The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #166936   Message #4019617
Posted By: keberoxu
16-Nov-19 - 03:12 PM
Thread Name: Gaelic/Irish: the word fulachtadh
Subject: Gaelic/Irish: the word fulachtadh
However you translate this word, it is not for the squeamish.

The word 'fulachtadh'
appears in the manuscript, the Leabhar Breac.
It is part of a quatrain of verse handwritten in
the margins of the manuscript.
Which stanza reads:

Ach, cer thinn a fulachtadh
tucad er chnes meic Mhuire
tinne leis a dubhachus
do bhí uirraidh-si uime


By the time one encounters the English translation
set to music by Samuel Barber in the song "Crucifixion,"
the first music Barber composed for his song cycle "Hermit Songs,"

it has been rendered thus
(translator Howard Mumford Jones):

Ah! sore was the suffering borne
By the body of Mary's son!
But sorer still to Him was the grief
Which for His sake came upon His Mother.

"Suffering" being the poetic equivalent of "fulachtadh" above.

Is this a euphemistic translation, though?
What does 'fulachtadh' really mean?