Dear all, I am preparing an edition of this book. It was Peadar Ua Laoghaire's less successful novel (less successful than Séadna) published in 1907. It is 59 chapters long, and I have converted 7 chapters so far into the modern spelling (while keeping the dialect) and added full notes too. See http://www.scribd.com/doc/38209715/Niamh-by-Peadar-Ua-Laoghaire-with-modernised- spelling . Note this edition can be printed, but not saved or copied - just in case I am ever able to get it published.

The book is interesting, as it set in the time of King Brian Ború and the battle of Clontarf in AD 1014. But it came in for flak for being a historical novel noted for its lack of understanding of 10th/11th century Ireland. However, for my purposes historical anachronisms are not important, as I am reading it for the Cork Irish, and it is a good read, despite its anachronisms. To understand the flak this book has taken, I cobbled together these quotes from Philip O' Leary's book, the Prose Literature of the Gaelic Revival (note: an excellent book):

"In common with all Gaelic historic writers, Peadar Ua Laoghaire made his Brian Bóroimhe a self-consciously patriotic nation-builder committed to the permanent supression of those petty personal, dynastic, and provincial rivalries that threatened Ireland with a full-scale Norse conquest".

One such passage is this (in my modernised spelling): "do thuig Brian go raibh an baol ann, agus gur mhóide an baol a laighead a tuigeadh é. Thuig sé, leis, go mbeadh an baol ann an fhaid a bheadh ríthe Éireann ag gabháil i gcoinnibh a chéile, agus ag troid lena chéile, agus ag lagú a chéile mar a bhíodar. Dá bhrí sin, chomh luath agus thosnaigh a chomhacht ar dhul i méid, do thosnaigh sé ar na ríthibh eile do thabhairt féna smacht féin, agus ar a chur fhéachaint orthu oibriú a’ lámhaibh a chéile i gcoinnibh na Lochlannach".

Philip O' Leary goes on to explain: "Irish civil strife after Brian's death at Clontarf obviously pained Ua Laoghaire. For instance, he writes of the coronation of Brian's son Donnchadh as High King, but downplays the fact that his claim to the throne was widely rejected, and that he was in fact merely the king of Munster. Indeed, Ua Laoghaire seems to have wished to avoid the whole topic of post-Clontarf dissension". [I might add that the High King after Clontarf was actually Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, king of Meath and High King of Ireland, who had been deposed by Brian Ború in AD 1002.]

Philip O'Leary criticises the book for PUL's "usual cantankerous editorializing on pet issues such as Irish importation of nasty English habits like the wearing of hats or Irish tolerance for the duplicitous malice of English historians" and says "the novel is rife with anachronism and howling inaccuracies, most notably perhaps the introduction of a papal legate to tenth-century Ireland and the consistent interpretation of Brian's campaigns against the Norse and Norse-Irish, about whom Ua Laoghaire seems to have known virtually nothing, as a straightforward struggle between Irish Christianity and Scandinavian paganism".

O'Leary continues "Ua Laoghaire's Brian Bóroimhe is always presented as a champion of Christianity, and the author's anachronistic introduction of a papal legate underscores the fact that An tAthair Peadar had in mind no generic or pallidly ecumenical brand of Christianity but rather full unity with and submission to the Holy See".

The editor of Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge, someone called Mac Néill, lost his friendship witih PUL over the book - as he refused to accept PUL's proposal that he publish two sequels to Niamh to turn it into a three-volume novel, when in fact he didn't have the historical knowledge for it.

Pádraig Pearse commented in An Claidheamh Soluis on Niamh that the was is flawed by "the cardinal fault of being untrue--not merely to history...but to historical vraisemblance". Pádraig Mac Suibhne's review in An Claidheamh Soluis focused on the beauty of the Irish, and suggested the book should be memorized for the Irish, although it was unreliable as a history.

Maol Muire (Sister Mary Vincent) was an admirer of PUL, but she wrote in her book 'An tAthair Peadar Ó Laoghaire agus a Shaothar': "ach bhí An tAthair Peadar ag dul thar a chómhacht nuair a a thug sé fé sgéal startha do sgríobhadh... Ní raibh aon eolas puinn ag an Athair Peadar ar stair na haoise sin...Níl aon ní sa sgéal a chuirfeadh i n-iúil do dhuine gur bhain sé le haois imigéineamhail na Lochlannach".

Many historical novels are inaccurate. Some history books are inaccurate! What were they looking for in fiction?

As for the publication, maith thú! Certainly your notes will be a key selling point for such a book. Can you do them in Irish, or are you aiming this book toward learners?

(Message edited by seánw on October 04, 2010)

Thank you for your comments Seán.

Yes, historical fiction is precisely that, fiction, but PUL's book had no feel for the period and I think the trend in historical fiction is for a better and better sense of the time periods covered.

First of all, it is by no means certain that I would be able to publish this book, and I think "Internet publishing" could be a good second - ie to leave the PDF on scribd.com. I would like to do such editions of many of his works! I am thinking of a 40 volume edition of everything he wrote in Irish. But if I could publish in hard copy, I would do so too.

Second, yes, the edition is geared towards learners. The aim is for many facets of Cork Irish to be learned through reading the book. Such modern spellings editions of Munster Irish books are often quite poorly done, with inadequate or non-existent notes, or incorrect editing. Gabriel Rosenstock's edition of PUL's Don Quixote (Don Chíochótae I think it was) changed much of the original dialect for example, and had no notes. Liam Mac Mathúna's Séadna edition is good, but there are no notes, although there is a short vocabulary at the end. Also that edition of Séadna seemed to edit the original Irish: eg where the original contained "sul ar", that has been changed into "sarar", to make it more Cork than it was originally!! I don't think it is right to add in dialectal forms that were not used in the first place - as if you were editing a book by a Scottish author who wrote "little children" and you thought to yourself "tut, tut! he must have meant wee bairns!"

Another problem is that many words in Séadna are hard to find in dictionaries and not in the vocabulary at the end. If you think of the passage in Séadna that talks about "na braimíní ag siosraigh", you could spend a long time trying to find out what this means. One site (http://www.scoilgaeilge.org/lessons/seadna/gl4.htm) provides a glossary for Séadna, and claims those words means "the little farters are whispering". Unless you knew that the word for "colt", "bromach", is "bramach" in Cork Irish, with "braimín" as the diminutive, you are probably not going to find the right translation. Siosrach is the Cork form of seitreach "to neigh", but as a feminine verbal noun, it becomes "ag siosraigh" in the dative. But note that even strong speakers in the Cork Gaeltacht don't use siosrach any more - I know from a discussion I had last time I was there that the Standardised Irish form has replaced it. So it could actually be really hard to work out what some passages in Séadna mean.

The full passage I am talking about is: " Bhí capaill mhóra ann agus capaill bheaga, seana chapaill agus capaill óga, capaill dhubha agus capaill bhána, capaill ghlasa agus capaill bhreaca, capaill ag siosaraigh agus capaill ag léimrigh, capaill a bhí go deagh-chroicinn groidhe cumasach agus braimíní gránda giobalacha". It means "there were large horses there, and small horses, old horses and young horses, black horses and white horses, grey horses and speckled horses, horses neighing and horses leaping, strong, spirited horses with fine coats and shaggy ugly young colts".

I think such books require special annotation. It is my assumption that, however famous Séadna is, the number of people who have read it is much lower than the number of people who have heard of it, and the number of people who understood each sentence correctly is much lower still. So that is why, after spending much time digging things out for myself, I choose to put them in the notes for Niamh. If I put the notes in Irish, firstly, those notes would need a serious looking at by an Irish expert. But secondly, it would defeat the purpose of the book -- which is to make it easier to read Niamh and learn about the dialect. There is much that is self-defeating about the way the Irish language is taught. Take the book Stair na Gaeilge - a wonderful book, but it is for fluent Irish speakers only. In some ways it is natural that a book about the development of Irish dialects should be in Irish, but the constant pretence that this language is not a language almost exclusively spoken by learners leads to the self-defeating approach whereby detailed material on this subject is only available in Irish--basic learners of an Irish dialect cannot access this book. The full version of the Christian Brothers' Grammar is only available in Irish--apparently learners don't need to know the full details of the grammar. (In which case, they're never going to learn it...) And modernised spelling versions of Munster Irish books normally come with long introductions--all in Standardised Irish. Quite apart from the failure to use the Munster Irish in such introductions, it is constantly assumed that most Irish speakers are fluent or native.

There seems no reason to pretend that most learners of Irish can pick up a book by Peadar Ua Laoghaire and find all the words with ease in Ó Dónall's dictionary, including the ones that aren't in the dictionary. There are aspects of Cork Irish grammar that you would not be able to find in any grammar book. I am thinking things like "cér a díobh thu?", where you simply won't be able to find anything in the Christian Brother's Grammar, Nolan's Grammar, Lars Braesicke's grammar, or any other grammar resource on "cér a" [I found one line on it in Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne, which is not a grammar book, but I don't think the form has ever been discussed anywhere else]. These things should be annotated.