Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis (The Parliament of Clan Thomas)

Feacht n-aon dár fhás comhéirghe agas coinbhliocht coguidh eidir na déeibh ifrionnda dá fhios cia dhíobh do áitreabhfadh an fearann eidir Sruth Stix agas Sruth Acheron, agas do choimhthionóladar na geinte ifrionnda as gach áitreabh a rabhadar ar bhrú Srotha Stix, agas as iad so fa hárdtaoisig acu, eadhon Belsebub agas Abíron agas Sátan; agas do fearadh cath créachtach crólinnteach eaturra, ⁊ madhmus an cath ar Bhelsebub gona mhuinntir, agas do dhíothchuireadar cách iad fa ioltuathuibh na talmhan agas fa chríochuibh an domhuin mhóir, do lot agas do lánmhilleadh toraidh na talmhan ar na cineadhachuibh go comhchoitchionn.

Ro leathnuigheadar na cineoil dheamhnuighe sin fan gcruinne gceathardha go coimhleathan dá haghmhilleadh. Do bhí mac ag an mBeilsebub sin darbh ainm Dracapéist, ⁊ mac do sin Lóbus Laghrach, ⁊ mac do sin Liobur Lobhtha. Do bhádur sin ag aghmhilleadh bfhear nÉirionn go haimsir Laoghaire mhic Néill Naoighiallaigh do bheith a bfhlaithios Éirionn; agas do bhí taoiseach toirteamhuil tromchonáigh re tórrumh ⁊ le treabhaireacht ag Laoghaire, eadhon Bladhorrnn Bréanánach mac Palcamais; agas do bhí inghean ag an mBladhorrnn sin, eadhon Beistea a hainm, agas do pósadh le Liobur Lobhtha í, ⁊ ro geineadh clann iomdha eaturra; ⁊ do bhí mac don chloinn sin do dhearrsgnuidh ar fhuathmhuireacht ⁊ ar ainmheasardhacht an cineadh ó dtáinig .i. Tomás Mór modurrtha mísgiamhach mac Liobair Lobhtha.

As í sin uair ⁊ aimsior tháinig Pádruig an Éirinn go sruithibh iomdha leis do shíolchur chrábhaidh ⁊ chreidimh eidir na geintibh geinntlighe do bhí an Éirinn an tan sin. Is annsin do thionóil Pádruig sruithe agas naoimh Éirionn chum aonbhuill as a haithle, agas as í comhairle do-rónsad: na hiolchineoil diabhulda uile do dhíthchur a hÉirinn; agas do ghabhsad agá gcomhfhógradh as gach áit a rabhadar go mullach Cruaiche Pádruig, agas do dhíbir Pádruig iad go Loch na nDeamhan, acht Tomás amháin; ⁊ is uime nár cuireadh Tomás leo, air a bheith a dtaoibh a mháthar don chineadh cholladha dhaonna, agas don chineol deamhnuidhe a athair.

Narrative

There are two texts, both composed in the seventeenth century, bearing the title Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis (PCT). This is an extract from the older of the two texts, referred to as PCT I, which was likely composed in Kerry sometime around 1610-1615 by a member of a Gaelic learned family, possibly an Ua Duinín. PCT is a prosimetric satire (crosánacht) which combines verse and prose in the vein of earlier saga literature and contemporary romance. The prose style is bombastic and wordy, given to frequent alliteration and use of pairs of synonyms, as can be seen in this passage. It is likely that the author had received some training in a bardic school, as the poetry in PCT conforms more closely to the rules of Classical verse than is typical of contemporary prosimetra.

The satire is written from the perspective of the traditional Gaelic aristocracy, and is targeted against the nouveau riche who prospered during the tumultuous seventeenth century in Ireland. The text begins with an account of the history of the descendants of Tomás up until the present day, and how they had become prosperous at the expense of traditional élites. It then turns to the events of the two parliaments they hold, both of which degenerate into Rabelaisian brawls and shouting matches. The passage excerpted here, from the beginning of the text, explains the demonic origin of Tomás and his progeny.

The prose of PCT is relatively easy to read, some of the more obscure vocabulary notwithstanding, compared to the complexities of Classical verse. The long sentences might appear intimidating at first, but they mostly consist of several independent clauses joined together with the conjunction agus and the typical word-order throughout the text is verb-subject-object as in Modern Irish. Much of the text, including this passage, is narrative, and thus consists of verbs in the third person preterite. Many of the morphological distinctions observed by the bardic grammarians and adhered to in Classical verse are not followed here. Nevertheless, the directness of the syntax makes it a rather approachable text.

That said, this text does present some difficulties to the learner. There are some older forms, such as the use of ro rather than do as a past-tense marker, and the use of the third person plural preterite ending -sad rather than –(s)ada(i)r. Nicholas Williams’ edition of the text follows a single manuscript (RIA MS 23 O 72), and opts to reproduce the orthography of that manuscript rather than normalizing the spelling. An eclipsed f is spelled as bfh rather than the expected bhf. The representation of unstressed short vowels is fluid, as is the norm in manuscripts of the period, so that the preposition i can be spelled as either a or i, agus is spelled agas, etc. Lenited d and lenited g are also frequently interchangeable, reflecting their identical pronunciation at this period. For the learner, this can make looking up words in the dictionary more difficult, as it isn’t always immediately obvious what the dictionary form actually is.

A final potential area of confusion is the frequent use in this text of verbal noun phrases introduced with the preposition do (reduced to a in the modern language), where English and other languages would have infinitive phrases or subordinate clauses. These sorts of phrases are common in Modern Irish (e.g. caithfidh mé rud a dhéanamh), but are used more broadly in this text, sometimes where Modern Irish might employ a relative clause. In Modern Irish, the subject or direct object of a verbal noun always precedes the verbal noun and the preposition do, but in Early Modern Irish there is a distinction between infinitive phrases in which the direct object precedes the verbal noun (na hiolchineoil diabhulda uile do dhíthchur) and purpose clauses in which the direct object follows it and occurs in the genitive case (do shíolchur chrábhaidh7 chreidimh).

Translation

One time, there arose uprising and contention of war among the infernal gods in order to know who of them would inhabit the territory between the river Stix and the river Acheron, and the infernal peoples gathered together out of every dwelling in which they were on the bank of the river Stix, and it was these [people] who were their high chieftains, namely, Belsebub, and Abíron, and Satan, and a destructive, bloody battle was waged among them, and Belsebub was defeated with his people, and everyone exiled them throughout the many nations of the earth and throughout the borders of the great world to wound and to fully destroy the fruit of the earth for the [human] tribes all together.

Those demonic kindreds expanded very widely throughout the four-fold earth in order to devastate it [the world].

That Belsebub had a son whose name was Dracapéist, and [there was] a son to him, Lóbus Laghrach, and [there was] a son to him, Liobur Lobhtha.

Those [ones] were devastating the men of Ireland until the time of Laoghaire son of Níall Naoighiallach being in the sovereignty of Ireland, and Laoghaire had a stout chieftain of great prosperity regarding attending and husbandry, namely, Bladhorrnn Bréanánach Mac Palcamais, and that Bladhorrnn had a daughter, namely, Beistea [was] her name, and she was married to Liobur Lobhtha, and many children were borne to them, and there was son among those children who surpassed in hatefulness and intemperance the people from which he came, namely, Tomás Mór, the gloomy, ugly, son of Liobair.

That was the time and the hour when Pádruig came to Ireland accompanied by many church elders with him in order to propagate religion and belief among the heathen peoples who were in Ireland at that time.

It is then that Pádruig gathered the church elders and saints of Ireland into one place thereafter, and this is the counsel that they made: to expel all of the numerous demonic races from Ireland, and they began banishing them out of every place in which they were to the height of Cruach Pádruig, and Pádruig banished them to Loch na nDeamhan except for Tomás, and it is on account of this that Tomás was not cast out along with them: because he was on his mother's side of the carnal human race, and his father [was] of the demonic race.

Translation

As noted in the general guide, PCT is a considerably more accessible text for modern readers than Classical poetry. There are, nonetheless, some points that are worth commenting on, either because they present potential difficulties for readers familiar with Modern Irish, or because they illustrate some of the differences between the language of prose texts and of Classical verse.

[Ll. 3-13]

The first paragraph is one long sentence, consisting mostly of independent clauses headed by agusor 7.

Feacht n-aon dár fhás: the expression feacht n-aon is a formulaic opening for a story, similar to English ‘one day’ or ‘on one occasion’ and appears in a number of other medieval and early modern Irish prose stories, most notably Táin Bó Cúailgne. The particle dár (a combination of the preposition de, the relative particle a, and the past-tense marker ro) is originally a partitive relative ‘of which there was’, but serves to link a temporal phrase with the main verb, as in modern Irish lá dá raibh mé ‘one day (when) I was’.

eidir na déeibh ifrionnda: the spelling déeibh instead of déibh perhaps reflects the fact that the word dia ‘god’ had two syllables in the accusative and dative plural forms in Classical verse. The ending -ibh for the dative plural is ubiquitous in Early Modern Irish, even following prepositions such as eidir that historically governed the accusative case. Unlike nouns, adjectives do not take this ending any more, as can be seen in ifrionnda.

dá fhios cia dhíobh do áitreabhfadh an fearann: while fhios is not, strictly speaking, a verbal noun, the syntax of dá fhios mirrors that of verbal noun phrases headed by the preposition do, and fhios has verbal force here, ‘in order to know it’. The possessive pronoun embedded in dá is proleptic, looking ahead to the indirect question cia dhíobh do áitreabhfadh; the interrogative pronoun cia heads a relative clause containing the verb of the question. As in Modern Irish, there is no difference in the way that direct and indirect questions are phrased. Note also that, unlike in Modern Irish, the pre-verbal particle do is not elided to d’ before a verb that begins with a vowel (or f followed by a vowel).

as gach áitreabh: the use of as (instead of older a) as the simple preposition is an example of the trend in Early Modern Irish to reform simple prepositions from the third person masculine singular conjugated form of that preposition: for example, roimh (from roimhe) and faoi are commonly used instead of older re and fo or fa, and aige is used instead of ag in many Munster dialects. These innovative forms are not permitted in Classical Irish poetry, but the fact that they are cited as faulty in the grammatical tracts indicates that they must have been in use in that period.

a rabhadar ar bhrú Srotha Stix: The a before the verb is an alternate spelling of the preposition i, which introduces an indirect relative clause headed by the verb rabhadar. The relative clause is indirect because the antecedent (áitreabh) is neither the subject nor direct object of the verb. In Modern Irish, these types of prepositional relative clauses are often introduced with the preposition + n + the relative particle a or ar, e.g. ina raibh siad, but in Early Modern Irish the relative particle is incorporated into the preposition, cf. ó dtáinig below (rather than óna dtáinig or ón ar tháinig). Williams notes that the normal word for ‘bank’ is bruach, and that the use of the archaic or poetic brú here is suggestive of parody or burlesque.

agas as iad so fa hárdtaoisig acu: here agas introduces another independent clause, a copula phrase with unexpressed subject, which is further qualified by the relative copula phrase fa hárdtaoisig acu. The conjugated preposition acu here means ‘among them’ i.e. ‘The following were chief leaders among them’.

eadhon Belsebub agas Abíron agus Sátan: the adverb eadhon derives from eadh, the third person neuter pronoun, and the adverb ón ‘this, that, thus,’ and derives from the Latin phrase id est. While Belsebub and Sátan are demonic names mentioned in the canonical Gospels, Abíron (or Abiram) is the name of one of the Israelites who joined a conspiracy against Moses and Abraham, rather than a demonic name.

agas do fearadh cath créachtach crólinnteach eaturra: here agas introduces yet another independent clause. As in Modern Irish, the autonomous verb fearadh is not lenited, despite following the verbal particle do which normally causes lenition.

7 madhmus an cath ar Bhelsebub gona mhuinntir: the symbol 7, which is a Latin scribal shorthand for et, was adapted to represent agus in Irish manuscripts fairly early on. The use of madhmus here is idiomatic: cath or a similar word is the subject of the verb, the one defeated in battle is introduced by the preposition ar, and the victor by the preposition ri (which has been omitted here). The idiom here is attested in many older heroic literary texts, which may help contribute to the mock-epic feel of PCT. The form of the verb is unusual; in the third person singular s-preterite, one would expect the final ‘s’ to be palatal (slender); madhmais rather than madhmus. Gona is a combination of the preposition go and the possessive pronoun a; like the prepositions le and i, an n is inserted between the two vowels, rather than eliding them together, as is done with do and de. Go is used here to mean ‘with, along with,’ which is a meaning that has largely fallen out of use in the modern language.

do lot agas do lánmhilleadh toraidh na talmhan ar na cineadhachuibh go comhchoitchionn:this is an example of the construction with do + verbal noun mentioned above; the two verbal nouns express a purpose clause qualifying the main verb dhíothchuireadear. As noted in the General Guide, in Early Modern Irish the direct object of a verbal noun in a purpose or result clause follows the verbal noun, and occurs in the genitive case. This is unlike Modern Irish, where the direct object always precedes the verbal noun (toradh na talún a lot agus a lánmhilleadh). The parallel verbal nouns lot and lánmhillleadh are an example of the preference for alliterating pairs of near-synonyms, which can be seen in a wide range of Irish literary works. In go coimhchoitchionn, the preposition go is prefixed to an adjective to form an adverb, just as in Modern Irish.

[Ll. 14-27]

This paragraph begins with two shorter sentences, before concluding in a long sentence which, like the previous paragraph, consists mainly of independent clauses linked with agas. As above, the word order is fairly consistent.

Ro leathnuigheadar: do would be expected here, but the older form ro is not uncommon.

fan gcruinne gceathardha go coimhleathan: the eclipsis of cruinne and ceathardha indicates that the preposition fa governs the accusative here, ‘(motion) throughout’. Elsewhere in the text, however, (accusative) nasalization also appears where one would expect (dative) lenition e.g. ag an mBeilsebub sin, below.

dá haghmhilleadh: this is another example of do + verbal noun, expressing a purpose clause here; an h is inserted before the verbal noun because the possessive pronoun a ‘her’ is combined with the preposition do to form dá; this possessive pronoun refers to the feminine noun cruinne in the main sentence.

Do bhí mac ag an mBeilsebub sin: as in Modern Irish, the substantive verb together with the preposition ag indicates possession. Since the preposition ag governs the dative case, in Classical Irish the noun would be lenited rather than eclipsed here, but in non-Classical Early Modern Irish, the dative and accusative cases become confused, leading to the situation in contemporary Irish where the occurrence of lenition or eclipsis after a preposition followed by the definite article is determined by dialect rather than grammatical case.

darbh ainm Dracapéist: this expression is still attested in contemporary Irish: the preposition do + indirect relative past copula ar(bh) = to whom Dracapéist was a name; cf. _ is ainm dom‘_ is name to-me’.

Do bhádur sin: introduces another long sentence, again formed mostly by the combination of separate independent clauses with agas.

ag aghmhilleadh bfhear nÉirionn: typically one would expect lenition rather than eclipsis following a verbal noun in the dative following ag. The eclipsed form bfhear (rather than fhear) is influenced by the (expected) eclipsis of nÉironn; this sort of ‘dynamic eclipsis’ - eclipsis motivated by analogy rather than the formal grammar of the language - is not uncommon in Early Modern Irish.

go haimsir Laoghaire mhic Néill Naoighiallaigh do bheith a bfhlaithios Éirionn: this is another example of a verbal noun phrase with do, which expresses here a temporal clause. Because Laoghaire Mhic Néill is governed by the noun aimsir, it takes the genitive case.

agas do bhí taoiseach toirteamhuil tromchonáigh re tórrumh 7 le treabhaireacht: this passage is striking for its alliteration. The syntactical parallelism of toirteamhuil and tromchonáigh is noteworthy too, and shows how nouns in the genitive such as tromchonáigh often have the force of adjectives. The parallelism of re tórrumh 7 le treabhaireacht is a good example of the confusion of the prepositions re and le, as they are functioning similarly here.

eadhon Beistea a hainm: the adverb eadhon here introduces a copula phrase with suppressed copula: (ba é) Beistea a hainm, Beistea (was) her name.

agas do pósadh le Liobur Lobhtha í: as in Modern Irish, the autonomous verb is not lenited even after particles such as do which would normally cause lenition. Also as in Modern Irish, the forms "é, í, iad" are used rather than "sé, sí, siad" to express the subject of the autonomous verb, and the pronoun comes at the end of the clause.

7 do bhí mac don chloinn sin: the confusion in form (but not in meaning) between the prepositions do ‘to’ and de ‘from, of,’ which is to be seen in many dialects of Modern Irish, dates back to the Old Irish period.

do dhearrsgnuidh ar fhuathmhuireacht 7 ar ainmheasardhacht: the positive preverbal do here contains an invisible relative particle causing lenition. As the antecedent in the main clause, mac, is the subject of the verb do dhearrsgnuidh, this is a direct relative clause.

an cineadh ó dtáinig: here too the relative particle is invisible, but indicated by eclipsis; Modern Irish has óna dtáinig or ónar tháinig.

.i. Tomás Mór modurrtha mísgiamhach mac Liobair Lobhtha: as mentioned above, .i. is a scribal shorthand for both Latin id est and Irish eadh ón; as with 7, there is always some uncertainty as to whether it should be read as a Latin (and thus an example of code-switching) or Irish word.

[Ll. 28-38]

As í sin uair 7 aimsior tháinig Pádruig an Éirinn: the copula phrase as í sin uair 7 aimsior serves to front or emphasize an element of the relative clause which follows it. Uair 7 aimsior is another example of the tendency to include pairs of alliterating near-synonyms, as all vowels are considered to alliterate with each other in Irish. Note that aimsior here simply means ‘time,’ unlike Modern Irish where it normally means ‘weather.’ Uair and aimsior lack the definite article, because they are made definite by the relative clause beginning with tháinig. In Modern Irish the relative particle a would be expected before the verb, but in Early Modern Irish there is no equivalent relative particle and the lenition marks the relative.

do shíolchur chrábhaidh 7 chreidimh: this is yet another example of a do + verbal noun phrase, here expressing a purpose clause. As with do lot agus do lánmhilleadh toraidh na talmhan above, the direct objects of the verbal noun follow it and are placed in the genitive case in a purpose or result clause. They are lenited following the verbal noun síolchur, which is in the dative case (following do), although this rule is not consistently applied.

agas as í comhairle do-rónsad: this yet another example of the copula being used to front an element of the relative clause which it heads. As with uair 7 aimsior, there is no article before comhairle because the relative clause clearly marks the noun as definite.

na hiolchineoil diabhulda uile do dhíthchur a hÉirinn: this phrase provides the content of the noun comhairle (cf. English ‘their advice was to...’). Since the verbal noun is acting like an infinitive, the word-order is what is expected in Modern Irish, with the direct objects coming before the verbal noun and preposition do and any indirect objects or prepositional phrases following the verbal noun.

agas do ghabhsad agá gcomhfhógradh: As with phrases such as dá haghmhilleadh, the pronoun object of of a verbal noun is expressed as a possessive pronoun before the verbal noun. The lengthening of the final vowel in agá is perhaps by analogy with the dá (do + a), which in Modern Irish replaces the combination ag + a before verbal nouns.

as gach áit a rabhadar: like as gach áitreabh a rabhadar above, this is an indirect relative clause, and the relative particle a has been incorporated into the preposition a (alternate spelling of i).

7 is uime nár cuireadh Tomás leo: is uime is another example of a fronting copula. The particle nár is used before negative direct and indirect relative clauses with past tense verbs, and the fact that uime is neither subject or direct object of cuireadh makes this an indirect relative clause. Because cuireadh is a past autonomous verb, it is exempt from the lenition which usually follows nár.

air a bheith: air is a variant spelling of the simple preposition ar ‘on account of’, not to be confused with the conjugated third person masculine singular form, followed by the possessive adjective a ‘his’ and the verbal noun beith. As in Modern Irish, the subject of an intransitive verbal noun can be expressed with a possessive adjective.

a dtaoibh a mháthar don chineadh cholladha dhaonna: the prepositional phrase a dtaoibh a mháthar qualifies and restricts the prepositional phrase don chineadh cholladha dhaonna, which in turn qualifies the verbal noun bheith– ‘being of the mortal human race on his mother’s side.’

agas don chineol deamhnuidhe a athair: this phrase is not syntactically parallel with the previous one: a athairis the subject of an unexpressed copula, [ba] don chineol deamhnuidhe a athair.

* Our thanks to Pádraig Ó Macháin for comments on an earlier version of this Guide.

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Definition

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Function