Category: Language

This category started off as the Irish Language but developed into language in general. In short – words matter. Brigid is the god of the file, so it’s worth getting words right!

An Caighdeán Oifigiúil

Or – the Official Standard. Of Irish that is! Now prior to the country gaining complete independence from Britain, standards in Irish were variable to say the least. While we speak now of three main dialects, or canúintí, before the Caighdeán was established, there were many many more pre-1950’s ish. It could prove difficult for speakers of different dialects to understand each other – and indeed, even in English accents and dialects were far more pronounced before the advent of international telly/ radio. One only needs look at the entries in Irish on Dúchas to see the differences in spelling and grammar across different areas.

The Caighdeán was an attempt to make things easier for Irish learners and fight against the lowering rates of people speaking the language. Irish has, and continues to be, a major part of the Irish identity for many people, although in modern Ireland, there are those who lament time “wasted” on learning it. In case you’ve not read this blog before – I love the language, love speaking it and work on improving my Irish. But it has to be said, looking at those old Dúchas entries, there were an awful lot of extra letters banging around teh place!

The Caighdeán was focused on making things simpler for new learners, but it kinda left out those who had learnt spelling, grammar and even font before it was implemented. Oh yes, there was a specific font used for writing Irish – you’ll have noticed this from Dúchas as well, I hope – but here’s an example of what it looked like. Many silent letters were left out in the new Caighdeán (an caighdeán nua) meaning that words like Lughnasadh now became Lúnasa August, or the festival of Lúnasa). Or, for a more extreme example, Gaedhealtacht became Gaeltacht (Irish speaking area). It was a way of making the written word look less intimidating.

But the Caighdeán was dealing with many different dialects – the one quoted most often is the Roscommon dialect, spoken by our first president Douglas Hyde (Dubhghlas de hÍde) which has now died out. Even trying to pick a “correct” option from Munster, Connacht and Ulster Irish would be difficult – try telling any native speaker of any language that the grammar or pronunciation they’ve been using since birth is incorrect? Ah go, I dare yah! So, the Caighdeán is a bit of a mess alright when it comes to picking one or the other. And really, if you’re speaking Connacht Irish, for example, it’s perfectly acceptable to say “Cá bhfuil my bhicycle?” instead of “Cá bhfuil mo rothar?” since as it was explained to me, the word “bicycle” had been used in the Gaeltacht for decades before this new-fangled “rothar” came along. Equally, the official word for potato in Irish is práta (prátaí in the plural, cos who’d need to know what 1 spud is??), but for my mothers family in Clare, it was always fataí/ phataí. And I’m not telling her she’s wrong!!

So what ended up being in the Caighdeán was a mixture of what was most commonly used, what the particular contributor liked or pure accident. Now my Dad, good Galwayman that he is, would claim that Connacht Irish is the best, although I have read things on the internet (cos everything written on the internet is true!) indicating that Munster Irish would be closer to the written Irish we have from the 16th century on. To me, it doesn’t matter, as long as the language is being spoken. I mean, in English, we don’t argue whether the Dublin “Staarhy” (the word story, short for “any story?” or “what’s the story”) is any more or less correct than the more rural “how’s she cuttin’?” Both are understood to be colloquialisms rather than standard language. Why shouldn’t the local idiosyncrasies in Irish be treated the same? In practice, it is – it’s really only when dealing with scholarship, education and political publications the Caighdeán become important.

But that’s part of the issue. Children from the age of 4 in schools are taught Irish, sometimes according to the Caighdeán, sometimes according to the teacher’s own Irish, which may or may not be fluent or approaching fluent in standard. I remember going over the irregular verb to be/ bí 5 times in my first year in secondary school, but whereas in primary school we had covered the aimsir chaite, aimsir láithreach, aimsir fháistineach, módh choinníollach, aimsir ghnáthchaite, aimsir ghnáthláithreach, and a few other bits and bobs, in secondary school, we just did 3 of them (aimsir chaite, aimsir láithreach, aimsir fháistineach), cos the rest were deemed too scary. There are 11 irregular verbs in Irish and the verb to be is one of them, but to cover it 5 times in one year, and only in 3 verb tenses at that? Well it was a bit of overkill to me, even as a 12 yr old.

The language is presented as a big deal to kids and the Caighdeán is complicated – it’s trying to condense an entire language to a system of rules and grammars and syntax. I never knew there was tenses in verbs in English until my teenage years – I knew they were there in Irish, French and German though. I though the tuiseals, the cases of nouns, were an Irish only thing, until I started learning German. Even now, if you ask me for the Tuiseal Ginideach of any noun, I’ll struggle, but most of the time if I put it into a sentence, it will come to me. Equally, knowing whether a noun is male or female is mostly beyond me, but I can usually get the use of a séimhiú roughly right.

No more than we have “Learning English as a foreign language” classes, I think we need to do the same with Irish. It doesn’t matter which canúint you’re learning – and I’d argue the Caighdeán or “school Irish” is a fourth canúint all on its own – it doesn’t matter if you mix the words and syntax and grammar from all 4 of the canúintí. No more than other languages, the official standard of the language doesn’t always bear a resemblance to the actual spoken, every day language and that’s ok. I mean, think of someone from Ayrshire in Scotland and Somerset in England and the differences between the English they speak. Hell, think of the difference between Liverpudlian and Mancunian English, and they’re much closer together, geographically speaking! None of those could be considered to be “Standard English” but there’s no problem with the deviations.

The Caighdeán caused a gap in the passing on of the language from generation to generation, since those who had learned the language for writing pre-Caighdeán would struggle with the spelling at least post-Caighdeán, and so, would struggle with helping the next generation. But it’s not exactly the evil that many people call it. It’s a mixed bag like so much else in this world. And it’s been updated since the 1950’s, which is good, cos Ireland has changed since the 1950’s, why wouldn’t the language?

The Caighdeán is a useful tool to have in your back pocket, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t conform to it. Equally, if you have a fierce love of silent letters, sure fire ahead, it’ll look strange to modern eyes, but we’ll cope. And the cló gaelach is a lovely font, sure why wouldn’t you want to use it occasionally!

UPG, Sources and the importance of differentiating

I hope everyone likes the new look of the blog. Please let me know what you think!

Over the last few months, I’ve had some debates, rows, discussions and plain fights with people online over the importance of citing sources when making a declaration with regard to spirituality or deity. Here’s the thing. I don’t mean going back through papers from 30 yrs ago, when you might first have read something, I mean saying things like “Oh I read this paper by such and such that linked this aspect to that aspect and came up with this”. For most people, that’s about all that’s needed. Or indeed, “it was a story in the Lives, the one that isn’t Cogistosus or Bethu”. And then someone else can come and suggest the Prima, and the original person says, “That’s the one, thanks!” I don’t expect people with no research training to do much more than that.

Now if you’re writing something for publication, either a research paper, a book, or a blog you know will be widely read, or if you’re known as a scholar of the subject, I expect more. I expect a proper research citation really at that point. Or at least a very clear indication where the information came from. It doesn’t need to be Harvard referencing or anything like that for blogs (although for books and papers, if your editor isn’t asking for some sort of official citation scheme, question what sort of publication it is!) but something like “In Bethu Brigte,…..” or “In X’s paper, The Red Book, …” things like that really help when trying to separate facts or primary/ secondary sources of gnosis from personal gnosis.

I’m always amazed I’m not pulled up more often when I go back over older things I’ve written because of the lack of references or at least a nod to where this is coming from.

Why is this important?

Well. There’s a few reasons. The first one is “paper never refused ink”. Anyone can write anything, particularly in these days of free blogs on the internet (ahem, look at what you’re reading!) and really, we have no idea what their credentials are or what experience they have or whether they’re speaking truth or lies. I’d advise reading anything, including anything on this blog, with a pinch of salt until you can determine for yourself the legitimacy of the author. And sometimes that’s harder than others.

I’ll give an example. Every Imbolc, I see things going round the internet about how “golden round foods” are the way to celebrate Brigid’s festival. This is then linked to the “fact” that Brigid is a “sun deity” and Imbolc is celebrating the return of the sun. These people have never been to Ireland in February. Seriously. Let’s attack this a bit at a time. From the variety of Lives of the saint we have, Brigid is strongly connected with the dairy, so butter, milk, cream, anything that can be made in the dairy is a good way to start with offerings, if you want to go down that road. But pancakes in Ireland are associated with Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, when Lent will start. The date of Ash Wednesday can vary from 4th Feb to 10th March every year because Easter Sunday is calculated by a combination of the spring equinox and the moon cycle. From https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/when-easter

The simple standard definition of Easter is that it is the first Sunday after the full Moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox. If the full Moon falls on a Sunday then Easter is the next Sunday.

So it could be easy to say in Ireland, they use pancakes to celebrate Imbolc – except we don’t. When I was a child, pancakes were only served on Shrove Tuesday, because eggs and rich foods were not eaten during length traditionally, and pancakes were a handy and tasty way of using up such foods. It has nothing to do with Brigid or Imbolc at all. But someone somewhere didn’t really understand what was going on, linked some ideas about Brigid being a sun deity (which she isn’t, more on this later) with pancakes being round and golden like the sun and came up with pancakes being a great way to celebrate.

I mean, pancakes are a great way to celebrate anything, but it’s cos they’re so tasty and nice. There is no symbolism here linking them to Imbolc.

And then we come to the bit about celebrating the return of the sun at Imbolc. Not in Ireland. Imbolc is officially the start of spring in Ireland, but it’s more the beginning of spring, when we first see green shoots coming out of the ground. The weather is still, usually, miserable. It’s raining. It’s cold, it’s heavy, it’s unrelenting. It’s one of the prices we pay for those lovely green fields and for me, it’s worth it, but a celebration of sun return, it is not. We do sun celebrations at solstices. Kinda.

But the thing is, because this post saying Brigid is a sun deity and so anything round and golden , like eggs and pancakes and other foods, represent the sun, these are all good things to make for Imbolc, goes around every year and is celebrated across the internet every year, a lot of people are picking up some very inaccurate information. We don’t really have a sun deity as such in Ireland. If we did, the Dagda would be a much more likely candidate, but honestly, our deities are more to do with arts, crafts, and trades. They’re doing things. Brigid (from Sanas Cormac, or Cormac’s Glossary) is associated with poets, healing and smithcraft. There’s a list of animals as well – although it’s important to realise Cormac’s Glossary is not a modern dictionary, but that could be a whole other post! There’s definitely no mention of sun goddess in there or in the Leabhar Gabála Éireann (the Book of the Invasions of Ireland, essentially, our creation myth) or in Caith Maighe Tuireadh (Battle of Moytura).

But definitely not sun deities.

And I can already hear people asking, why this is important? Sure what harm can it do? Well, if you don’t believe that dealing with deity in the right manner is important, frankly, I’m wondering why you’re reading this blog at all? Every religion in the world has its ways of dealing with deity and observances around them. And yes, these things change over time and Brigid herself has shown herself very willing to change with the times – she supported the people of Ireland as a saint when paganism wasn’t really an option any more (although if you’ve read previous posts here, you’ll know of my belief that Christianity in Ireland was more of a thin veneer over deep roots of paganism anyway). So worship can change and what a deity does can change. Sure, I’ll accept that. But such changes happen gradually over generations, not overnight (relatively speaking) because someone got things wrong.

Now, Irish Brigid is not the only Brigid, I know that. But this all serves equally well for any other Brigid. I have yet to come across non-modern lore regarding Brigid as a sun deity. And yet, outside of certain circles, people accept this as true. It’s the same with the triple deity – triple deities in Ireland don’t fit the maiden/mother/crone mould – trust me!! – and yet, there’s a plethora of people out these insisting Brigid is a maiden, mother, crone. That’s a Wiccan process as far as I can figure out (and it was difficult to even narrow it down that far) but I’d strongly advise against telling Irish Brigid she fits that mould. Seriously. Or, if you’re going to have that conversation with her – let me watch? 😀

I can hear people screaming all over the place, “But that’s not my gnosis!!” Yeah, personal gnosis has a role to play in any spirituality. It’s really important and vital to your spiritual growth to develop your own gnosis. (Gnosis is the word used in many spiritual circles to cover knowledge and belief about a certain topic, comes from the Greek word for knowledge anyway). UPG, unverified personal gnosis, is such a common term around the place that it has it’s own acronym. It’s hugely important that you develop your own practices and beliefs, otherwise we end up with dogma and that’s not good. But it’s also crucial, absolutely crucial, to outline to others where something is based on your own experiences and where something is based on lore or writings or common knowledge. For example, Brigid to me is a friend, a support, a manager, a leader, a powerful force in this world. She is strong and capable and gets shit done. This is my personal gnosis. She appears this way to others as well. She also appears as a beautiful energy to others. She appears as a loving relation to others. She is more than one thing – deity is not simple. But it would be wrong of me to say she is only a support or only a capable doer of things. Because that leads others to doubt where their experiences have taken them. Now I do get annoyed at people who only see the beautiful energy thing, because that to me is a waste of energy. Energy is there to be used and useful – maybe it’s my engineering background, but I have a strong belief that deity needs to be useful as well, because, well why else would we do all of this? And even the belief that deity needs to be useful is personal gnosis as well.

It’s important to delineate between knowledge stemming from the lore and personal gnosis, because of the danger of leading others down an incorrect path. We’re not all called to do the same work, and why should we be? But the core of the lore concerning Brigid is quite brief, there’s not mounds of writing there (Irish Brigid again here!) so it’s worth being familiar with it and basing your practice on it. Working out from there is extremely useful. The Mary Jones website has a handy list of the lore concerning Brigid here, although I should note, I don’t necessarily agree with the links to Welsh mythology. I’m not familiar enough with Welsh mythology to comment more than that though. Clann Bhríde have a more complete list of lore here. They’ve also kindly provided a little commentary on each bit as well as links to where the originals can be found online.

There’s no reason not to look at the ancient lore we have, because it tells us what our ancestors deemed important to be recorded. We can work out our own practices from there. But it is work – it’s not enough to just decide something is right and go do it, you have to prove it to yourself and look for indications from herself that it is right. And, it’s really important to remember that while something might be fine and dandy for you to do, it might not be for someone else. Brigid doesn’t treat us all the same. That’s not in the old Irish ways. People were given their due, but their due was not constant. So, what is right and proper for me do to in relation to Brigid, might not be right or even safe for someone else to do.

We have a lot of commonalities for Brigid – fire, lighting candles, praying, writing – whether creative writing or otherwise, healing work, smithcraft… there’s a lot in it. And I go into it a lot in my courses in the Irish Pagan School as to how we can extrapolate from the lore and directions we might go in.

But just remember – the lore is there for a reason. It’s all we have. And “experiences may vary” is a valid warning no matter what we’re talking about! So label your UPG as such. You may find others have a similar UPG and that’s great. But they might not and that’s ok too – just as long as the experience is being labelled as UPG and nothing generally accepted practice.

Words matter

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”

We’ve all heard the above rhyme right? Certainly those of Gen X or older were told this in school, in response to a bully, whatever the situation was. We were told words wouldn’t hurt us and to let it wash off like the rain. (OK in other countries, you might not have been told the rain bit, but in Ireland it’s relevant!)

The people who told us this were trying their best, but they were wrong. Words matter. Language matters. It all matters. The words we use show other people what we think is important and how we want them to think as well. No really! So why am I talking about this? Well it’s the 3rd of May here in Ireland (an tríú lá de mhí na Bealtaine, as Gaeilge) which means that Friday sunset to midday Saturday was the festival of Bealtaine.

Cue memes all over the internet celebrating “Beltane”.

Now, I’ll admit, this particular language issue probably isn’t going to solve world hunger and yes, I do agree world peace, world hunger, gender equality, etc are more important than this. But here’s the thing – this is important too. “Beltane” is the anglicisation of Bealtaine and like most anglicisations, it loses all meaning in the translation. Bealtaine (or indeed Bealltinne in Scottish Gaelic, although I’m less sure of this one and very open to correction by someone who knows better!) comes from “bright fire”, “blazing fire”, something like that. “Beltane” means nothing really. It’s like many of the anglicisations forced on my country: by making the word more “acceptable” to non-Irish speakers, it loses all meaning and context.

And yeah, it’s appropriation. I know, it’s not cool to think of appropriating from Irish culture, cos after all, we’re European, we’re white, how can people appropriate from us? Really easily as it happens. Our culture and traditions are living and breathing – just look at all the reports of yellow flowers scattered across thresholds or May bushes being used across the country this weekend. And yeah, fire is an integral part of the festival. If you want an overview of the traditions associated with the festival here in Ireland, the Irish Pagan School has a class on it, go take a look. Or check out www.duchas.ie (there’s 688 manuscripts on Bealtaine, 2195 for May Day)

But back to appropriation. Many Irish people won’t create a fuss, will say “Beltane” is grand, will say just there’s no point nitpicking about things like this. This is part of our post-colonial bullshit which taught us our own language was worthless, barbaric and rustic at best. We were taught over centuries that our language was less than that of our oppressors (the language of our oppressors being English, just in case anyone was in doubt). And yeah, this is political. A lot of every day life is political – that’s no reason to not speak about this.

So what has this to do with Brigid? Well, she’s a poet. Words matter to anyone in creative wordsmithing. Whether it’s stories, histories, poems, whatever, the language and words we use, matter. That’s why I encourage people to learn na cúpla focail, the few words of Irish, because language is important. Brigid has been through millenia of the Irish language. She’s used it, she uses it, she will use it in the future. But Beltane? Why on the gods green earth would that mean anything to her?

And as I’ve said before, if you really think Brigid doesn’t give a damn about politics, I strongly invite you to go look at the role of the filí in the Ireland of the past.

This post is an expanded version of a post I’ve been typing on Facebook for most of the weekend. I’m getting really tired of dealing with people who tell me this isn’t important. It damn well is. We work with a deity of words. The majority of the Irish magic system is one of words. How did Amergin claim Ireland? How did the Dagda lose Brú na Boinne to his son? How do the prophecies of the Morrigan come true? Words, words, words.

If you’ve been a practicing pagan for decades and never heard of this issue before, then maybe don’t reject it off hand, but have a think about how great it is that even after decades you can learn something new. If you’re an Irish person who’s feeling really uncomfortable with the fuss I’m making about this – I feel you. Have a think about why you feel uncomfortable about this and where that’s coming from. If you think this is all bullshit – well I’m questioning why you’re reading the blog at all to be honest.

Words have power. Have a read of this article from the Scientific American to consider why: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-words-matter-what-cognitive-science-says-about-prohibiting-certain-terms/ And even if you don’t celebrate an Irish Bealtaine, but insist that your festival of Beltane has nothing to do with Ireland, have a look into where “Beltane” comes from and who were the influences that caused it to be so widespread and where their information came from. The real stories, not the myths. There’s nothing to say you can’t keep marking the festival as you currently do, but know the history and context of what you’re doing and learn from it.

Sticks and stones may break my bones and words most certainly can hurt me.

Translations

No, I don’t mean the play by Brian Friel (although if you do get the chance to ever see/read that play, please do. Or indeed anything by Brian Friel) I mean translating language, words, from one language to another. And specifically, from English to Irish.

Speaking to the gods in their own language, or at least in the language you think is theirs, can be an offering in and of itself. For those of us following the Irish deities, this means Irish. And there’s a lot of us that started out speaking English. Even those of us who are Irish generally start out with English most of the time as well. And there’s differences in the language. There’s differences in thinking, in philosophy, in syntax, in grammar… Things that aren’t necessarily obvious when you’re learning a language. And I’m going to use some examples I’ve seen around the place (and by place I meant internet) over the years and explain why double checking is important.

So, I think the one that has come around so so often in the last few years is the time someone decided to translate Blue Lives Matter as “Gorm Chónaí Ábhar”. Now technically in Irish, blue = gorm; conaí = lives; ábhar = matter. but…..

In Irish, in preceding generations, an fear dubh (technically translates as the black man) was used for the devil. (Or at least this was my experience with my grandparents) So those words were taken plus there’s a rumour/ thought/ hypothesis coming from linguists that actually it comes from the Viking words for black people (which mean blue people because the first ones they met wore a lot of blue clothing. Either way, the Irish for black man is fear gorm (technically meaning blue man). So there’s the first problem.

The second word “chónaí” does mean lives, but it means lives as in I live here. Táim i mo chónaí in Éireann means I live in Ireland. Lives in this context (blue lives matter) would be saol. Equally, as ye may have noticed in the previous paragraph, in Irish the noun comes first and the adjective second. So, it would need to be saol gorm not gorm saol.

Finally we come to “ábhar”. Ábhar means matter as in stuff. Things. Subject. That sort of matter. As in “Cén ábhar a thóg tú ar scoil?” (which subjects did you study at school?) That sort of thing. Matters as in ” blue lives matter” is an entirely different concept in Irish. The closest concept would be “important” or “of worth”.

Coming from all that, one way of saying “blue lives matter” in Irish would be is fiú iad saolta gorma. Now, ye’ll notice that the words “saol” and “gorm” have changed there and that’s cos in Irish, words change according to case and number. So because we’re saying lives, plural, saol goes to saolta and that forces gorm to gorma.

Now for someone of my politics (which would be fairly liberal and left wing to say the least) the irony of someone trying to say “blue lives matter”, a phrase that came up to support the police in opposition to the black lives matter movement, and coming up with something as twisted and backwards as this is fairly amusing. It’s not so bad on a T-shirt, but I’ve seen tattoos of this.

The second one I’m looking at is from a Yasmine Galenorn books where she translates Land of Brilliant Apples as Talamh Lonrach Oll. OK, she never claims it’s Irish, so I’m not really going for her here. It’s just being used as an example. First off, “talamh” does mean land, but it’s land as in ground, or earth. Land as in country, area is tír. Again we come to the whole adjectives changing spelling with cases and being in the reverse order (plus the Irish for apple is úll, not oll) So Land of the Brilliant Apples would be more like Tír na hÚlla Lonracha rather than Talamch Lonrach oll.

Now here’s the thing. No one, deities included, can expect you to become fluent overnight in any language. And frankly, if they do, they can bloody well teach you overnight 🙂 That’s not what I’m about here, not about shaming. This is about raising awareness that using Google Translate or other online translators for spiritual or tattoos or anything permanent or important – double check it. Triple check. Tie in with a native speaker or someone who is at least on their way to fluent. Use Google Translate and then translate what they give you back into the original language. Try each word on it’s own and again as a phrase. Run the answers you get by someone who knows the language.

For the record, I don’t consider myself fluent in Irish. I learned Irish in school, as do most people going through the Irish school system. I love the language so I use it as much as I can and I had parents who could afford to send me to Irish college for 3 weeks in the summer (for 5 years on the trot!) I got to use and speak the language as a living language and learn to appreciate the differences and things to think about. There’s nothing quite as surprising the first time you realised you dreamt in different language to what you’re used to 🙂

But, there are many topics I can’t converse with as Gaeilge. I’m an engineer, I don’t have the Irish terms for much of my daily business conversation. Speaking about politics, world affairs, etc is probably beyond my comfortable Irish. But I use what I have.

And that’s important. The gods appreciate whatever our best is. But if it’s something important, if it’s something permanent – remember, the syntax, grammar and structure is NOT the same as in English. (and possibly not whatever your native language is). Learning Irish is a great way to honour the Irish pantheon, and they will appreciate it, but remember our magic is a magic of language and poetry and words – be careful what you say!!

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