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55
AN BAILE FÁ AN ḂFAIRRGE.
1. Bád is masculine, but the pronoun of reference is feminine, because bád is personified. Bád and cailín, in regard to adjectives, articles and pronouns, behave in exactly the same way. In C. C, C, p. 29, bád . . é seo occurs, but is due to careless reporting. See S. Ċ. na nD., p. 55. This irregularity in gender is probably due to genuine personification, and not to the influence of some word which is regarded as the chief or leading word of its class. Thus, it is probably incorrect to ascribe the use of feminines with bád and árṫraċ as due to the influence of long.
2. "A fine, sunny day."
3. "The skipper got sleepy." Do ṫuit mo ċodlaḋ orm or do ṫuiṫeas dom ċodlaḋ, I fell asleep.
4. "To the bottom of the sea."
5. "The son said to the men that, however (ill) he had fared in the past, he would lose his life now because of (the loss of) the pot."
6. "See ! Tie (lit. make) a rope around me fast and sure, and I will go down and fetch it."
7. "Do you want to drown yourself?"
8. "Hold hard on the rope, then."
9. "Down with you, in God's name."
10. "When he reached the bottom."
11. "He was astonished when he saw the house, with the door open, perfectly safe from any inrush of water, and with nothing around it but a fine bank of sand."
12. "The boy saluted him, and he saluted the boy." Note use of
innso next line. For vividness it is used instead of innsin.
13. "A pipe-stem."
14. "I will not mind it."
15. "(The explanation of my coming here is) a pot which fell out of my grasp down from the boat a while ago." The sense would be spoiled if we wrote do ṫuit corcán, &c. See note 19, p. 57. Corcán is subject in position of emphasis, but has a further shade of meaning conveyed by the words in brackets. We may call it the defining subject or pearsa ċum míniġṫe.
16. "In turning round to leave, as he was going out."
17. "Let me not prevent you from doing your work."
18. "That is their way of living, washing and making up for the
folk about here."
