The last day before the post-setters arrive.
We’ve got some work, yet, which is to pull two gates, a last panel of the back fence, and to bring the tarp inward in the final setup that will protect the pond while the new posts set.
This involves less lifting, but more Rube-Goldberging.
I was so tired I went to bed about 8:30 last night. I think Jane must have lasted longer, but I was done in.
Jane wants to get up early tomorrow and pull the side panels before the post-setters get to work, and then while they work, get the tarp arranged on the west side, but I’d like to do the tarp today, and just have that part finished. It’s cold in the mornings!
We’ll work it out.
Meanwhile I’ve got to call the accountant and make sure our tax info arrived.
Tangential for linguistic tongue-tangling:
I ran across an unusual Celtic (Irish) name, while looking for character names: Cathair is the old spelling. Cahir is the more modern spelling. Either way, it’s pronounced Kah-HEERR. (Not Kah-THAIR as it looks.) … And I had trouble thereafter, when my brain tried to parse it, “Cat-hair.” Which no doubt will permanently irritate anyone out there named Cathair. This led to wondering how a guy would deal with a name spelled like that. Heh. But it also led to thinking of nicknames: Cat? Might work, still mostly manly. Kitty-Cat? Might be pushing it a bit, buster. Kitty? No. Kitten? Not likely unless you want a “discussion” about it…. (Or, y’know, unless you say it really, really nicely and offer a nice date….) OK, still, probably not. Tiger, though, that might work. — But I’m not sure anyone would believe it as a character name. I’m still having trouble parsing it. Cat-hair? No, no, this so invites a fight, even with someone peacefully minded. Ca-thair? That sounds good, exotic, interesting. But it’s not how Irish people say it. Ca-hir, like the more modern spelling, will probably win out. But I have this sneaky desire to give a character the spelling, Cathair, and make a whole big deal out of it with his buddies. Heheheh. (I am used to that, given my own full name. — Ben, short for Benjamin, is my *middle* name.)
Try Cadheire?
Cathair (oh dear, auto spellcheck on the IPad wants to switch that to “cat hair,” yours is a very bad influence on computers, BCS!) means, I believe, “seat” or “chair”… Goes over to bookcase and hauls out Irish/English Dictionary. Ah hah, it gives the primary meaning as “city, court, mansion,” which helps me remember the derivation. It’s from, I believe, Latin “cathedra” (which spell check just wanted to turn, correctly if prematurely this time, into “cathedral”). In Early Christian/Dark Age Times in Ireland, the largest, most built up and full of people/learning loci were the ecclesiastical, monastic centers known as “cathedras” or chairs/seats of bishops. Later in English the word became “cathedral” but in Irish apparently it also became a name. Actually, I think being called “Chair” is worse than being called “Cat Hair.”
As for those pesky “H’s” in Irish and Scottish Gaelic: they are not pronounced at all. Rather, they are orthographic guides letting you know that the letter before the “h” is pronounced differently than normal. In earlier Irish orthography, a dot above the letter was used instead of an “h.”
Hmm, I tend to believe your etymology more than what BehindTheName.com claims. They claim Cathair is from roots meaning “Battle-Man” and Cathán likewise is “Little Battle” (or more like, “Little Fighter,” I’d think).
I’m tempted to have a big deal over the spelling, and eventually settle on his friends (after teasing him a lot) nickname him Tiger.
It’s that, or go with Cahir or find another name. Somehow, it seems interesting, though.
But I’m curious, because I feel like I know too little about a whole culture that was important for a large portion of European land and history.
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd…we got further than we expected. We have all gates down, all the side fence down, everything but four last panels which are ready to be lifted from their sockets and carried some 30 or so feet to the pile in the driveway.
So we are pretty well done. We got the tarp-fencing up, and secured for the next week of ‘letting the concrete set’ on the new posts, when the crew gets them dug and installed tomorrow, which should be noisy. We have jackhammers, diggers, etc. But that’s only for a day. After that, the posts stand and set [not sit] until, we hope, Friday, and at that point we shall have a new fence in place.
We took pix.
Wiishu will have a story about this.
I got less writing done than I wanted, and Jane had Word Perfect crash with a bit of hers this morning, which sent her in disgust out to do battle with the fence—I followed.
But by golly we did it.
Overnight is fine for the concrete to set. If the posts are wood be sure to put a couple of inches of gravel in the bottom of the hole for drainage.
Congratulations on getting it done!
The moon and the stars must be aligned (Total Lunar Eclipse) because I had a burst of energy and attacked the stack of stuff sitting beside my reading chair which hadn’t been touched since before Christmas. I filled a 90-gallon recycling bin with old magazines, and catalogs, plus the cardboard recycling. I then proceeded to sort my laundry into the iron/put away piles. I even folded the winter sheets and coverlets that I won’t be using again until November or so. Gee, those meds sure do work fine!
For more on total eclipse the night of 14-15 April see the following website: http://www.space.com/25479-total-lunar-eclipse-2014-skywatching-guide.html
Middle of totality at 3:46 a.m. EDT/ 12:46 a.m. PDT/ 9:46 p.m. 14 April Hawaii (HAST)
Of course—it was blue sky today, but now has clouded over….
(Sigh) Rain here. And a frost warning for tonight. Though how we’ll get rain and frost beats me. Maybe it will clear up late tonight.
Glad to hear the fence is ready for replacing!
Is there a good source for:
(1) Celtic / Gaelic language background or beginner’s level Scots and Irish Gaelic language?
(2) Celtic / Gaelic mythology and folklore, on a beginner’s to intermediate level?
Discussion about the name, Cathair, on Jane’s blog, has led to a story idea, but to do it justice, I’d rather know more about Scots and Irish lore, which I know too little about, rather than to confuse it with what I know of old English and Germanic lore.
Raesean, Michael, CJ, et al., I’d appreciate whatever pointers would be useful. — And I’m very, very puzzled by the language / spelling drift from what I’ve seen of Irish and Scots Gaelic to however it’s actually pronounced, which appears complex, though regular…if I could only learn the patterns and the why’s and wherefore’s.
Oh dear, and the story may be trying to acquire a hob or brownie who’s sick from bad potatoes…. Puir we bairn….
I don’t know if the books I have are a /good/ source, but here goes: Celtic Fairy Tales, collected by Joseph Jacobs, published by Dover Books ISBN 0-486-21826-0, and More …, ISBN 0-486-21827-9. They should be fairly easy to find. I have one volume (#3!) of a three volume set by Michael Scott, Tales from the Land of Erin, apparently for children (beginners!); another three volume set, Irish Folk & Fairy Tales, is aimed at adults, but, perhaps, not scholars. They are published by Sphere Books, in the UK. I suspect ABEbooks.com will be your friend there. Finally, from Penguin Popular Classics, I have Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales, chosen and edited by Gordon Jarvie. And I have a book of Russian tales, and Andrew Lang’s coloured books of fairy tales as ebooks from the Mobileread library. A pseudo-Jungian aficionado can never have too many fairy tale books… 😀
Well, so far as Celtic language is concerned, a good basic resource I frequently return to is Teach Yourself Gaelic by Boyd Robertson and Iain Taylor. I forget whether or not it has more of a focus on Scottish or Irish Gaelic (my sneaking suspicion is that it focuses on Irish Gaelic, because that is what people think of when they think of the “Celtic” language), but it has proven an outstanding primer on pronunciation and basic conjugation. It also has an accompanying CD set, which I don’t think you can find anywhere but ebay, but the chances you can find MP3 rips from various p2p resources is pretty decent.
Alas, no, to the best of my knowledge (mostly Scottish Gaelic), there still is not a brilliant, written book for learning Scottish Gaelic… There must be something nicer for Irish Gaelic because it has a much larger learning base… But I’ve not seen one that Celticists are uniformly keen on. I am, however, out of date for what is being used in Ireland… And to some extent in Scotland but when I have looked in Scotland, I’ve not seen a great looking book.
The University of Edinburgh, where I learnt my basic Scottish Gaelic in, um, well, 1979-83, did not have a good text at hand then (we first used “McLaren’s Gaelic Self-Taught), with the lecturer (and noted Gaelic tradition bearer) – Willy Matheson frequently saying “this is wrong, correct the page to read…”. Today the Celtic Dept. uses a self-published textbook, I believe. I’m not certain the Harvard Celtic Dept. has a favored set of text books either, but I have to confess that I never did Celtic language learning there as I had done it in Edinburgh.
No, you can’t learn the language well from reading 19th C. folk tales. That’s what Willy Matheson had us doing after maybe two weeks of grammar (we learnt the future tense at five minutes of six on a Friday evening, then class dismissed at six: not the way to learn either grammar or language facility well). Second year Gaelic at that time was translating passages of Alice in Wondeland back into Gaelic, also not a great way to learn the language. I could go on, but….
BCS: see if you can find out what books Gaelic summer schools and teaching departments are using for their beginning courses.
I think there is a college somewhere on Cape Breton Island in New Brunswick that teaches in Gaelic – probably Scots Gaelic. If I dig it up I’ll post it here. I know it is one of the few places that still use it as living language.
Yes, the college is St Francis Xavier, informally known as St. F. X., and an excellent place it is. I was up there years ago at a Celtic Conference giving a paper on archery imagery in Scottish Gaelic Verse.
Och, thank ye all! I may have to locate those gradually. I do know, I need to set up a study plan to get myself back into study habits for things like self-taught language study.
There’s what looks like some useful Scots Gaelic learning material on the BBC Scotland website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/alba/foghlam/beag_air_bheag/ and you can practice by reading the news in Gaelic at http://www.bbc.co.uk/naidheachdan/ or by watching BBC Alba http://www.bbc.co.uk/alba/
Thanks, everyone, for the Celtic resources. I’m copying these so I can keep track of the sources and links and order items.
I’ve noticed a few Gaelic-language songs in my music library, which should help, when I can get anywhere near the level to distinguish the words / lyrics.
I was looking for basic familiarity with myth/legend/folklore, more than depth into the language, but with language skill (and the curiosity) I might as well see how far I can go with it. — This reminds me to pursue things. Good stuff!