I think the biggest stumbling blocks is that not many of us can read Irish (Gaelige).
While I am on mobile and (therefore) have not accessed the files, the ToC and description of the OCR process leads me to understand that the original print is in Irish, not English.
I couldn't verify it, and a human translation would be preferable -- but it's probably good enough to get an idea of the story if you want to read some right now.
It looks extremely accessible. I can puzzle through the pages I looked at with school-level Irish.
The script can be mechanically translated to the modern characters, no ambiguity there. The spelling and grammar isn't the perfectly standardized Irish introduced in the 1940s and 50s - which isn't representative of how anyone ever spoke the language - but its differences are those a good to mediocre student might make anyway while trying to write the official standard.
It helps that this is clearly written for a YA audience. Literary Irish has lots of complicated constructions and idioms which are difficult to translate, but this does not.
Oh man, you weren't kidding. Part of me wants to print out some of these pages to use in my D&D game, somehow.
(Although, part of me is also uneasy with that idea - using someone's culture & heritage as set dressing, without paying it any of the actual respect it deserves. It would be just as easy to copy a few paragraphs from Wikipedia, & use a Star Trek font to make something look fantastical, which is something I've done in the past.)
Stop worrying. It truly doesn't matter. No culture deserves respect. You might respect one culture or another for some reason but if you don't, as in this case, then there's nothing to worry about.
I don't know if I agree with that, but I will say that people in general deserve respect. If I were playing with an Irish player, I definitely wouldn't want to offend them by treating their language like set-dressing, and I wouldn't particularly want someone using my culture for that, either.
Luckily it's part of Irish culture not to worry about things like that.
Sure some people might be offended, especially if you're an asshole about it. But generally Irish people are glad to share their culture, and delighted to see genuine interest from foreigners. Sad though our history is, we don't have the kind of issues that make some other groups more reluctant to share the symbols of their identity†.
† Notable exceptions apply, especially regarding English upper classes.
Irish mythology gets bowlderised plenty, so we've a pretty thick skin about it these days. If you _do_ treat it well, any Irish players who have even the remotest interest in this kind of thing (which anyone playing TTRPG probably would be), would really appreciate it.
So, thanks for trying to be cool about this stuff!
Oh, I'm... absolutely going to steal things from Irish mythology in my game, and adapt it to suit my setting & plot so far. In fact, my players are about to leave "fantasy iceland" to go to "fantasy ireland", probably next session, so I need to read up on a few things to see what I can steal & borrow!
While it's perfectly noble and fine to behave that way yourself, this idea very often extends to abusing people who don't follow it. That's when it becomes toxic and wrong. It's a personal choice and there's nothing wrong with anybody who uses some country's culture for whatever they like. I've been a victim of this kind of abuse myself and it does hurt. People need to treat humans well, not abstract concepts like culture.
No-one's going to mind in the slightest if you lift Gaelic type or script for a D&D setting. (If you start larding in corny or inaccurate Irish stereotypes as well then people might start to be offended and/or amused.) If it matters, the writing style is basically just a long-surviving regional variation of what was once a mainstream form of Latin script, anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule#/media/F... . So its story is quite similar to the story of how blackletter hung on as the primary script family for German until roughly the same time in the 20th century.
I wouldn't worry in the slightest - any cultural appropriation offense has long since been hammered out at the altar of American Television.
The Punch Magazine-esque depiction of bucolic ignorance in ST:TNG {1} is probably the worst representation I can think of, but you still have recent romcoms {2} which the Irish Times film review section best describe as "...stunningly regressive stuff."
That said, even the most cutting satire is fully appreciated when done well. Steve Coogan's fantastic double-billing as his own look-a-like from Ireland was very well received here, negative connotations nonwithstanding.
Native Irish Speaker and Sci-Fi fan here. What an unexpected delight. For those who might not pick it up , the author name "Máiréad Ní Ghráda" is that of an unmarried (that's the "Ní") woman ("Máiréad" which is like a variation of Mary).
Here's my Translations of the Chapter titles. I'm pretty sure many of these have old-Irish style séimhiú (a dot above a consonant denotes what would now be a h after the consonant) in the originals that have not been translated by the OCR, so there are several missing h letters. If I weren't on a plane over Afghanistan, I'd download the PDF to check. Will update the repo when I can!
Pláinéid na feaca Súil Duine riamh = A planet no person's eyes have ever seen
An Radarc, tríd an gCiandracán = the view throughout the [Ciandracan] (this is a compound proper noun, "Cian" is "head" or "brain" and "racán" could be visor or rocket)
An Turas go Manannán = the Trip to Manannán
Manannán = Manannán (it's a noun, which is very similar to the Irish term for the Manx and the Isle of Mann).
Muintear Manannáin = the people of Manannán
na 'Cráidmí' = the Craidmi (I think it's just a plural noun)
An tÁrd-Máigistir = the high Magistrate, or possibly the supreme magistry
An Priorún = the Priory
Oidce sa Coill = The class/lesson/teaching in the woods/forest
An tinneall = the fire
Oidce tar Oidceanta = Lesson upon lesson
Lug Lám-fada = the long-armed lug
An Tróid leis na 'Cráidmí' = The war with the Craidmi
Diogaltas = Revenge
An téalod = not sure about this one
Oidce sa Coill = The class/lesson/teaching in the woods/forest
Oidce tar Oidceanta = Lesson upon lesson
I suspect these are actually mistranscribed by the project. That looks more like it should be "Oiḋċe sa Coill" or "Oidhche sa Choill" without the ponc séimhithe, and in modern spelling "Oíche sa Choill" - "A Night in the Forest". Comparing the transcription of the first chapter with the source in the PDF they're missing a fada (an acute accent for non-Irish speakers) in "ná".
Similarly, I'd probably render the second one as "Night upon Nights".
Not a native speaker myself, just a former gaelscoil student who's done their best to undo the gaelscoilis tendencies. Probably closer to a "heritage speaker" in the linguistic sense in some aspects.
Sadly out of practice these days, since I've been living in Denmark nearly three years. It's strange to lose competency in a language that you spoke every day for about 13 years.
I hope the project can upload a full scan at some point. I'm a huge sci-fi fan, and there's definitely a dearth of Irish language books in that genre.
It's probably an téaloḋ (an tÉalodh without the ponc, t-Éalú in modern orthography) in the original, which lines up with the other missing poncs I mentioned above.
Not an Irish speaker, but I've seen some of the names and terms while reading folklore. Is it possible that Lug Lám-fada is a proper name/epithet for "Long-armed Lug" (alluding to the god Lug) instead of a descriptor of a "long-armed lug" object?
Yes, she's making a lot of allusions of Irish mythology, and that's definitely a reference to the god Lug Lámhfhada. Also, the word 'lámh' in Irish isn't quite arm. It's your arm below the elbow, including your hand. He has that epithet because for a bunch of reason, not least because of how skilled he is in all things.
The line between folklore and mythology is fuzzy, but this definitely falls on the mythology side of the line.
This is fantastic. As an absolute beginner in the language I've added to my list of learning resources for Gaeilge. I've tried to find a better scan of the book online, but it's not anywhere - there's some Máiréad Ní Ghráda on archive.org but this one is missing.
It also looks like the PDF in the repo is just the first 20 pages, it would be worthwhile scanning the whole thing cleanly and uploading to preserve this important work.
Tangentially related via the Irish Language but on YouTube, "Channel 5" who previously focused on street protest gonzo journalism have branched out into explorations of endangered languages and started with an episode on Irish:
I think the biggest stumbling blocks is that not many of us can read Irish (Gaelige).
While I am on mobile and (therefore) have not accessed the files, the ToC and description of the OCR process leads me to understand that the original print is in Irish, not English.
Yes, which imho makes it more remarkable. I do not doubt an English translation is coming once they can convert it into modern Irish.
Here's Claude's translation of the PDF in the repo:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/0c40c3f8-16de-4947-93c1-3...
I couldn't verify it, and a human translation would be preferable -- but it's probably good enough to get an idea of the story if you want to read some right now.
I can verify it looks fine.
Not absolutely rigorous, e.g.
Why "far more knowledge"? I don't see any emphasis like that in the original.
I'd have a few nits but they're of similarly small magnitude.
Ah yes, planets famously remain static in the sky…
It looks extremely accessible. I can puzzle through the pages I looked at with school-level Irish.
The script can be mechanically translated to the modern characters, no ambiguity there. The spelling and grammar isn't the perfectly standardized Irish introduced in the 1940s and 50s - which isn't representative of how anyone ever spoke the language - but its differences are those a good to mediocre student might make anyway while trying to write the official standard.
It helps that this is clearly written for a YA audience. Literary Irish has lots of complicated constructions and idioms which are difficult to translate, but this does not.
I mean, it _is_ in modern Irish! It just needs to be transcribed.
Beautiful, it's typeset in classic cló Gaelach.
Oh man, you weren't kidding. Part of me wants to print out some of these pages to use in my D&D game, somehow.
(Although, part of me is also uneasy with that idea - using someone's culture & heritage as set dressing, without paying it any of the actual respect it deserves. It would be just as easy to copy a few paragraphs from Wikipedia, & use a Star Trek font to make something look fantastical, which is something I've done in the past.)
Stop worrying. It truly doesn't matter. No culture deserves respect. You might respect one culture or another for some reason but if you don't, as in this case, then there's nothing to worry about.
I don't know if I agree with that, but I will say that people in general deserve respect. If I were playing with an Irish player, I definitely wouldn't want to offend them by treating their language like set-dressing, and I wouldn't particularly want someone using my culture for that, either.
Luckily it's part of Irish culture not to worry about things like that.
Sure some people might be offended, especially if you're an asshole about it. But generally Irish people are glad to share their culture, and delighted to see genuine interest from foreigners. Sad though our history is, we don't have the kind of issues that make some other groups more reluctant to share the symbols of their identity†.
† Notable exceptions apply, especially regarding English upper classes.
Irish mythology gets bowlderised plenty, so we've a pretty thick skin about it these days. If you _do_ treat it well, any Irish players who have even the remotest interest in this kind of thing (which anyone playing TTRPG probably would be), would really appreciate it.
So, thanks for trying to be cool about this stuff!
Oh, I'm... absolutely going to steal things from Irish mythology in my game, and adapt it to suit my setting & plot so far. In fact, my players are about to leave "fantasy iceland" to go to "fantasy ireland", probably next session, so I need to read up on a few things to see what I can steal & borrow!
While it's perfectly noble and fine to behave that way yourself, this idea very often extends to abusing people who don't follow it. That's when it becomes toxic and wrong. It's a personal choice and there's nothing wrong with anybody who uses some country's culture for whatever they like. I've been a victim of this kind of abuse myself and it does hurt. People need to treat humans well, not abstract concepts like culture.
No-one's going to mind in the slightest if you lift Gaelic type or script for a D&D setting. (If you start larding in corny or inaccurate Irish stereotypes as well then people might start to be offended and/or amused.) If it matters, the writing style is basically just a long-surviving regional variation of what was once a mainstream form of Latin script, anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule#/media/F... . So its story is quite similar to the story of how blackletter hung on as the primary script family for German until roughly the same time in the 20th century.
I wouldn't worry in the slightest - any cultural appropriation offense has long since been hammered out at the altar of American Television.
The Punch Magazine-esque depiction of bucolic ignorance in ST:TNG {1} is probably the worst representation I can think of, but you still have recent romcoms {2} which the Irish Times film review section best describe as "...stunningly regressive stuff."
That said, even the most cutting satire is fully appreciated when done well. Steve Coogan's fantastic double-billing as his own look-a-like from Ireland was very well received here, negative connotations nonwithstanding.
{1} https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bringloidi {2} https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Mountain_Thyme_(film) {3} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEjEGbAFzJU
Native Irish Speaker and Sci-Fi fan here. What an unexpected delight. For those who might not pick it up , the author name "Máiréad Ní Ghráda" is that of an unmarried (that's the "Ní") woman ("Máiréad" which is like a variation of Mary).
Here's my Translations of the Chapter titles. I'm pretty sure many of these have old-Irish style séimhiú (a dot above a consonant denotes what would now be a h after the consonant) in the originals that have not been translated by the OCR, so there are several missing h letters. If I weren't on a plane over Afghanistan, I'd download the PDF to check. Will update the repo when I can!
I suspect these are actually mistranscribed by the project. That looks more like it should be "Oiḋċe sa Coill" or "Oidhche sa Choill" without the ponc séimhithe, and in modern spelling "Oíche sa Choill" - "A Night in the Forest". Comparing the transcription of the first chapter with the source in the PDF they're missing a fada (an acute accent for non-Irish speakers) in "ná".
Similarly, I'd probably render the second one as "Night upon Nights".
That does make more sense.
Thanks.
Not a native speaker myself, just a former gaelscoil student who's done their best to undo the gaelscoilis tendencies. Probably closer to a "heritage speaker" in the linguistic sense in some aspects.
Sadly out of practice these days, since I've been living in Denmark nearly three years. It's strange to lose competency in a language that you spoke every day for about 13 years.
I hope the project can upload a full scan at some point. I'm a huge sci-fi fan, and there's definitely a dearth of Irish language books in that genre.
"An t-Éalod" I think would be "the escape"?
That's almost certainly right. I couldn't see that as anything other than "Teal" but Éalú makes perfect sense especially thematically.
It's probably an téaloḋ (an tÉalodh without the ponc, t-Éalú in modern orthography) in the original, which lines up with the other missing poncs I mentioned above.
Not an Irish speaker, but I've seen some of the names and terms while reading folklore. Is it possible that Lug Lám-fada is a proper name/epithet for "Long-armed Lug" (alluding to the god Lug) instead of a descriptor of a "long-armed lug" object?
Yes, she's making a lot of allusions of Irish mythology, and that's definitely a reference to the god Lug Lámhfhada. Also, the word 'lámh' in Irish isn't quite arm. It's your arm below the elbow, including your hand. He has that epithet because for a bunch of reason, not least because of how skilled he is in all things.
The line between folklore and mythology is fuzzy, but this definitely falls on the mythology side of the line.
The battle/fight with the Craidmi. troid is singular whereas war is plural.
And she's not just any Máiréad Ní Ghráda; this is the same Máiréad Ní Ghráda who wrote An Triail and Progress in Irish!
Maith thú
there are earlier north american examples; steam man of the prairies (1860s) being one.
(i'm big into mecha, sorry for the nitpick.)
This is fantastic. As an absolute beginner in the language I've added to my list of learning resources for Gaeilge. I've tried to find a better scan of the book online, but it's not anywhere - there's some Máiréad Ní Ghráda on archive.org but this one is missing.
It also looks like the PDF in the repo is just the first 20 pages, it would be worthwhile scanning the whole thing cleanly and uploading to preserve this important work.
Tangentially related via the Irish Language but on YouTube, "Channel 5" who previously focused on street protest gonzo journalism have branched out into explorations of endangered languages and started with an episode on Irish:
https://youtu.be/oJRMfInSjRo