Lines 46 and 47 are translated by Thurneysen, "Too hard have I been
offended; Laeg, son of Riangabra, farewell," but there is no "farewell"
in the Irish. The lines seem to be: "Indeed the offence was great, O
Laeg, O thou son of Riangabra," and the words are an answer to Laeg,
who may be supposed to try to stop her flight.
PAGE 85
Line 24. "That she might forget her jealousy," lit. "a drink of
forgetfulness of her jealousy," deoga dermait a heta. The translation
seems to be an accepted one, and certainly gives sense, but it is
doubtful whether or not eta can be regarded as a genitive of et,
"jealousy "; the genitive elsewhere is eoit.
There is a conclusion to this romance which is plainly added by the
compiler: it is reproduced here, to show the difference between its
style and the style of the original author:
"This then was a token given to Cuchulain that he should be destroyed
by the People of the Mound, for the power of the demons was great
before the advent of the Faith; so great was that power that the demons
warred against men in bodily form, and they showed delights and secret
things to them; and that those demons were co-eternal was believed by
them. So that from the signs that they showed, men called them the
Ignorant Folk of the Mounds, the People of the Sid."
THE EXILE OF THE SONS OF USNACH
PAGE 91
The four pieces of rhetoric, at the beginning of this text are
translated by Thurneysen, Sagen aus dem alten Irland, pp. 11 and 12.
In the first, third, and fourth of those, the only difference of any
importance between the text adopted and Thurneysen's versions is the
third line of the third piece, which perhaps should run: "With stately
eyes with blue pupils," segdaib suilib sellglassaib, taking the text of
the Yellow Book of Lecan.
The second piece appears to run as follows:
Let Cathbad hear, the fair one, with face that all love,
the prince, the royal diadem, let he who is extolled be increased
by druid arts of the Druid:
because I have no words of wisdom
to oppose (?) to Feidlimid,
the light of knowledge;
for the nature of woman knows not
what is under her body,
(or) what in the hollow of my womb cries out.
These rhetorics are remarkable for the great number of the
alliterations in the original.
PAGE 93
Thurneysen omits a verse of Cathbad's poem. A translation of the whole
seems to run thus:
Deirdre, great cause of destruction,
though thou art fair of face, famous, pale,
Ulster shall sorrow in thy time,
thou hidden (?) daughter of Feidlimid.
Windisch's Dict. gives "modest daughter" in the last line; the original
is ingen fial. But the word might be more closely connected with fial,
"a veil." "Modest" is not exactly the epithet that one would naturally
apply to the Deirdre of the Leinster version, and the epithet of
"veiled" or "hidden" would suit her much better, the reference being to
her long concealment by Conor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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