Cover art ‘Blooming clover’ by Jac van Looij

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Book of Leinster Book I

Notes

Author: Possibly Fland mac Lonáin, Mac Dá Cherda, Cormac (likely Cormac mac Cuilennáin, king-bishop of Munster, d. 908), and others

• The Trefocul is a remarkable Old Irish rhetorical-poetic treatise, cataloguing technical categories of verse composition and rhetorical figures, each illustrated with a short poem or verse example.
• The categories range across metrical, semantic, and stylistic concerns — dissonance, obscurity, colour, doubling, raising, lowering, and highly technical formal features like the dialt n-etarléime (monosyllable of interjection) and lorgga fuach (tracking stitch).
• The woman of the síde verse (under Its lowering) alludes to the Donn of Cuailnge, the great bull of the Táin Bó Cuailnge.
• The Colum Cille verse under Its anticipation of length is a devotional piece in the saint’s voice.
• Several verses are fragmentary in the manuscript, marked here with […].

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Translation

Trefocul

Without crookedness, without roughness, {MS folio 37a5} Without over-shortness, without over-length, Without belittling, without over-praising, Without satire against the present, {MS folio 37a10} Without singularity against plurality,

{5005} Without impropriety, without inelegance, Without dissonance, without obscurity, {MS folio 37a15} With colour and meaning, With its measure against wood and metre and movement and ending, and joint, and expression, and interpretation. {MS folio 37a20} So that there be in it:

{5010} Its praise. Its reproach. Its cursing. Its distinguishing. Its unity. Its oneness. Its fullness. {MS folio 37a25} Its doubling. Its diminution. Its ennobling. Its enslaving.

{5015} Its raising up. Its lowering. {MS folio 37a30} Its tracking stitch. Its monosyllable of interjection. Its casting of nine — nine persons, that is, when a person strikes upon the wave, that is the word between them. That, tot. Its anticipation of length. Its head-proximity.

{5020} Its decapitation. Its mis-heading. {MS folio 37a40} Its mode of expression. Its prefix of expression. Its half of the tepid. Its coupling of the half. {MS folio 37a45} Its genesis from it — that is, the offspring from the couple, for every kind of speech as far as from a monosyllable to a charm.

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{5025} {MS folio 37b} These are examples of the foregoing.

Without crooked rhyme:

Let us take, together with a companion, bright jewels, fine goods, ready before going into the sea — {MS folio 37b5} let us clear our profits before night — that is, ready and night — example.

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p. 166

{MS folio 37b} Crooked rhyme. Fland mac Lonáin sang it in a poem on Delbn:

Land of Two Lakes — its foundation pressed down, {MS folio 37b10} its deep base firm, boundaries of harbour. Forest of long retreat, victorious share, bright bark, radiant-clear, {5035} red and ruddy.

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Without roughness. Mac Dá Cherda sang it:

My little spring at Collamair — not everyone has tasted it; the one who has tasted it — {5040} has drunk with its proper vessel.

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Without over-shortness:

It is a matter to be against the well-fortified enclosure and to call one at the door who has not gone in.

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Without over-length:

{5045} There stands above the host a fair, long yew-tree under venom; {MS folio 37b25} it casts a clear, fine note — a sweet bell — in the church of Colm Uí Néill.

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Without belittling. Fer Muman sang it:

{5050} The grandson there in the ash-tree — without true men — under the sides of the sloping, thatched ridge — a stranger like every Leinsterman, landed like every Munsterman.

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Without over-praising. Rechtgal ua Siadail sang it in a poem on Óengus son of Domnall:

{5055} She was the power of the province of all Ireland — {MS folio 37b35} high wave, great sacred tree — she submerges below — it is not peace otherwise — every king except the King of Heaven.

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p. 167

{5060} {MS folio 37b} Without satire against the present:

O Fland of the lakes, with threads of summer — {MS folio 37b40} you are the base of the lord’s kindred — it is Fland’s custom — a measure of splendour — a boat beyond his people.

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Without singularity against plurality. Máel Cainnig ua Tolaig, that is son of Laíre Laídig:

{5065} Cormac, a wondrous sage — {MS folio 37b45} after the Dagda I reckon it — son of Culennán — without reproach — with great, beautiful songs.

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Without impropriety. Óengus son of Oiblenn sang it:

{5070} Seeking generosity from whose very strong radiance — towers with the eagerness of service, {5075} carefully, the order of rhyme.

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Without inelegance:

There came here from the household of God a little cleric, fair-hued, fair his colour — I know not what secret {5080} would be worse for us than for her.

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{MS folio 37c} Without dissonance:

He is the king of Sencha — pleasant summer — bright-shielded in valour, after the shape of a drinking-vessel — for the slaughter of wounding flesh {5085} upon the Eóganacht of Fir Maige.

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Without obscurity — that is, the two bare ones straightened according to rule. {MS folio 37c5} Verse is composed in obscurity that is yoked — that is the most common of all.

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p. 168

{MS folio 37c} With colour and meaning — ut dicitur. Tlachtga of the dark terrors — in satire, speckled is what is satirised; fair is what is praised. Ut dixit:

{5090} Though the men of the world were few from Liffey to Leth — he would fill them — though they were not — from the drink from the palm of Domnall.

{5095} {MS folio 37c10} Máel Ruanaid the red, around his point — he seeks the knotted, plaited thing — he is a wood — the rump of a cow without a herd — on a cliff — the crooked nose of Máel Ruanaid son of Fland.

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Speckled in satirising. Ut dixit Fingín mac Flaind:

{5100} I have made for them a band of sweet poetry — words of brightness — a deed without softness — they have not given praise beyond their traces. {MS folio 37c15} Reproach does not follow them from the poetic class, in the shape we have heard — at our assembly — but that they gave no reward for their poems.

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Meaning then — that is, as their character is, so let them be praised — that is, praise of a warrior by a warrior, and praise of a cleric by a cleric.

Its reproach. Ut Fer Muman dixit:

Voice of a crane, cry of a lie. {MS folio 37c20} Foolish boundary — a boundary with pouring — {5110} after being here, crooked in his householding — the wandering of Milchú son of Onchú.

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Its cursing. Ut Cormac cecinit on Inis Caín:

Whoever might be a full year in the guest-house of Inis Caín — {5115} he would be as a little sprig from his loin — going over Sliab Sion eastward.

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p. 169

{MS folio 37c} Its literary distinguishing — ut idem:

Purer than weeping — together at once — a sage whose lineage is steadied — {5120} {MS folio 37c25} the trace of Cathach — rightful.

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Its syllabic distinguishing. Ut Mac Lénín dixit:

Since there is a son of a chest — candle-bright, noble — every name is a name — the name of a lad: Fer.

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Its unity. Cormac to the Cnú Segsa:

{5125} Áed of Ailech, of great battles — he visited Daire — the restless — of Dubthach — his winter, whiter than the swans of Loch Léin.

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Its doubling:

{MS folio 37c30} Águr, águr — after a long while — {5130} to be in pain, pain — it is not peace, peace — like everyone, everyone, until judgement, judgement — at every hour, hour — though weary, weary.

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Its diminution. Ut Fland mac Lonáin:

My love — Cnámhine — {5135} loved the land of Éle the fierce — joyful to me its plain — though a hundred horsemen should meet me.

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Its oneness. Ut Clothna son of Óengus dixit:

{MS folio 37c35} A great, chosen enquiry — {5140} to the man who shelters the host of Sadb — O land of the strong men of noble houses — from me to your bright strong man of Gabal.

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p. 170

{MS folio 37c} Its enslaving. Mac Legind to a king’s servant of Resad:

For our little bundle of friendship — {5145} our great raising of our pure settlement — he has not found good his equal kindness — though he is a serf he is a good man.

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Its raising up:

Against my purple cheek — if fitting — {5150} poverty has come to me, it beats me — I hide it not, for you are a friend — as I speak it, so shall it be spoken.

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Its lowering. The woman of the síde sang it:

Seven full years from tonight — {5155} they shall be roused from the one port — men, women — woe to those who are — around the fierce Donn of Cuailnge.

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Its tracking stitch. Cormac sang it in the Trírig:

{MS folio 37c45} When I lift my dark little coracle {5160} upon the bright, broad-breasted ocean — shall I go, O King of the bright heaven — of my own will upon the brine? Whether it be roomy or slender, whether it be strong, raising a company — {5165} O God, help me — when one comes going upon the fierce flood.

The tracking stitch between two words — that is, “brine” and “roomy” — imbá — that is the tracking stitch.

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{MS folio 37c50} Its monosyllable of interjection — that is, a one-syllable prefix between two consonant-sounds of the fid-class. Ut idem in eodem:

{5170} What direction forever after the circuit of the cross — where has my pilgrim staff gone with its belt — whether eastward or westward — not slight — whether northward or southward.

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p. 171

{MS folio 37c} That is the example there — that is, ced between the end of the first line — that is, lond — and the beginning of the second line.

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Its casting of nine:

{MS folio 37c55} The dignity of the kings — law is the strife — {5180} while he lived he bore service — noble rescue, whole rescue of each thing — swift rescue, wheel-rescue which has come — let them come.

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Its hard anticipation:

Though my face were not shapely — there is no hiding of secrets or voice — {5185} it is fitting for me, though harsh my colour — since it is not I who spoiled my form.

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{MS folio 38a} Its anticipation of length:

Colum Cille — long may he be — he will be my little protection to the grave — {5190} against every sharp danger — let me praise the greatness of my eye.

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Its head-proximity:

The poets of Fál looked here — ancient lore with keenness, with Fergus — {5195} if it be beyond a champion — every plain outward — Dubthach has surpassed humans. O God, O King.

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Its half-decapitation:

{MS folio 38a5} A company I have shared — great was the foolishness — {5200} in the dwelling above Druim Lías — O my Lord, O King — indeed — everything living that lives, death does not go below.

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p. 172

{MS folio 38a} Its decapitation:

With the son of the true man of the purple battle-raven — {5205} fire goes from heaven — not scarce — it presses the summit — to the round peak — the head is usually in the fist of Cú Echtga. Cellach of the helmet — beloved man — of the division of February — […] {5210} {MS folio 38a10} son of the king of the kingdom of the tower of the day — dearer to me than… […]

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Its half of the tepid:

It is the red fire, drink of colour — against which neither battle nor shower is taken — {5215} this is the head, the fairest form — that is beneath you throughout the world.

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Its coupling of the half — that is, masculine or feminine expression brought into the neuter expression — this is eye to eye — ut quidam cecinit:

It is he — her brow, her secret found — {5220} she with whom is the cheek bright as the sun — {MS folio 38a15} that trace of peace, for the polishing of a king — to the reach of a king.

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Its genesis from it. Ut quidam dixit:

He is the sweet son beyond every lord — she is the dear one, cherished by all — {5225} against the cause of her fair race — for the tracking.

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