Varia III. Some corrigenda to A Bardic miscellany

Abstract

VARIA III Some corrigenda to A Bardic miscellany The texts of ABM were lightly edited by me over a number of years, and when I visit them today I am occasionally confronted with errors based on my own (not my co-editor’s) misunderstanding of the material. I am happy to see that these errors are being corrected by editors of the poems, or of extracts of the poems, contained in the volume. While working on the article in this volume of Ériu on the celebration of the wife in Classical verse (see pp 13768 above), I noticed a number of such errors which it will be appropriate to correct here. For the most part they involve failure on my part to identify a woman’s father’s name, or her maiden name, which research for that article showed was the standard way of referring to, or introducing, married women in this poetry (see pp 1436). In the iargcomharc which is ABM 90.19, for example, as it stands, there is no identification, beyond the name Caitilı́n, of the wife of Éinrı́ (mac Briain) Ó Néill ($1471), and the internal rhyme with cuachmı́n in the first couplet is absent; the text of the first line should read Ingen Ruaidhrı́ nár char cisti, and this both satisfies the metre and meets the convention of identifying the woman by her father’s Christian name. The otherwise unintelligible tuirrı́ of ABM 334.10b should read Tuirrı́ (Siobhán tuigseanach Tuirrı́) that is, Joan Terry, first wife of Sior Doimnic Sairséal (Dominick Sarsfield). Again, the mudhar of ABM 88.30a, 221.34b and 396.27b, and the diúidigh, mugharaigh and dealbhnuigh of ABM 191.9b and d, should all be upper-case, as in the Mughar in ABM 426.1a and the Mughor in Gabhaidh mo shuirghe, a Shior Lúcáis (RIA 744 (A/v/2), ‘Dillon Duanaire’, 20a, q. 31a). The woman in question, Siobhán Mudhar, or Jane Moore,1 was wife of Lúcás Dı́olmhain/ Lucas Dillon and mother of the Roibeard who is said in ABM 191 to be descended from Dı́olmhainigh and Diúidigh (Tuites) and Mugharaigh (Moores) and Dealbhnaigh and Brianaigh and Búrcaigh and Carthaigh and Gearaltaigh.2 The same Roibeard Dı́olmhain’s wife is identified in the iargcomhairc to ABM 191 and 433 as Róis Dı́olmhain, but as she was a Dillon by birth, these references are not in breach of the convention in Bardic poetry of using the wife’s maiden-name, as argued in the paper. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3318/ERIU.2015.65.6 Ériu LXV (2015) 177178 # Royal Irish Academy 1 Note that the form Mudhar distinguishes her surname from the Irish surname Ó Mórdha, also anglicised Moore. I am assuming that the form reflects the vocalisation of internal lenited d and g; see the discussion in SNG 352.2.12. In Classical verse, of course, the internal consonant is to be pronounced and the name is disyllabic. 2 Siobhán herself is celebrated in ABM 426, which may be a detached iargcomharc, in which she is said to be related to every noble Irishman (read do foighreadh a fuil in 426.2c) and every earl in Ireland; similar statements will be found in the iargcomhairc to her in the other poems referred to. In 426 her mother’s name is Máire; her father is Seón in ABM 396.28a. In ABM 408.34d, fáoiteach should be read Faoiteach, the reference being to Frances White, wife of Tomás Dı́olmhain, fourth Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen. DAMIAN McMANUS Department of Irish, Trinity College Dublin 178 DAMIAN MCMANUS ...