Wine Dark Sea, In Wild Profusion, Creamh na Coille

Wild garlic season is just finishing up in Ireland, and as a farewell to Erin's green shore it blossoms profusely in white flowerings throughout the land. Thanks to this wonderful plant I've eaten a-lot of beautiful wild garlic pesto and wild garlic soup the last couple of months, as well as going on some lovely walks in the woods! On one of said walks, I made this music video for "The Wine Dark Sea," an extra track from "Hy Brasil, Songs of the Irish in Latin America." I've released the song as a pay as you please single on Bandcamp.

Wild garlic (creamh in Irish) has been known for its curative properties for millennia. In Ireland it was known particularly for treatment of fevers. Creamh has illustrious and wildly expansive Indo-European roots. In Russian it is called ceremsa, krémuon in Greek, In old Irish it was crem and in middle Irish crim. It was used as a flavouring for butter in Gaelic times and every year there was a garlic festival. This part of the year was called Crimmess (Crim feis) meaning, literally, garlic festival. The word is found in place-names across the country, for example, Achadh Creamhchoille (Aghacramphill) in Fermanagh, Gleann Creamha (Glencrew) in Tyrone, and Inis Creamha on Loch Coirb in Galway. Wild garlic is associated with bitterness too, and the 17th century harper, Tadgh Rua Ó Conchuair, described a fellow musician's bad playing as like seirbhe an creamha "the bitterness of wild garlic."

Faghairt caorthainn ar a chrobh,
'na ladhraibh do leagh an creamh,
sás marbh do mhosgladh a huaigh
cosgradh cruiadh na n-arm n-amh.

A fiery tempered blade in his talons
As claws fumbling with wild garlic
A terror ensnared on his tomb
awful mangling, butchering raw his weapon

Another interesting aside regarding garlic comes in what was called "Garlic Sunday." Garland's are associated with festivals in general in the English tradition, and according to the book "The Festival of Lughnasa" the English settlers in Ireland brought this term to Ireland and the Irish in turn translated it to "Garlic Sunday." The Irish language festival on this day (the last Sunday of July) was Domhnach Crom Dubh. Cruach Dubh (Crom Dubh) was the pre-Christian fertility God of Ireland who continued to be celebrated (often unbeknownst to the worshippers/merrymakers) until the modern era. In Lahinch in County Clare it was a religious festival and general mad melee until at least the 1920's. Loch Uachtar in Cavan also had a similar festival that died out too in the early 20th century. The book the "The Festival of Lughnasa" says "the gathering there was very large and people came to it from long distances if the day was fine."

Garlic was found in Egyptian tombs dating from the 18th century B.C. and wild garlic adorns the lifestyle supplements of our daily papers in our own era each season, here is a recipe I made my own from one such publication. I read that wild garlic can be substituted or supplemented with nettle, another fine local ingredient to try out.

Wild Garlic Pesto

100 g fresh wild garlic leaves
30 g pine nuts
200 ml rapeseed oil
30 g grated, parmigiano-reggiano

20g Gubeen Cheese (or Coolea Cheese or mature Desmond)
black pepper and sea salt

Bibliography

Díolaim Luibheanna
Nicholas Williams

Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture

edited by J. P. Mallory, Douglas Q. Adams

Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200
By Daibhí O Croinín

Acta Orientalia, A Eurasian Etymology Sarmysak (Vol 55, 2002)

María Magdolna Tartár 

The Festival of Lughnasa
Máire MacNeill

Irish Spanish Origins & Words

Having been travelling back and forth to Spain and Cuba these last few years I've been struck by the great similarities between some Spanish and Irish words. There are of course Latin roots to many Irish words,  but what is more interesting, is the relation between Irish and the original Celtic languages of Spain which are now extinct. Irish, though more than "two thousand years a growing," is perhaps (if the indigenous histories of Ireland are to be believed) the only extant Celtic language of Spain still in existence, let me explain!

Spanish National Library, Irish Gaels 1529

According to Gaelic chronicles, most notably, Lebor Gábhala Érenn (from the late 11th century) the Irish people are of Spanish origin. If you were of Gaelic royal blood you had to trace yourself to the north of Spain. All clans of note would begin their genealogies with the Gaelic conquest of Ireland, that being, with the sons of Míl Espáine, and their leader Íth. As Gaelic chieftain Hugh O' Donnell said (affirming his allegiance to Spain in a letter from 1593 to King Philip of Spain) "quod mea prosapea [sic] ex cantabrea [sic] originem sumpsit." "Because I myself am of Cantabrian origin." As proof of this when O' Donnell eventually fled to Spain he brought with him a copy of Lebor Gábhala Érenn, and along with that, a history of the genealogy of his clan to the Spanish court.

Many modern scholars hold these origin histories of the Irish in doubt and prefer to think of them as legends. What is interesting, is that recent genetic studies of Irish have placed the Irish populations beginnings squarely in the north of Spain, giving further credence to our Spanish origins. Lebor Gábhala Érenn was patched together from many earlier works, and had its own propaganda purposes at the time it was put together, and since. It comes from a firmly christian world (with some long lost original pagan sources). It tells how Ireland was spied from a tower in Galicia in the North of Spain called Breogán's Tower. Íth, son of Míl Espáine (who's father in turn was Bile son of Breogán) was told by his father to take that green land in the distance, so beginning the Gaelic conquest of Ireland.

Because of all this, and for other more practical reasons, for many hundreds of years, any Irish seeking refuge in Spain were considered native Spanish under Spanish law. In 1680 Charles II of Spain, in a royal decree, stated that "the Irish in Spain have always enjoyed the same privileges as Spaniards, this has always been the practice and indeed still is today."

In 1791 aroused by fears brought on by the French revolution an order was issued for a  special register of foreigners in Spain. Three native Irish men living Cadiz (being aware of the old laws) complained that they should not have to register. Their case was brought before the local magistrate who communicated with the Consejo Real in Madrid who replied "the taking of the oath to which all foreigners have been directed to submit, shall not be exacted on the Irish, seeing that by the sole fact of their having settled in Spain the Irish are regarded as Spaniards and have the same rights." This was signed as a royal decree by Charles IV in March 1792. This also applied to Army lists, where Irish were listed along with Spaniards according to seniority, whereas regiments of Flanders, Italy and Switzerland were entered at the end as foreign mercenaries. In 1734 the regiment of Limerick was listed as the oldest of the native Spanish regiments, for instance.

In 1529 the Earl of Desmond, James Fitzmaurice, and an envoy of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, King of Spain signed the Treaty of Dingle which incorporated much of the south-west of Ireland into a territory of the Hapsburg monarchy and confirmed again Irish peoples citizenship rights in Spain. Of course, this was highly effective propaganda for Spain against the English crown, that is, having a fresh stock of loyal catholics who were of the one blood with Spaniards ready to fight and die for their cause!

For me, one of the more chilling moments in Irish history was when what remained of the Gaelic nobility in the north of Ireland (in the personage of Hugh O' Neill, aforementioned Hugh O' Donnell and their retinues) sailed for the north of Spain in 1607 never to return, beginning what was called "The Flight of the Earls." Was this the Gaelic kings returning to their old origins?

Another great example of Spanish/Irish from this time is Philibín ó Súilleabháin Beara-child of an Irish nobleman who, along with his family, left Ireland for Spain in 1602, never to return. Philibín became a scholar, and was commissioned by the Spanish government to write "A Natural History of Ireland"-a reply to some very influential propaganda written by Geraldius Cambrensis called Topographia Hibernica. Geraldius's tome was written to King Henry II of England, and was used as an effective carte blanche for the original invasion and syphoning off of Ireland to English control, the book was dusted off again in Elizabethan times to justify their reconquest of Ireland. Unfortunately Philibín's important writings were lost to history until recent times, when they were found in manuscripts in the University of Upsala in Sweden. Another O' Sullivan published the first volume of the translation (from the original Latin to English) in 2009.

My own 21st century scribbling are being done, fittingly, in the town of Paterna in the province of Valencia, Spain. La leyenda persiste!


I'll finish with a bunch of Spanish words, with their Irish equivalents after...


Sconse, Sconsa
A fenced off fort

Cómo estás tu? Conas atá tu? 
How are you?

Escoba/Scuab
Broom

Tierra/Tír

Country

Toro/tarbh

Bull

Cama/Leaba

Bed

Cofre/Cofra
Chest (as in a chest of drawers)

Cala/Caladh
A cove or small bay

Mama/Mama*
A woman's breast

Fosa/Fossa**
A grave pit or ditch

Conejo (Conill in Valenciano)/Coinín
Rabbit

Ayer/Aréir
Yesterday

Fiesta (Feasta in Valenciano)/Feasta
Party with food and drink

Di Marts(Valenciano)/De Máirt
Tuesday

Na(Valenciano)/Na
The in plural form as in "the Germans"

Corbata/Carbhat
Tie (as in a neck-tie)

Pecados/Peacaí
Sins (from the latin I'm guessing!)

Obra/Obair
Work

Taberna/Tábhairne
Pub

* I came across this word in Irish in the poetry of 18th century Irish poet Eoghan Rua Ó' Súilleabháin (in the third verse of the linked poem). Eoin came from Gníomh go Léith another village next to Killarney.

** There is a village next to my hometown of Killarney called Fossa. I was always told that the meaning of the village had been lost or that it had a pre-Celtic origin, methinks it is surely Celtic!




Further Reading


Ireland 1518 by  Lauret Vital, introduction by Hiram Morgan, a Dorothy Convery translation (2011)

The Natural History of Ireland by Don Philibín Ó Súileabháin Beara, translation by Denis C. O'Sullivan (2009)

The Military Order of St. Patrick by Micheline Walsh, Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society Vol. 9, No. 2 (1979)

That Langer is Baloobas!

The Irish have a long history of service in the British Army. For centuries, in a country full of strife and upheaval, it was the one job you could count on-you could always count on her Majesty's Few bob.... if you lived long enough to benefit from it. One famous regiment of the British Army were "The Munster Fusiliers." Under that moniker, they were active for forty years, from 1881 to 1922. They had many run-ins with many foes, from German Kaisers to Ottoman Kings. While stationed in India the Munster Fusiliers faced one of their most unusual enemies, that being: the Langur Monkey.  The Langurs were so unpopular with the Munster Fusiliers, that they were the inspiration for the most famous of Cork slang words - Langer.

Langer - A fool, a really drunk person, or a penis. The etymology of Langer derives from the time of the Munster Fusiliers. When they were stationed out in India the Fusiliers were probably pestered to distraction by langur monkeys; soon enough they began using Langer as a term of insult amongst each other - "feck off you langer,"  "yer some langer,"  and so on. The term quickly spread back home to Ireland and eventually became the quintessential Cork slang term it is today.

A Young Langur Monkey

The Irish State, since its formation in the early 1920's, has been a neutral state; the only active service Irish soldiers see is on peace keeping missions with the U.N.  One of the most infamous missions of the Irish Army was when they were stationed out in the Congo in the late 1950's/early 1960's. It was during an engagement there that another colorful Hiberno-English word took flower-Baloobas.

Baloobas - A fool or a really drunk person. For example - "Yer man was baloobas altogether" or "He's some balooba."
The Baloobas are an African tribe of the Congo.  On Nov 8th 1960, although the Baloobas fought with bow and arrow, they almost wiped out one whole Irish Platoon.

St Patrick's Day "Pattys Galore"-- A Recipe for Disaster.

I'm back in Atlanta after celebrating St. Patrick's Day in Savannah. It has the second largest St. Patrick's day parade in the world I am told. They have a custom in Savannah; of families of Irish origin from the town, marching in the St. Patrick's Day parade. It was great to see all generations of the one family marching together, proudly strutting down the street. Sometimes they glided by on floats replete with comfortable chairs; for the older members of the family. Near enough to where we watched the parade was "the Irish Green"; where people from the surrounding Irish neighbourhood used to often assemble for diversion and the likes. It seems they still do -- though in sorely depleted numbers -- they must have all been marching!

"The Shamrock Lounge" taken on the Irish Green. Pity about the wonky spelling of "ceol agus craic aneso." 
It looks like there was neither ceol nor craic but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt. We passed by at the wrong time I'm sure!

For curiosity's sake, we walked down by the riverfront and River Street, where the majority of the festive madness was taking place. It took us a good half hour to traverse the length of the street. The thoroughfare was thronged with people dressed in green, some in various states of undress. Most notable of the scantily clad folk, were a group of strippers outside one pub, valiantly trying to entice people into the premises with their gyrations.
Having enough of the madness we wandered towards the center of town, where we came across a mighty Irish bar called "O' Connell's". It was the quietest Irish bar in Savannah, and the only authentic one as far as I could see. The place serves no food--which is always a good barometer for a decent Irish bar (for better or worse!). The owner is a young fella called Dan O' Connell, Dan plays Irish music and tries to make the place accommodating to Irish musicians, like any decent publican and public house at home.



I've lately been collecting words of Irish Gaelic origin in American English. I saw a fair few people in Savannah with green t-shirts emblazoned with "Hooligan" and it reminded me of this expression's Irish origin! The t-shirts are to be found in Walmart -- along with Drunken Leprechaun wine and other such Cultural gems of "St Patty's Day".


Hooligan - From the Irish surname "O' hUllacháin"- pronounced o hoo lich awn.

Shinangans -- From "sin anachain" -- pronounced Shin on a kin which means -- thats trouble/devilish behaviour. Anachain's most common meaning is -- disaster -- but it also can mean trouble.

Clan/klan -- From "clann" -- pronounced k lown. It means family.

Bogey Man -- From "púca"/"púcaí" -- Which in Irish is a type of spirit (of the other worldly variety not the spirits you imbibe that is). Pronounced -- Poo ka/poo kee, poo ka being singular, poo kee being plural.

Baby (as in darling) -- From  Báb -- Slang for a girl, a young attractive one that is. Pronounced -- Baw b.  I've heard it used in poems of Eoghan Rua from the 1700's, and báb is still in use; for instance in the Irish for "Hen Night" -- coisír na mbáb (literally girls party).

To brag -- From "bréag" -- which means to lie. Pronounced -- bray a g.

Galore -- From "go leor" -- which means lots of. Pronounced gu lore.

Irish Gaelic and American English

     The influence of the Irish language on American English is, to me, a really interesting subject. Problematically, the actual scale of its influence is contentious and almost impossible to be definitive about. It is an esoteric subject, as the people who would have forged the majority of this influence -- that is,  the Irish of the 19th century -- were mainly poor, marginalised, and illiterate. In my own opinion they played more of a part in the forming of American English than people are often willing to realise.
      One of the main arguments against the Irish Gaelic influence on American English is that there was a large number of monolingual English speakers or bilingual speakers amongst immigrants from Ireland in the 19th century, and thus linguistically they would have assimilated very quickly. The truth of this is hard to surmise, but if we say for argument's sake that this is true, it might allow for even more of a dialogue between the language communities. If a proportion of the Irish immigrants spoke English, that is, we had a foot in the door to carve out our linguistic influence on American English, so to speak. To add a little more to this theory, the English spoken by many Irish people in the 19th century was more of a Creole, for want of a better word, taking much of its color and vitality from Irish and mixing it with English. My own grandparents for instance, who hadn't a word of Irish, used innumerous words and sayings borrowed from Irish in their English. And that is a more recent generation again. Current English in Ireland isn't a patch on the exuberance and color of my grandparents' version of the language.
       Irish Gaelic’s lack of standing within the American College system (the current Irish language department in Notre Dame being a notable exception) might also be said to have had an influence on it being over looked in the search for the etymology of many an American English word. Through the centuries a myriad of Greek, Roman, and English experts have graced Harvard and Yale - yet hardly a professor or scholar of Gaelic between them.
       So Irish Gaelic has flourished and languished on the perimeter of American society, with the greater culture (as in bigger - bigger not always being best!) oblivious to its vagaries. Spoken most often by the illiterate, devoid of its voice in the pages of history, Irish Gaelic in America is historically found among the working class and the socially marginalized, though it has always been present in some form or another in the U.S.A.'s rich linguistic tapestry.
    Today, at its lowest ebb, 20 000 people speak Irish Gaelic as their home language in the States. Sadly, though a tiny number, it is more than most Native American languages. This figure is indeed small when compared with the great slews (from the Irish for crowd - slua) of Irish speakers who came during, and in, the decades after the Great Famine. I have heard it said that there were more Irish speakers in New York in the 1870's than in the whole of the Irish Province of Munster.
It is estimated that there are currently around 20 000 native Irish speakers in the whole of Ireland, so the 20 000 that speak Irish at home in America (presumably native speakers) are no paltry number. The first Gaelic revival started in America decades before its counterpart in Ireland. The first Irish language newspaper "An Gaodhal" was published in New York in 1881.
    The Irish speakers who influenced American English straddled two, if not more, worlds. They lived in some of the most culturally seminal areas of America: The Five Points of New York, the Irish Channel and Third Ward of New Orleans, and downtown San Francisco, Savannah and Chicago. They lived alongside African-Americans, Germans and many others, swimming in--rather than stirring--the great melting pot. Their malleable nature (probably due more to expediency than choice) put them right in the vanguard of the great shifting tides of America's cultural revolutions. Irish Gaelic's influence echoes in the most unlikely of places. The fact that it often relies on common sense to figure out (and--at worse--conjecture to guess) an American English word's Irish derivation, doesn't endear Irish to the academic. This counts Irish out of all but the most paltry/obvious etymological influence, according to most academics of American English.
     I've assembled a rag bag mix of words and expressions in American English that for my two cents are of Irish Gaelic etymology. I'll list the ones I'm most sure of first and become more speculative as I go on!


Boogaloo - From the Irish Bogadh go luath, which probably best translates as "scarper" or "move on out." It's pronounced BUG ga go LOO.

I have a CD at home which contains songs and a couple of old, Irish-language folk tales concerning Na Fianna, warriors of huge standing in Irish folklore. In one particular tale the main character Fionn is on a hill in the Dingle Peninsula in Kerry, and he sees a boat coming into the pier. The storyteller says Fionn gets a feeling he should "bogadh go luath" or boogaloo down to the pier to the boat that is docking to see whats going on, a far cry from the Ports of Savannah and New Orleans when the famine Irish bustled and boogalooed on those city streets.

Bunny (rabbit that is), Buns (ass) - From the Irish Bun, which means bottom, not unsurprisingly! (Pronounced the same as in English.)

Boogie - From the Irish Bogadh (pronounced - BUG ah) which means to move or shift.

Jazz - From the Irish teas (pronounced - chass or jass) which means heat.
Jazzy - From the Irish teasaí (pronounced - chassy or jassy) which means heated.

Jass is the original spelling of Jazz. Jazz as an American English term, originally it was slang for  something being hot, sexually that is. It broadened the scope of its meaning pretty quickly to encompass anything with that verve - fighting, music, sport, etc.  Consider the amount of Irish people in New Orleans when Jazz was gestating. One might note too that one profession open to many Irish women after the famine was prostitution. Again these people are undocumented, almost all illiterate. Here's a link to a more detailed argument/etymology from Dan Cassidy - the writer of the book "How the Irish Invented Slang" - http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Linguistics/irish.html
Though Dan may be way off in a fair few of his theories, some of his research is genuinely enlightening, it just takes a bit of sifting through his wilder notions. Neither is Cassidy an Irish speaker, which doesn't help his argument, but he has done some interesting research, most notably as regards the aforementioned Jazz!


You Dig? I dig - From the Irish An dtigeann tú? Tigim (pronounced - on DIH-gunn too? DIG um). It means, "Do you understand? I understand."

Kybosh - From the Irish Caip an bháis (pronounced - COP ahn VAH-sh). Which means to put a definitive end to.

Skidamarink a dinka dink, skidamarkinka a doo - from the Irish " -'s déanamid rince rince rince déanamid rince' (pronounced -  iss DIHnna me RINKa RINKa RINKa DIHnna me RINKa). It means, "We dance dance dance we dance."

For those that don't know, "Skidamarinka" is a song based on a children's rhyme from a 1910 Broadway musical called "The Echo." It's been used in a lot of children's T.V. since that time, most popularly in The Elephant Show.

So Long - From the Irish Slán (pronounced - slawn) which means goodbye.


Wooly Booly - from the Irish Ruaile Buaile (pronounced  - ROO la BOO la)- ruction or commotion.

Most often used in the phrase Rí Rá agus Ruaile Buaile, used for when a party is going full throttle.  Popularised in The song "Wooly Booly" by Sam and the Pharaohs, and most recently by the band Smithereeens! (Smidiriní-Irish for little bits). I'm not sure about the wooly booly being Irish, as the writer of the song thought he was making up gibberish, but that doesn't discount it totally.

Bugged out - In the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, "Jim's eyes bugged out." He was amazed--taken aback, in other words. In a short story by Gaelic writer Liam O' Flatharta, a character's eyes are "ag bogadh amach," (pronounced - egg BUG ah MOCK) which means literally to bulge or move out, it has the same actual connotations as in English--being amazed, that is.