The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #40347   Message #588340
Posted By: Matthew Edwards
08-Nov-01 - 01:22 PM
Thread Name: BS: The Naming of Cats
Subject: RE: BS: The Naming of Cats
O'Connor's translation comes from his book Kings,Lords, & Commons: an Anthology from the Irish of which I have a paperback copy published in 1970 by Gill and Macmillan. If it is not still in print it ought to be. There are other translations; one by Kuno Meyer appears in his Ancient Irish Poetry, and in his notes Meyer dates the poem to the 8th or 9th century. Robin Flower also made a translation, but as Frank O'Connor comments "Robin Flower's well-known translation in the metre of 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star' ignores the slowness of the original, which approximates more to iambic pentameter."
The notes to the poem are my own, and somewhere I have read which Austrian monastery was the source but I can't track the reference down. Is St Gall in Austria? Meyer cites a text and translation in Thesaurus Paleohibernicus, ii, p293.