Page:West Irish folk-tales and romances - William Larminie.djvu/285

 Rh in “King Mananaun,” and twice in “The King who had Twelve Sons.”

The word translated “thistles” is snæhĕdi, which usually means needles. The narrator said it meant thistles here.

Page 14. The bells rang: cf.,

“And when in Salamanca's cave Him listed his magic wand to wave, The bells would ring in Notre Dame.”

Page 15. Diversion. The word was so pronounced—not divarsion.

Page 31. “The Ghost and his Wives.” The word translated churchyard usually means “church” only.

Page 35. I know of no parallel to this story as a whole. “Bioultach” probably means “Yellow-hair”—”bwï-oltax.” Is he a solar hero? There is true painting of certain sides of Irish character in this tale; the mutual affection of the brothers, their indifference to larger interests, must be noted.

Page 50. This sea-run is a fairly good specimen of this style of composition. There are several words I am unable to translate. As regards the style of the runs in general in Celtic tales, I am unable to accept the view that it has anything in common with the well-known corrupt literary Irish style. There is this fundamental difference between the two. The bombast and exaggeration of the written literature is seriously given, seriously meant. In the “runs” of the oral literature the whole description is obviously fantastic, and meant for such. Popular taste would never have endured the laboured exaggeration which the pedantry of half-educated scribe composers thought so fine; nor would the outrageous accumulation of alliterative adjectives, in which such persons indulged, have been possible of invention by oral reciters on the spur of the moment. The first of the runs here given shows, by the unintelligibility of part of it, that the narrator was not inventing, but merely giving an imperfect version to the best of his ability. He did not know the meaning of half of it. I now add the Irish of this run, and for the purposes of comparison two others:—

“Hoog sjïĕd suuăs sjoolti mooră, bă qoodjăxi, baa qoodjăxi, maan-jærăcă, mar ă craainj, njïr aaci sjee tjee-tjïrjĕ căn talhu naa hælămoodj căn rooiv lesj na heegeeălti (?), n’ aait; ă ră rǫǫntji, mïălti mooră, llopĭdaan acăs llapidaan, behi vĕăcă