Cover art by Joseph Mallord William Turner
Book of Leinster Book I
Notes
Author: Anonymous
- This passage is a technical treatise on the forfeda — the supplementary letters of the Old Irish ogham alphabet, added beyond the original twenty letters to represent sounds not covered by the basic aicme (groups). The five forfeda are:
- Ébad (X1695) — representing a vowel/diphthong
- Ór (X1696)
- Uillend (X1697)
- Ifin (X1698)
- Emancholl (X1699) — “twin hazel”, a double letter
- The text categorises words by which forfed letter governs their spelling, functioning essentially as an orthographic guide for poets who needed to write correctly in ogham or apply the letters in metrical analysis.
- Lanchumang (“full contraction”) and cumang (“contraction”) are technical terms describing how two vowel sounds or two forfeda combine into a single syllable — an important distinction for metrical counting.
- The closing anecdote explains why poets hold the privileged legal status of nemid (sacred persons, exempt from certain laws and entitled to special protections) — by reference to the famous story of Néde mac Adnai and Caiar king of Connacht, in which Néde composed a satire (bricht) so powerful it caused shame-blisters to appear on Caiar’s face, ultimately leading to the king’s death. This story illustrates the near-magical power of poetic satire in early Irish law and tradition.
- The passage is fragmentary in places, with manuscript damage indicated by […] and the Unicode placeholder characters representing ogham symbols that cannot be rendered in standard text.
Translation
De dúlib feda na fored
On the Elements of the Letters of the Forfeda
{5320} {MS folio 38b} On the elements of the letters of the forfeda among poets: it is one syllable in terms of nobility; it is two in terms of contraction.
{MS folio 38b10} The arrangement of the forfeda — poets observe the true testimony of two yews:
- X1695 (ébad) as one
- X1696 (ór)
- X1697 (uillend)
- X1698 (ifin)
- X1699 (emancholl)
at one time, after — aed.
The order of the forfeda, that is, between bail and baile:
- Two emancholl {X1699}: bairg, baire, bair — and brai, and bran, and bairt, and baire, and bairend, and bai, and baill, and baile — these are emanchuill; they are all cut by it, &c.
{MS folio 38b15} Beoil and beoir and treoir {X1695} — beid and teid and reid and gleid and seid and gleid and seid — dead and stead and tread — these are {X1695}; they are all cut by it.
{5330} Lian and brian and grian and trian and triall and srian and cliar and riar and mían {MS folio 38b20} and tiar and miad — ifin is the letter for all of these.
Feoil {X1695}, fíal {X1697} — feóil {X1695}, fia {X1697} — feaig {X1695}, fiag {X1697} — they are all cut by it.
Buidle and buidlen and airem — these are two {X1698}. Buaid and druaid — these are two {X1698}. Duar and cruan and mual and fuar — nuall and fúam and {5335} {MS folio 38b25} duan — ifin is the letter for all of these. Cual is {X1698}. Coel is {X1696}. Cuitti, that is, {X1698}.
p. 178
{MS folio 38b} Coich is {X1696} — buar {X1698} — boir is {X1696} — muid, that is, {X1698} — maes is {X1696} — boaid and boar and boa and boilban and […] — boairig is {X1696}; they are all cut by it.
Doí and roí and coí and moí and loí and gnoí — these are {X1696}; they are all cut by it.
Noer is {X1696}. Suad {5340} {MS folio 38b30} is {X1698}. Muag is {X1698}.
Full Contraction and Contraction in the Forfeda
Full contraction (lanchumang) in the forfeda — it is observed from side-stems. Two elements go into one: the poet possesses the cause that does not suppress. It is the full contraction between the two noble letters in co-junction. It is the contraction — the place where the two vowels are in one syllable, the place where the two forfeda are raised.
The Forfeda Letters
eba — ór — uillend — ifin — emancholl 1 {X169C} {X1695} {X1696} {X1697} {X1698} {X1699}
(Here the manuscript lists the ogham forfeda characters in sequence.)
Why Are Poets Called Nemid?
{5345} {MS folio 38b40} Why are poets called nemid (“sacred/privileged”) in relation to the grades of poets? Not difficult. Because of non-disturbance from evil against them — on account of the shame brought about through satire that Néde performed upon Caiar, that is, upon the king of Connacht.