OK, the specific question is silly, but the general one that follows will be helpful to lots of us who haven’t learned the mother tongue.
Specific question that started my wondering: In “Finnegan’s Wake” several Gaelic words are used:
Tim has a “drop of the craythur every morn” - what is craythur? (I’m guessing whiskey.)
Biddy O’Brien says “Tim, mavourneen, why did you die?” - what is the translation of mavourneen? (Spelling varies depending on which lyrics you have.)
The last line, Tim says “Thanum an Dhul” (sometimes rendered “Thunderin’ Jaysus”) - to what is this oath refering?
The general question is: does anyone know a good site with an Irish/Gaelic-English translator? I’ve tried:
but I get a translation only about one word in four when I enter words found in song titles. I’m not trying to learn Gaelic (would that I had the time!) I’m just curious about the titles and phrases used in the tunes I play. Thanks.
yep, craythur is whiskey, but it’s not a word in Irish as far as I know. I think it’s a hiberno-english thing. the Irish for whiskey is uisce beatha (which translates to “water of life” )
that’s the best dictionary online. some words change based on their grammatical place in the sentence (to put it simply). if you see a consonant followed by an h at the beginning of a word, try taking out the h and then looking up the word. also, if there are two consonants next to each other at the beginning of a word and it looks like something that would never happen in english (nd, gc…) take out the first consonant and then look up the word. those are just grammatical things that change based on whatever the preceding word is, so the dictionary won’t recognize the word unless you change it back to the original.
I hope that helps. or you can always try just googling the tune title and hope to find a translation somewhere.
I’ve often wondered if craythur was an ‘inkhorn’ term, used to display the speaker’s classical education and command of the classics. Craythur sounds to me a lot like Krater, the greek term for the flattish bowl that wine was mixed in and drunk from. If you recall that at the time whiskey was usually drunk in the form of punch due to the fact that it was rarely if ever aged as modern spirits are, so it was far from mellow, then the similarity of mixing wine and mixing whiskey becomes more obvious.
I have no evidence at all for this assumption apart from the fact that the two words near homophones.
I do know that during the period in which english was being imposed by government fiat on the Irish population, educated catholics would make a point of being bilingual in latin or greek rather than english, and this was often what was taught in hedge schools.
craythur, crayture add/view comments (0)
// n. HE rendering of the word ‘creature’ (using the archaic pronunciation of ‘ea’) in the sense of intoxicating liquor, especially whiskey < E dial. creature, n. ‘Give us a drop of the crayture, for the love of God’, ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ (the song): ‘He’d a drop of the craythur every morn’; Carleton, Hedge School, ed. Cronin, 171: “‘You must bring plinty of bacon, hung beef, and fowls, bread and cabbage – not forgetting the phaties (see práta), and six-pence a-head for the crathur, boys, won’t yees?’”, Joyce, F.W., 4.29: "He addle liddle phifie Annie ugged the little craythur’. See creature.
Thanks, Peter. I found all the terms in “Finnegan’s Wake” on that site. Sara, thanks for the tips on using the gaelic-english dictionaryand thanks to everyone else for your help.
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