minstrel: Looking for/ Many harps

[Mike C. Baker]

>The part of the Lismore book that I'm familiar with is a collection of
>Scottish Gaelic poetry, taken down from performance in the late 16th
>century. The truly fascinating (ok, maybe it's only fascinating to
>linguists) aspect of this document is that, rather than being written
by
>someone educated in Gaelic literary traditions, it was recorded by
someone
>presumably fluent in spoken Gaelic, but who was only _literate_ in
>English. So you've got late-period Scottish Gaelic being written
according
>to the rules of English spelling. Besides being an interesting
curiosity,
>it's a treasure-trove of information on pronunciation and dialect.
>
>But I digress.

Tangwystyl, I venture to gently disagree on this point.

It is important to at least some of us to try and get the sounds
right, or at least as close as we can without a time displacement
device capable of making direct recordings from Anno Domini1595.

Maybe not in every endeavor.  Maybe not in every song or poem
or riddle or triad or tale or whatever.

But, sometimes, the sound _is_ more important than the concept
embodied in the words, when the singing / saying is "right".

My opinion, and I'm sticking to it!

(n.b.: date plucked from thin air; arbitrary pre-A.D. 1600)

Mike C. Baker
SCA: Amr ibn Majid al-Bakri al-Amra
"Other": Kihe Blackeagle (the Dreamsinger Bard)
My opinions are my own -- who else would want them?
e-mail: kihe at ticnet.com OR kihe at rocketmail.com


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