02/08/10 |
Literature |
Back to Will's Class Page | The Assignment | Vocab Hints | Summaries | Handouts | |
This is a straightforward translation effort, for the most part. It is just a piece of literature I stumbled across, over break, that I enjoyed. But because it is basically a fairy tale story, written ten years ago, it seemed like a nice connection to the fairy tales I handed out before break.
I'll hand out the story in parts, it naturally breaks into some nice "cliffhanger" sections. Naturally, it would be great if you can keep up, but if you can't, please use the summaries I'll post here and leapfrog to the next section.
You'll need a little imagination, and your big dictionary, to figure out some of the non-standard, Munster dialect structures and vocabulary. E-mail me with questions, if you can't find something!
P.S. -- what you're getting as handouts was scanned and processed, so typos may still lurk among them.
For vocabulary, I'll just indicate paragraph number, for each specific handout, and you should find things easily.
CHECK the "last updated" line every now and then. If someone sends in a question, or I discover something interesting in mid-week, I may update the postings here, so you may (no guarantee) find additional help appears as the week progresses.
Here's a quick hint for the most common endings, note that slender vs. broad is very important.
AIMSIR CAITE (PAST TENSE)
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AIMSIR FHÁISTINEACH (FUTURE TENSE)
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1st singular | chuireas | cheannaíos | 1st singular | cuirfead | ceannód (eod) |
2nd singular | chuiris | cheannaís | 2nd singular | cuirfir | ceannóir (eoir) |
3rd plural | chuireadar | cheannaíodar | 3rd plural | cuirfid | ceannóid (eoid) |
Last updated: Thursday night, 01/07/10 (reformatted 01/11)
General note, several paragraphs: sometimes go/gur is used to mean "until," rather than one of those "that" things. This happens several times toward the bottom of this first page of the story. I'll have a handout on that for Jan 11.
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Last updated: Jan 15, Friday night, probably the last update
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Last updated: Jan 25, Monday
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Last Updated: Wednesday evening, Feb 3
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Tadhg Ó Catháin is a lad who often goes out to play cards. This one certain night as he was returning home he bumped into a neighbor woman, who said, "Tadhg, what a pity to see you returning to your lonely little house every night with no other company (there) but a sooty old cross."
Smart-alecky Tadhg replied, "What, don't I have a dog?" But shortly he met another woman, who asked if he ever thought about marrying. Again Tadhg was contemptuous, saying he had potatoes, turf, etc., an easy life, he needed nothing more.
Sure enough, he met a third person, an old fellow who thought Tadhg would like to hear the pitter-patter of little feet, and happy little cries, in the morning. Says Tadhg, "The bleating of the sheep on the edge of the mountain is much sweeter to me than all the happy cries in the world," and off he heads home.
But after a little while, it is odd that he hasn't reached home yet, so he stops and looks around. "You're lost," he says to himself, and figures talking to those people must have put him astray, curse them!
He was on a mountain, one he didn't recognize. The wind blew so hard it nearly tore the coat off his back. The sky cleared to show stars he didn't know . . . where was he? A shiver (of fear) ran through him, and he said to himself that that was what all his bravado had led to.
Just at that moment the wind lifted him off his feet and took him across the peaks, the glens, through streams of fog, into a whirlwind of snow until he landed in the end in a place he didn't know, a silent glen. He saw a light in the distance and made for it.
It was some sort of castle and gay shouts were coming from it. In he went. It wasn't long before he came to a great hall full of fairy women who were having a great party of drinking and feasting . . .
A voice addresses Tadhg, giving him palpitations of fear. "Come down here," it says, which he does, and then, "Tell us a story, Tadhg!"
He replies, "Oh, that's something I cannot do, I never met a storyteller that had sixpence in his pocket (i.e., that was worth anything)." That silences the crowd and a little fear comes over Tadhg. Then the voice calls out, "Tadhg, raise a tune on the violin for us!"
"Oh, dear," says Tadhg, "you have entirely the wrong man for that, I wouldn't know a violin from a flail." That brings an even worse silence from the crowd. He looked around at them and the fear inside him grew.
But the voice spoke again (a third time, note), "Well, even so, Tadhg, give us a couple of steps on the flagstone."
"Steps, ah, that's a good joke, my two feet have been tied since the day I was born." Tadhg looked around and made out that these answers were not at all welcome. Every eye was going right through him, and he started to pray.
The voice spoke again: "Tadhg Ó Catháin, may long wandering be on you and your heart without grace (relief)." The crowd clapped their hands and Tadhg was lifted from his feet and taken on a journey through the night, past the mountains, past the bogs, past the moors until he landed in a place he did not know.
It was on the side of the road he was, and wet, cold, and scared within an inch of his life. What should he see there but the people (of the area) coming down the road toward him, a funeral, indeed, and they had a coffin. They were all corpses, dead for a month at least. And the smell from them would knock down a horse. They stopped.
"Tadhg Ó Catháin," said the voice, "stand out here on the middle (belly) of the road!" But Tadhg was so afraid that he couldn't drag his feet anywhere. They opened the coffin, and what was inside but another corpse! They took it out. The odor nearly laid Tadhg out and he screamed with wild astonishment.
They lifted this corpse up onto his back. They bound the legs and arms of the corpse around him in front. Tadhg screamed. He screamed a second time. But his vital organs were tied into knots.
"Bury him in the graveyard quickly, he has been a month unburied," the corpses said to him.
"Corpse! A Month! Christ! Help me, in the name of God, help me," Tadhg screamed. And off he went the length of the road trying to throw the corpse off him.
But to no avail, all the while the corpse put his putrid mouth next to Tadhg's ear, "Tadhg Ó Catháin, bury me, bury me soon!" It's hard to tell you the horror that grabbed Tadhg when he heard the voice in his ear.
"We are going south to Cillín na mBoc," said one of the crowd, "and make haste, for if the day brightens on us and your man is on your back still, it is in Hell that you will finish!"
It wasn't disgust but terror that took him south, screaming all the way. The went through bogs and brambles, through glens and meadows, and every time he would stop to catch his breath he would get a kick from the corpse, and, "Stir yourself, beggar (worthless person), look at the day lightening on us!"
That would put him on his best (effort) headed south with him leaping over walls and falling into turf holes and with no other tune from him by "That's what comes of bravado, Tadhg, darling, that's what comes of bravado."
At last when they reached Cillín na mBoc it was the case that the gates were fastened against them by the people of the graveyard, meaning the corpses. Standing on the walls they were, and every one of them shouting, "This is a clean graveyard, you there, no welcome for lepers." Indeed, dearest listener, Tadhg almost jumped out of his own skin when he heard the word.
"Leper! Is that's what's up there (on my back)?"
"What else, Tadhg Ó Catháin, are you so totally simple, and a third of him missing already?" , with great laughter. "Go north to Cillín Tiarna , they accept lepers there," they said.
Off they went north as if there were no turning back, and Tadhg's heart in his mouth. The rumor must have run ahead of them for when they reached Cillín Tiarna all the corpses, every one of them a leper and gaps taken out of them, were waiting for them at the gates.
Welcome lepers," they said. Tadhg was not too pleased.
"This one up on top of me is the leper, I am a whole person," he said.
"Now you are a leper, and your nose will be off in a couple of weeks," they said. Tadhg screamed. He would have let out the second scream except that the leper kicked him in the crotch. "Shut up, you coward, inside with you and put me in the ground."
The people of Cillín Tiarna took Tadhg to a place inside, they lifted up a couple of (flag) stones and slid the corpse down off his back nice and gently into the grave that they had come to. They threw the clay down on him, and then the stones. Tadhg was examining his nose with his fingers.
"Am I really a leper?" he said with a shout.
"Yes", they said, "but if you would play a tune on the violin over the grave you would be all right."
"But," says Tadhg, "I could not . . ." He did not get time to refuse as a violin was put into his hands. His fingers leapt on the strings as if they owned them. The tune he played was, "Virgin Mary, keep a candle by me until I have cut the goosefoot," and it was so good that the dead around him rose to listen. In they end, they had to tear the violin from him as he was getting notions.
"Beat a couple of steps on the gravestone for us now," they said. He didn't have time to oppose the idea as they sent him up on the stones. Off we went dancing as if he would never stop, the shows kicking up dust from the air until he had all of their toes tapping. In the end it took three corpses to stop him, he was so taken with himself.
"Would you read a bit of the mass for us now, Tadhg, so that your man's spirit will not come back to scare you?" they said.
He didn't know how to read, much less in Latin, he couldn't even ring the bell. But it was useless for him to refuse as without further delay the vestments were on him and he was making the sign of the cross and going through the Mass -- and the Latin came in strong floods out of him. (Latin stuff here). Indeed, dear reader, truly the corpses were very proud of him, I have to tell you. But they couldn't stop him. "All of you here on your knees that I may read the blessing of the church over you." He had just started when the wind knocked him down and took him off about over the yew trees and through the air and clouds.
The wind blew him east and west, and right into the start of the morning. Where the devil should he land but smack in the center of the hall of the castle, and the feast was still in progress. Gradually a silence fell over them, and every eye looked at him.
"Tadhg Ó Cathaín," said the voice, walk up to us out of there!" He did so. "Do you have a story for us this time around?"
"Indeed I do," said Tadhg, and he as proud as a cat that would have pockets on him, "and not only that but I will play a ocpule of tunes on the scrip-scrape (viol:in) for you, and who knows whether I might beat a hornpipe out on the flagstones. And if you still are not satistified with me, I will read you a bit of the Mass."
A deadly silence fell on the women. "All right,"says Tadhg, "Mass. father Tadhg Ó Catháin at your service, Dominus vobiscum (etc.). Holy Mother Mary, the crowd burst into the air and the women flew out of site in a puff of smoke. All of them except one woman. The nicest of them.
She stayed up by the foot of the fire, a fine red-haired woman that had an angel's little mouth on her -- but devilment in her eyes.
"Tadgh Ó Catháin", says she, "There's no doubt that you are a fine strapping fellow. Will you sit down by the fire?" Which he did, and no need to get a second invitation (crook of the finger), I am telling you. "And Latin is all very well, Tadhg, but we are not so taken with it around here. Those women, that is, and she winked at him.
"I am not one of them myself anyway, Tadhg, you must know, (but) an ordinary person like yourself, " and she smiled (laughed) with Tadhg and the delight of it almost knocked him over.
"Shall I tell my story to you," says he.
'There's no hurry, Tadghaín, darling, with the full night still before us. And since the night is so dark and disagreeable, maybe it would be all right if we spent the night here close beside one another?" Which they did.