see:
Marban,
A Hermit, Speaks
Michael Hartnett
Contemporary Irish Poetry
ed., Anthony Bradley
Univ. of California
Press, 1980
I posted the latter to s.c.i. some while back..., 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....
Hartnett clearly didn’t seek to translate the whole, but seems rather to have aimed at 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. At the end, Gúaire exclaims that he’d give all he has to live as Marbáin does.
|
As: A Marbáin Gan ainm |
Early Irish Lyrics, Eighth to Twelfth Century edited by Gerard Murphy Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950 |
|
Marban, A Hermit, Speaks - translation by Michael Hartnett |
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.
[1] 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 notes & 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: "
I could go on in this vein, but the alliteration & internal rhyme &
consonance are only parts
of the verse pattern here.
In [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: 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>
Carney also notes:
</QUOTE>
from:
If you consider these guidelines, the rhyme scheme in
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:
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 [systematically] to poetry.
& 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."
<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.
...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."
Medieval Irish Lyrics [pp x-xi]
Selected & translated, James Carney
1967, Univ. of California Press
- & entertaining.
Early Irish Poetry
ed. James Carney
1962, Mercier Press.
