did over there. A whole year went like that at Cruchan and a year at the sid on Femen Plain so that all men north and south, have seen our power. Now we are going to take the shape of water creatures and live two years under the sea.
They left and each went his own way. One entered the Sinann river, the other the river Suir, and they spent two full years under water. One year they were seen devouring each other in the Suir, the next in the Sinann.
Next they turned into two stags, and each gathered up the other’s herd of young deer and made a shambles of his dwelling place.
Then they became two warriors, gashing each other.
Then two phantoms, terrifying each other.
Then two dragons, pouring down snow on each other’s land.
They dropped down then out of the air, and became two maggots. One of them got into the spring of the river Cronn in Cuailnge, where a cow belonging to Dáire mac Fiachna drank it up. The other got into the wellspring Garad in Connacht, where a cow belonging to Medb and Aihill drank it. From them, in this way, sprang the two bulls, Finnbennach, the white-horned, of Ai Plain, and Dub, the dark bull of Cuailnge.
Rucht and Friuch were their names when they were pig-keepers Ingen and Ette, Talon and Whing, when they were two birds of prey, Bled and Blod,, Whale and Seabeast when they were two undersea creatures, Rinna and Faebur, Point and Edge, when they were two warriors Scáth and Sciath, Shadow and Shield , when they were two fantoms and Cruinniuc and Tuinniuc when they were two maggots. Finnbennach Ai, the White, and Donn Cuailnge, the Brown, were their names when they were two bulls.
This was the Brown Bull of Cuailnge—
Dark brown dire haughty with young health
Horrific overwealming ferocious
Full of craft
Furious fiery flanks narrow
Brave brutal thick breasted
Curly browed head cocked high
Growling and eyes glaring
Tough mained neck thick and strong
Snorting mighty in muzzle and eye
With a true bull’s brow
And a wave’s charge
And a royal wrath
And the rush of a bear
And a beast’s rage
And a bandit’s stap
And a lion’s fury.
Thirty grown boys could take
Their place from rump to nape
--a hero to his herd at morning
foolhardy at the herd’s head
to his cows the beloved
to husbandmen a prop
the father of the great beasts
overlooks the ox of the earth.
A white head and white feet
Had the Bull Finnbennach
And a red body the colour of blood
As if bathed in blood
Or dyed in the red bog
Or pounded in purple
With his blank paps
Under breast and back
And his heavy mane and great hoofs
The beloved of the cows of Ai
With ponderous tail
And a stallion’s breast
And a cow’s eye apple
And a salmon’s snout
And hinder haunch
He romps in rut
Born to bear victory
Bellowing in greatness
Idol of the ox herd
The prime demon Finnbennach.
Super heros and action….
Cúchulainn (Ulster Cycle)
Seen in art, special effects…..shape shifting…natural images
The first warp spasm siezed Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood, or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin so that his feet and shins and knees switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front.
The balled sinews of his calves switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front of his shins, each big knot the size of a warrior’s bunched fist. On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month- old child. His face and features became a red bowl, he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn’t probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull, the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and liver flapped in his mouth and throat, and his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram’s fleece reached his mouth from his throat. His heart boomed loud in his breast like the baying of a watch-dog at its feed or the sound of a lion among bears. Malignant mists, and spurts of fire the torches of the Badb—flickered red in the vaporous clouds that rose boiling above his head so fierce was his fury. The hair of his head twisted like the tangle of a red thornbush stuck in a gap if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage.
The Later Fenian Romantic Tradition
Dairmuid and Grainne
Outlaws in the middle spaces….
Man beasts.go betweens….
Who is that freckled sweet-worded man, upon whom is the curling dusky-black hair and the two red ruddy cheeks, upon the left hand of Osin the son of Finn?
That man is Diarmuid the grandson of Dubne, the white toothed, of the light-some countenance, that is, the best lover of women and of maidens that is in the whole world.
Wilt thou receive courtship from me, O O’ Duibne, since Oisin received it not from me?
I will not, said Diarmuid, for whatever woman is betrothed to Oisin I may not take her, even were she not betrothed to Finn.
Then said Grainne, I put thee under taboos of danger and of destruction, O Diarmuid, that is, under the taboos of mighty druidism, if thou take me not with thee out of this household tonight, ere Finn and the king of Erin arise out of that sleep.
Evil bonds are those under which thou hast laid me, O woman, said Diarmuid.
After that Diarmuid arose and stood, and stetched forth his active warrior hand over his broad weapons, and took leave and farewell of Oisin and of the chiefs of the fian, and not bigger is a smooth-crimson whortleberry than was each tear that Diarmuid shed from his eyes at parting with his people. Diarmuid went to the top of the stronghold, and put the shafts of his two javelins under him, and rose with an airy, very light, exceeding high, bird-like leap, until he attained the breath of his two soles of the beautiful grass-green earth on the plain withoiut, and Grainne met him. Then Diarmuid spoke, and what he said was. I believe O’ Grainne, that this is an evil course upon which thou art come,
For it were better for thee to have Finn mac Cumail for a lover than myself, seeing that I know not what nook or corner, or remote part of Erin I can take thee to now, and return again home, without Finn’s learning what thou hast done.
It is certain that I will not go back, said Grainne, and that I will not part from thee until death part me from thee.
Then go forward O Grainne, said Diarmuid.
Lists: Attributes, behavioral guides societal expectation…the Fili Remind
From the Instructions of King Cormac
O Cormac grandson of Conn said Carberry
What are the dues of a chief and of an ale house?
Not hard to tell, said Cormac
Good behaviour around a good chief,
Lights to lamps
Exerting oneself for the company
A proper settlement of seats,
Liberality of dispensers,
A nimble hand at distributing
Attentive service
Music in moderation
Short story-telling
A joyous countenance
Welcome to guests
Silence during recitals
Harmonious choruses
Trans:Kuno Myer
Of Colum of Terryglass
He was no branch of a withered tree,
Colum, the holy son of Nanid,
Grandson of Nastar of noble deeds,
Lofty descendant of Crimthan the Little,
Son of Echu, son of Oengus,
Distinguished son of Crimthan the Noble,
For they were of the stock of a true prince,
Trees sprung from the root of a forest sanctuary
The fair heirs of Cathair,
A great harvest with fruit of many tastes
Above a multitude of branches.
Trans Kuno Myer
Instant Information compressed knowledge-truth…..transitions…..
Proverbs
What I am afraid may be said to me I had better say first myself
Whoever the cap fits takes it
A good word at court is better than a coin in one’s purse
Friendship is good though absence from friends is painful
Triads
Three things betokening trouble: holding plough land in common, performing feats together, alliance in marriage.
Three nurses of theft, a wood, a cloak, night
Three false sisters perhaps, maybe, I dare say
Three timid brothers hush stop listen
Three sounds of increase the lowing of a cow in milk the din of a smithy the swish of a plough.
Trans:Kuno Myer
Ranns Complexity concentrated
I hope and pray that none may kill me,
Nor I kill any, with woundings grim
But if ever any should think to kill me
I pray thee, God, let me kill him
Avoid all stewardship of church or Kill,
It is ill to be much in the cleric’s way
Lest you live to see that which with pains you save,
Like foam on the wave float far away
I mind not being drunk, but then
Much mind to be seen drunken
Drink only perfects all our play
Yet breeds it discord always
Like a fire kindled beneath a lake,
Like a stone to break an advancing sea,
Like a blow that is struck upon iron cold,
To the wayward woman thy counsels be
If you hope to teach, you must be a fool
A woman, a porker, or a mule.
Trans: Douglas Hyde
Modern Relevance- listing Continuity
Flan O’Brien/Myles na gCopaqleen, Brian O’Nolan
From The Catechism of Cliché
Yes More of it
What happens to blows at a council meeting?
It looks as if they might be exchanged.
What does pandemonium do?
It breaks loose.
Describe its subsequent dominion
It reigns.
How are allegations dealt with?
They are denied.
Yes, but then you are weakening Sir Come now, how are they denied?
Hotly
What is the mean temperature of an altercation therefore?
Heated.
What is the behaviour of a heated altercation?
It follows.
What happens to order?
It is restored.
Alternatively, in what does the meeting break up?
Disorder.
What does the meeting do in disorder?
Breaks up.
In what direction does the meeting break in disorder?
Up.
In what direction should I shut?
Up!!
The Romantic Look Back…..