Thurneysen's translation (p. 91) of Emer's lament may be referred to,
but he misses some strong points. Among these are:
Line 5. "Woe to Ulster where hospitality abounds."
Line 12. "Till he found a Druid to lift the weight."
Line 25. "Were it Furbaide of the heroes."
Line 27. "The hound would search through the solid earth."
Line 29. "The hosts of the Sid of Train are dead."
Line 30. "For the hound of the Smith of Conor."
Line 34. "Sick for the horseman of the plains."
Note the familiarity with the land of the fairies which Laeg is
asserted to have in the first verse of the poem: this familiarity
appears more than once in the Literary form of the story. Laeg speaks
of the land of Labraid as "known to him" in his- first description of
that land, again in the same description Laeg is recognised by Labraid
by his five-folded purple mantle, which seems to have been a
characteristic fairy gift. Also, Laeg seems at the end of the tale to
be the only one to recognise Manannan. There is no indication of any
familiarity of Laeg with the fairy country in the Antiquarian form.
The different Ulster heroes alluded to are mostly well-known; all
except Furbaide are in "Mae Datho's Boar." Furbaide was a son of
Conor; be is one of the eighteen leaders who assemble on the Hill of
Slane in the "Tain bo Cuailgne."
The Smith of Conor is of course Culann, from whom Cuchulain got his
name.
PAGES 68, 69
A translation of Emer's "Awakening of Cuchulain" may be found in
Thurneysen, p. 92 but there are one or two points that seem to be noted
as differing from the rendering there given.
Lines 3 and 4 seem to mean: "Look on the king of Macha, on my beauty /
does not that release thee from deep sleep?" Thurneysen gives "Look on
the king of Macha, my heart! thy sleep pleases him not." Mo crath can
hardly mean "my heart."
Line 6 is in the Irish deca a churnu co comraim! "see their horns for
the contest!" Instead of comraim Thurneysen seems to prefer the
reading of the second MS., co cormaim, and translates "their horns full
of beer." Churnu may mean trumpets as well as drinking-horns, and Emer
would hardly call on Cuchulain to throw off a drunken sleep (line 21)
and then take to beer!
The following translation of lines 17 to 20 seems preferable to
Thurneysen's:
"Heavy sleep is decay, and no good thing;
it is fatigue against a heavy war;
it is 'milk for the satiated,'
the sleep that is on thee;
death-weakness is the tanist of death."
The last line is tanaisi d'ec ecomnart. The tanist was the prince who
stood next to the king; the image seems too good a one to be lost;
Thurneysen translates "weakness is sister to death."
Line 14 seems to mean "see each wonder wrought by the cold"; Emer calls
Cuchulain's attention to the icicles which she thinks he is in danger
of resembling.
PAGE 69
For the literal translation of Liban's invitation see Thurneysen, p. 93.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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