Smoke in the Wind (2 page)

However, the Celtic Church of Ireland was in constant dispute with Rome on matters of liturgy and ritual. Rome had begun to reform itself in the fourth century, changing its dating of Easter and aspects of its liturgy. The Celtic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church refused to follow Rome, but the Celtic Church was gradually absorbed by Rome between the ninth and eleventh centuries while the Eastern Orthodox Church has continued to remain independent. The Celtic Church of Ireland, in Fidelma’s day, was much concerned with this conflict so that it is impossible to write of Church matters without referring to the philosophical warfare existing at the time.

One thing that was shared by both the Celtic Church and Rome in the seventh century was that the concept of celibacy was not universal. There had always been ascetics in the Church who sublimated physical love in a dedication to the deity, and at the Council of Nice in AD 325 clerical marriages had been condemned (but not banned) in the Western Church. The concept of celibacy arose in Rome mainly from the customs practised by the pagan priestesses of Vesta and the priests of Diana.

By the fifth century, Rome had forbidden its clerics from the rank of abbot and bishop to sleep with their wives and, shortly after, even to marry at all. The general clergy were discouraged from marrying by Rome but not forbidden to do so. Indeed, it was not until the reforming papacy of Leo IX (AD 1049-1054) that a serious attempt was made to force the Western clergy to accept universal celibacy. The Celtic Church took centuries to give up its anti-celibacy attitude and fall into line with Rome, while in the Eastern Orthodox Church priests below the rank of abbot and bishop have retained their right to marry until this day.

An awareness of these facts concerning the liberal attitudes towards sexual relationships in the Celtic Church is essential towards understanding the background to the Fidelma stories.

The condemnation of the ‘sin of the flesh’ remained alien to the Celtic Church for a long time after Rome’s attitude became a dogma. In Fidelma’s world, both sexes inhabited abbeys and monastic foundations, which were known as
conhospitae
, or double houses, where men and women lived and raised their children in Christ’s service.

Fidelma’s own house of St Brigid of Kildare was one such community of both sexes during her time. When Brigid established her community of Kildare (Cill Dara - church of the oaks) she invited a bishop named Conláed to join her. Her first surviving biography, completed fifty years after her death in AD 650, during Fidelma’s lifetime, was written by a monk of Kildare named Cogitosus, who makes it clear that it continued to be a mixed community in his day.

It should also be pointed out that, demonstrating their co-equal role with men, women were priests of the Celtic Church in this period. Brigid herself was ordained a bishop by Patrick’s nephew, Mel, and her case was not unique. In the sixth century, Rome actually wrote a protest at the Celtic practice of allowing women to celebrate the divine sacrifice of Mass.

Unlike the Roman Church, the Irish Church did not have a system of ‘confessors’ where ‘sins’ had to be confessed to clerics who then had the authority to absolve those sins in Christ’s name. Instead, people chose a ‘soul friend’ (
anam chara
) out of clerics or laity, with whom they discussed matters of emotional and spiritual well-being.

To help readers more readily identify personal names, a list of principal characters is given.

To some English readers, the Welsh names may look confusing. I will attempt to explain the most difficult Welsh phonetics which English readers apparently encounter. C is always hard as in ‘
c
at’ but CH is as in the composer ‘Ba
ch
’. DD is pronounced ‘th’ as in ‘
th
em’. LL as in ‘
Ll
anwda’, ‘
Ll
anpadern’ etc is a sound that does not occur in English. To make it correctly, one places the tongue on the roof of the mouth near the teeth as if to pronounce ‘l’ then blow voicelessly. In desperation one might resort to the sound ‘ch’lan’. TH is pronounced as in ‘clo
th
’. U is usually as in ‘t
ea
’ or ‘t
i
n’. W is as in ‘b
oo
n or ‘c
oo
k’. Y as in ‘t
ea
’ or ‘r
u
n’. For example, Cymru (Wales) is Kum-ree. Thus the name of the chieftain Gwnda is pronounced ‘G’oon-da’.

Finally, some readers have written to me arguing that I am being anachronistic by giving distances in the modern metric system. In this respect the historian must give way to the storyteller to translate for his readers a modern equivalent of the Irish measurements of Fidelma’s day. It would otherwise be too cumbersome to explain what was meant by an
ordlach
,
bas
,
troighid
,
céim
,
deis-céim
,
fertach
and
forrach
.

As the Fidelma series has become increasingly popular, many English-speaking fans have written wanting assurance about the way to pronounce the Irish names and words.

Irish belongs to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It is closely related to Manx and Scottish Gaelic and is a cousin of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. It is a very old European literary language. Professor Calvert Watkins of Harvard maintained it contains Europe’s oldest
vernacular
literature, Greek and Latin being a
lingua franca
. Surviving texts date from the seventh century AD.

The Irish of Fidelma’s period is classed as Old Irish which, after 950 AD, entered a period known as Middle Irish. Therefore, in the Fidelma books, Old Irish forms are generally adhered to, whenever possible, in both names and words. This is like using Chaucer’s English compared to modern English. For example, a word such as
aidche
(‘night’) in Old Irish is now rendered
oiche
in Modern Irish.

There are only eighteen letters in the Irish alphabet. From earliest times there has been a literary standard but today four distinct spoken dialects are recognised. For our purposes, we will keep to Fidelma’s dialect of Munster.

It is a general rule that stress is placed on the first syllable but, as in all languages, there are exceptions. In Munster the exceptions to the rule of initial stress are a) if the second syllable is long then it bears the stress; b) if the first two syllables are short and the third is long then the third syllable is stressed - such as in the word for fool, amad
á
n = amad-
aw
n; or c) where the second syllable contains
ach
and there is no long syllable, the second syllable bears the stress.

There are five short vowels -
a, e, i, o, u
- and five long vowels -
á, é, í, ó, ú
. On the long vowels note the accent, like the French acute, which is called a
fada
(lit. long), and this is the only accent in Irish. It occurs on capitals as well as lower case.

The accent is important for, depending on where it is placed, it changes the entire word.
Seán
(Shawn) = John. But
sean
(shan) = old and
séan
(she-an) = an omen. By leaving out the accent on the name of the famous film actor, Sean Connery, he has become ‘Old’ Connery!

These short and long vowels are either ‘broad’ or ‘slender’. The six broad vowels are:

There are double vowels, some of which are fairly easy because they compare to English pronunciation - such as ‘
ae
’ as in s
ay
or
ui
as in q
ui
t. However, some double and even triple vowels in Irish need to be learnt.

Most people will have noticed that many Irish people pronounce the word film as fil’
um
. This is actually a transference of Irish pronunciation rules. When
l
,
n
or
r
are followed by
b
,
bh
,
ch
,
g
(not after
n
),
m
, or
mh
, and are preceded by a short stressed vowel, an additional vowel is heard between them: ie
bolg
(stomach) is pronounced bol’ag;
garbh
(rough) is gar’ev;
dorcha
(dark) is dor’ach’a;
gorm
(blue) is gor’um and
ainm
(name) is an’im.

b
,
d
,
f
,
h
,
l
,
m
,
n
,
p
,
r
, and
t
are said more or less as in English.

In Irish the letters
j
,
k
,
q
,
w
,
x
,
y
and
z
do not exist and
v
is formed by the combination of ‘
bh
’.

Consonants can change their sound by aspiration or eclipse. Aspiration is caused by using the letter ‘h’ after them.

Consonants can also change their sound by being eclipsed, or silenced, by another consonant placed before them. For example
na mBan
(of women) = nah
m
’on; or
i bpaipéar
(in the paper) i
b
’ap’er; or
i gcathair
(in the city) i
g
’a’har.

For those interested in learning more about the language, it is worth remembering that, after centuries of suppression during the colonial period, Irish became the first official language of the Irish State on independence in 1922. The last published Census of 1991 showed one third of the population returning themselves as Irish-speaking. In Northern Ireland, where the language continued to be openly discouraged after Partition in 1922, only ten-and-a-half per cent of the population were able to speak the language in 1991, the first time an enumeration of speakers was allowed since Partition.

Language courses are now available on video and audio-cassette from a range of producers from Lingua-phone to RTÉ and BBC. There are some sixty summer schools and special intensive courses available. Teilifís na Gaeilge is the television station broadcasting entirely in Irish and there are several Irish language radio stations and newspapers. Information can be obtained from Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge, 46 Sráid Chill Dara, Baile Atha Cliath 2, Éire.

Readers might also like to know that
Valley of the Shadow
, in the Fidelma series, was produced on audio-cassette, read by Mary McCarthy, from Magna Story Sound (SS391 - ISBN 1-85903-313-X).

Sister Fidelma
, of Cashel, a
dálaigh
or advocate of the law courts of seventh-century Ireland

Brother Eadulf
, of Seaxmund’s Ham, a Saxon monk from the land of the South Folk

 

 

Brother Rhodri
, of Porth Clais

 

 

Abbot Tryffin
Gwlyddien
, king of Dyfed
Cathen
, son of Gwlyddien
Brother Meurig
, a
barnwr
or judge of Dyfed
Brother Cyngar
, of Menevia
Cadell
, a warrior

 

 

Mair
, a victim
Iorwerth
the smith, father of Mair
Iestyn
, his friend, a farmer
Idwal
, a youthful itinerant shepherd
Gwnda
, lord of Pen Caer
Elen
, Gwnda’s daughter
Buddog
, a servant in Gwnda’s hall

Clydog Cacynen
, an outlaw
Corryn
, one of his band
Sualda
, another of his band
Goff
, a smith
Rhonwen
, his wife
Dewi
, his son
Elisse
, the apothecary

 

Osric
, thane of the Hwicce