VARIA II Classical Irish miscellanea* 1 (A) TRIPLE N ‘BREAKING’ IN PERFECT RHYME According to Ó hEódhasa in his Rudimenta grammaticae Hibernicae (Graiméir ll 174, ff), the combination of rr and r in composition produces the same result as r r, namely rr, as in gearr ruith gearruith, and he goes on to note that the sound so elided in speech should nonetheless, in his opinion at least (imo vero ego censeo . . .), be written at all times, in order that the elements of the compound be clearly understood (that is, he recommends gearrruith). The results of the combination of ll l and nn n are not specified by Ó hEódhasa here, but the immediately preceding section deals with the combination of two consonants, among them r r, l l and n n, becoming by elision (his word is ‘extinctio’) one single heavy consonant [R], [L] and [N], albeit written rr, ll and nn, and Ó hEódhasa comments ‘rr, ll, nn eodem modo se habent ac l, r, n, quoad extinctionem’ so that we may assume that nn n and ll l produce [N] and [L], nn and ll respectively.1 See Mac Cárthaigh 2014, notes to lines 578, for Irish báthadh extinctio. In Graiméir l. 3319 (‘Graiméar Uı́ Mhaoil Chonaire’), the outcome of l l, ll l and l d is said to be the same (viz. ll) and so for n and r (the examples involving the combination of double and single being: imeallearg B imeal(l) learg, tafannual B tafann nuall, fochannuall B fochann nuall and Cathbharruadh B Cathbharr ruadh). At IGT i §41, the combination l or ll d and n or nn d are said to produce ll and nn respectively (that is, l and n teann) after sı́neadh gearr or sı́neadh meadhónach (for example, gal or gall dlúith gallúith; cion or ceann dearg cinnearg/ceinnearg) and l trom or n trom after sı́neadh fada (for instance, gáol dlúith gáolúith; cı́an dearg cı́ainearg). Similarly (§44), r(r) r (for example, mearrúaig B mear rúaig, gearrúaig B gearr rúaig and gérród (recte géród?) B gér ród). Note the examples griannua B grian nua (Graiméir l. 3325), and smérrubh B smér dubh (Graiméir l. 3344) contradicting this ruling on trom v teann. All of these matters are discussed and explained in Mac Cárthaigh 2014, to which the reader is referred.2 Here, I would like to draw attention to an outcome of such combinations which is not covered in the tracts but is attested, relatively frequently, in the surviving corpus of approximately two DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3318/ERIU.2014.64.4 Ériu LXIV (2014) 213227 # Royal Irish Academy * I am grateful to my co-editor and to the anonymous reader for Ériu for reading a first draft of this varium and suggesting numerous improvements. 1 Though written double, the consonants rr, nn and ll are regarded as single heavy (teann) consonants as they rhyme, say, with single m, not with a cluster of two consonants. Note that this discussion occurs in a section entitled De extinctione consonantis, covering the combination of two consonants producing one (láimh mı́n láimı́n, beag ceann beiceann). 2 See §41 and §44 and notes to lines 1935, 48393 and 51115; on trom see notes to 1535. thousand Bardic poems. The environment in question involves nn n, where the n is that of the suffixed 1st pl emphasising pronoun -ne, and the nn is the ending of a common or proper noun (ar Sionainn-ne ‘our [river] Shannon’, ar bhfearainn-ne ‘our land’). The sequence nn n involving the 1st pl conjugated prepositions and the emphasising pronoun (such as rinnne ‘to us’, againn-ne ‘with us’ dı́nn-ne ‘from us’, etc.) looks identical phonetically but is treated differently in the poetry, as will emerge from the discussion below.3 The teaching of the tracts and the Rudimenta/Graiméar, which deal with compounds rather...