Irish Poetry 101: The Self-Study Course - [4] A Partial Case Study
K. E. Dennis
No. 2, an annotated bibliography of non-electronic volumes. No. 3
discusses ways locating these non-electronic versions
~~~~
One pleasant consequence of the research I did for “Irish Poetry 101”
was finding the Irish original [or @ least most of it – it’s over 39
verses long], of the poem that Michael Hartnett translated as “Marban, A
Hermit, Speaks.”
see:
Marban, A Hermit, Speaks
Michael Hartnett
Contemporary Irish Poetry
ed., Anthony Bradley
pub., 1980, Univ. of California Press
I posted the latter to s.c.i. some while back, & Ger immortalized it @
http://www.enteract.com/~abardubh/poetry/kdpoem07.html, but the Bradley
anthology is one of these translation-only vols. I find so frustrating,
& there were no clues as to how I might find the original. I was quite
pleased, then, to come across large chunks of it in the text below, as
well as in a couple of the other books I’ve cited in post No. 2.
Hartnett clearly didn’t seek to translate the whole, but seems rather to
have aimed @ capturing the heart of it: Marbáin’s lovely evocation of
the natural beauty by which he is surrounded, like some 9th c. precursor
of Thoreau.
I’ve extracted here the verses that Hartnett drew upon in his
translation/adaptation, w/ some notes below.
The original poem is a dialogue: it opens w/ the king of Connacht,
Gúaire, questioning why his half-brother Marbáin lives as a hermit in
the forest; Marbáin replies w/ lyrical descriptions of the woods.
Gúaire then asks what Marbáin has for sustenance & company [not included
among the verses in the vol. below], which is beautifully answered. @
the end, Gúaire exclaims that he’d give all he has to live as Marbáin
does.
~~~~~
from: A Marbáin
[Anonymous - 9th century]
Early Irish Lyrics: Eighth to Twelfth Century
Edited & translated, Gerard Murphy
1956, Oxford – The Clarendon Press
~~~~~
Atá uarboth dam i caill,
nís-fitir acht mo fhíada:
uinnius di-síu, coll an-all,
bile rátha nosn-íada.
Mét mo boithe: becc nát becc,
baile setae sognath;
canaid sian mbinn día beinn
ben a lleinn co londath.
[1]
Langait doim Droma Rolach
assa sruth róeglan.
Fodeirc essi Roigne rúad,
Mucruime múad, Móenmag.
Mennután díamair desruid
Día mbí selb sétrois.
Día déxin in rega limm?
Rofínn mo bethu it écmais. [1]
[2]
Monga lebra
ibair éoglais,
nósta cél.
Caín in magan
márglas darach
darsin sén.
Aball uball
(mára ratha)
mbruidnech mbras;
barr dess dornach
collán cnóbec
cróebach nglas. [2]
Foilgit impe
mucca cenntai,
cadlaid, uirc,
mucca alltai,
uiss aird, ellti,
bruicnech, bruic,
Buidnech sídech,
slúag tromm tírech,
dál dom thing;
ina erchaill
tecat cremthainn:
álainn sin!
[3]
Caíni fleda
tecat mo teg,
tárgud tricc,
uisce idan
barrá bitchai,
bratáin, bricc.
Barrán cáerthainn,
áirni dubai
draigin duinn,
túaraí dercna,
cáera lomma
lecna luimm.
Line ugae,
mil, mess, melle,
(Día dod-roíd),
ubla milsi,
mónainn derca,
dercna froích.
Coirm co lubaib,
loc di subaib,
somlas snó,
sílbach sciach,
derca iach,
áirni chnó. [3]
Céola ferán
mbruinne forglan,
forom ndil;
dordán smálcha
caíne gnáthcha
úas mo thig;
Tellinn, cíarainn,
cerdán cruinne,
crónán séim;
gigrainn, cadain,
gair ré samain,
seinm ngairb chéir;
Tecat caínfinn,
corra, faílinn;
fos-cain cúan;
ní céol ndogra
cerca odra
a fráech rúacd.
Caíni ailmi
ardom-peitet,
ní íar n-a creic:
do Chríst, cech than,
ní mesa dam
oldás deit.
Cid maith latsu
a ndo-milsiu,
mó cech main;
buidech liumsa
do-berr damsa
óm Chríst chain.
~~~~~
*Hartnett’s third stanza is culled from the lines of these 2 verses,
which Murphy translates as:
The stags of Druim Rolach leap from its stream which flows brightly
through the plain.
Russet Roigne may be seen from it, Goodly Mucruime, and Móenmag.
Little hidden humble abode, with the path-filled [?] forest for estate:
will you go with me to see it? Life even without you has been very
happy.
[2] Similarly, Hartnett constructs his fourth verse from these two,
which Murphy translates as:
Long branches of a green yew-tree; glorious augury!
Lovely is the place, the great greenery of an oak adds to that portent.
There is an apple-tree with huge apples such as grow in fairy dwellings
(great are these blessings), and an excellent clustered crop from
small-nutted branching green hazels.
In addition, the next 2 quatrains are essentially reversed in Hartnett’s
version.
[3] Hartnett again combines words from 4 verses in the original into 1;
Murphy’s translation of these lines is incomplete:
Delightful feasts come… (swift preparing),
Pure water…, salmon and trout.
Produce of mountain ash, black sloes from a dark blackthorn,
berry-foods, bare fruits of a bare branch [?]….
A clutch of eggs, honey, mast, and heath-pease (sent by God), sweet
apples, red cranberries, whortleberries.
Beer and herbs, a patch of strawberries (good to taste in their plenty),
haws, yew-berries, nut-kernels.
~~~~~~~~
Some comments:
Note how the quatrains of the first section, w/ their alternating
end-rhymes & internal sound-echoes [in the Irish style, described a bit
below], shift to sextets w/ pairs of triplet rhymes.
It was not unusual in early Irish poetry for there to be several
different metrical forms w/in 1 work – especially in the longer poems.
[I’m not sure, given the editing in the Murphy text, but it is possible
this shift occurred in the orig’l after Gúaire’s 2nd question.] I like
to think of this technique as something like a trad’l music set,
shifting from a reel to a jig & perhaps a polka…
Now note how the sextets show a very marked alliteration. If you look
more closely, you’ll see something even more complicated: that the
alliteration progresses thru the successive verses in distinct patterns,
like overlapping ripples of consonance.
Here’s one verse:
Line ugae,
mil, mess, melle,
(Día dod-roíd),
ubla milsi,
mónainn derca,
dercna froích.
It’s easy to see the alliterations in lines 1-2-4-5 of “line,” “mil,
mess, melle,” then “milsi, / mónainn” & the 3-5-6 “Día dod-roíd,”
“derca, / dercna.” But if you realise that in the trad’l Irish
classification of consonants, the [b] in “ubla” is in the same category
as those initial [d]s - i.e., it’s a voiced stop – then you can see
that the alliteration is even more pervasive.
Now consider this: the last 2 lines of the preceding verse are: “cáera
lomma / lecna luimm.” These lines alliterate & rhyme w/ the first of
this verse, & thus ‘prefigure’ the 1-2-4-5 pattern. & similarly, if you
look further back in the preceding sextet, the same can be said of the
sequence “áirni dubai / draigin duinn, / túaraí dercna,” noting
particularly that in 3 successive sextets there’s an alternation of
“dercna,” “derca,” dercna,” derca.”
I could go on in this vein, but the alliteration & internal rhyme &
consonance are only parts of the verse pattern here.
In _Medieval Irish Lyrics_ [one of the texts in post No. 1] , James
Carney provides some very useful commentary on such trad’l verse forms,
& especially on the unique & complex types of rhyme that were developed
in that literature. Just a brief pertinent quote:
[QUOTE]
Any reader… will immediately see that Irish rhyme is not the same as the
rhyme used in English and in other languages. In fact, what in English
would be regarded as full rhyme, in Irish would often be felt as a
breach of good style. In Irish rhyme the vowels, generally speaking,
must be identical, and the rhyming consonants must be of the same
quality, that is, broad or slender.
[KED note: A broad consonant is one preceded by [a], [o], or [u]; a
slender consonant is one preceded by [e], or [I].]
Furthermore, the Irish divided the consonants into six classes, and
consonants, when single, rhyme only with others from the same class.
The following are the classes:
I. Voiced stops: b, d, g. In these poems [KED note: because they are
in Old or Middle Irish] , in internal or final position, generally
represented by p, t, c.
II. Voiceless stops: p, t, c; in internal or final position,
represented by pp, tt, cc.
III. Voiceless spirants: ph (f), th, ch.
IV. Voiced spirants and weakly pronounced voiced liquids: b (= v), m (=
nasal v), d (= th, as in English ‘then’), g (as in German ‘morgen’), l,
n, r.
V. Strongly pronounced voiced liquids: m (= mm, often so written), ll,
nn, ng, rr. Consonants of this class, following a long vowel or a
diphthong, may rhyme with those of class IV.
VI. The consonant s (frequently written ss) rhymes only with itself.”
[/QUOTE]
He also notes:
[QUOTE]
…since Old and Middle Irish orthography is imprecise in this matter the
reader without training will not always recognize the quality of an
Irish consonant. For instance, in modern Irish the word for woman is
written bean, in Old Irish ben: in each case the quality of the [n]… is
broad. In earlier Irish bein is written, when the final consonant is
slender.”
[/QUOTE]
from:
Medieval Irish Lyrics [pp x-xi],
Selected & translated, James Carney
1967, Univ. of California Press
If you consider these guidelines, the rhyme scheme in A Marbáin becomes
more evident - & entertaining.
One last quote:
“The origins of rhyme are very obscure; it is found neither in the
archaic alliterative verse of the Irish and Germanic peoples nor in
classical Greek and Latin poetry. It does however appear in the
rhetorical prose of the late empire – in the Golden Ass of Apuleius as
well as in the sermons of St. Augustine. A primitive form appears in
some of the fifth century hymns. But it is in Ireland that it appears
to have been developed to its fullest extent both in Latin and in the
vernacular.”
from: Francis Byrne, “Latin poetry in Ireland,’ in Early Irish Poetry,
ed. James Carney, 1962, Mercier Press.
I’m quite tickled to realise that that the Irish – whether or not they
actually ‘saved civilisation’ – were among the first westerners to apply
rhyme to poetry.
respectfully submitted,
|K.E. Dennis den...@mail.montclair.edu
|My employer is not responsible for my opinions,
|regardless of how sensible they are.