language north and south

Canadian Journal of Irish StudiesCanadian Association of Irish Studies

Language North and SouthA Concise Ulster Dictionary by C. I. Macafee; Translating IrelandReview by: Brian E. RaineyThe Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Jul., 1996), pp. 99-103Published by: Canadian Journal of Irish StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25513047 .

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Review Articles 99

Language North and South

A Concise Ulster Dictionary. Edited by C.I. Macafee. Oxford: OUR, 1996. 405

pp. UK?9.99. Michael Cronin.

Translating Ireland. Cork: Cork UP., 1996. 229 pp. IR?30.00 (hardcover), IR? 14.95 (paperback).

Interest in the English language as it is spoken in Ulster is not an altogeth er recent phenomenon. D. Patterson's The Provincialism of Belfast and

Surrounding Districts Pointed Out and Corrected appeared in 1860, to be fol

lowed twenty years later by W. H. Patterson's A Glossary of Words in Use in the

Counties of Antrim and Down. During the following hundred years numerous

lists of words and expressions were drawn up by both amateurs and profession als. In a more humorous vein, Ulster dialects in all their richness were enjoyed on radio, through the talks of Matt Mulcahy and an early Belfast soap opera, the

McCooeys; on the stage, thanks to the talent of James Young; and in printed form, with the Tyrone Ballads of W. F. Marshall, the Belfast Telegraph columns

of John Pepper and, more recently, the Cherryvelley Chronicles of Billy Simpson and Doreen McBride. The past twenty-five years, however, have seen a marked

increase in the number of serious studies devoted to aspects of Ulster English. These may be divided into two main categories: linguistic or sociolinguistic stud

ies and dictionaries or glossaries. Among the former are James Milroy's Regional Accents of English. Belfast (1981) and other works by James and Lesley Milroy, Alison Henry's Belfast English and Standard English (1995) and Rona K.

Kingsmore's Ulster Scots Speech (1995). The latter include Loreto Todd's Words

Apart (1990) and James Fenton's The Hamely Tongue (1995). A number of rea

sons might be adduced to account for this upsurge: the proliferation of studies of

varieties of English worldwide, of which the latest British example is the Atlas

of English Dialects; the fact that political events have, through radio and televi

sion, made different Ulster voices well-known; a realization of the richness of the

dialects existing in a small geographical space and their links with the English of North America; the use of Ulster dialect words by the poet Seamus Heaney; and,

finally, the radical changes which have taken place in the Ulster countryside,

sweeping away the rural life in which the dialects flourished. It has become

imperative to record them before they disappear for ever. As James Fenton puts it:

It was the time of the heavy horse, of flax-growing and the scutch

mill, of corn-growing and the corn-mill, of hard manual labour in the

hayfield and the potato-field, of long days in the moss, of hand-milk

ing and home-churning; and of much else that has gone, probably for

ever. Gone or going is much of the expressive and colourful language associated with all of these; it has become obsolete; and that fact has

been foremost in the considerations which have led to the compilation



100 The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies

of this record, since obsolescence tends to be followed quickly by

oblivion, (vi)

And yet, if an increasing number of Ulster people, particularly the young, tend to speak what is called "Received Ulster" or "Regional Modified Ulster

Standard," it is still just possible to find regional words and speech patterns which have survived relatively unscathed. It is perhaps unwise to be as sanguine as Joe Joseph who, in reference to the Atlas of English Dialects, writes: "The

book confounds linguists who predicted that dialects would die as BBC news

readers offered benchmarks for pukkah pronunciation, as television drama

brought every local accent into our sitting rooms...and as greater mobility made

regional tongues obsolete".1 There is an urgency, though it is a comfort to know

that even as some words and expressions disappear, new ones appear, emerging even from the miseries of the "Troubles."

The Concise Ulster Dictionary published by Oxford University Press has

therefore chosen the right moment to make its long-awaited appearance. Produced by the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and splendidly edited by Dr

C. I. Macafee, the Dictionary is the culmination of many years of linguistic endeavour. Although work had been done on a dictionary by pioneers such as

Professor John Braidwood, it was not until the establishment in 1989 of the

Ulster Dictionary Project that funding was found to make the Ulster Dialect

Archive housed at the Museum available to the public in a single concise vol ume. The result is a work which will please a wide readership: the student of lan

guage will be impressed by its scholarly presentation?the decision to provide etymologies was vital here?while general readers, especially Ulster people at

home or in exile, will search eagerly for favourite or half-remembered words and

expressions, hearing long-gone voices speak again as they think of the sheugh forenenst the house, where they were warned not to get clabber all over their

feet. They will also have to search diligently, however, since spelling dialect words is a problem and a certain amount of phonetic ingenuity is required to find some terms, a fact which the editor acknowledges. For example, a search for

what I, with Fenton, would spell cassie, reveals no such entry, so the reader is

forced to find the near homonym cassey; this in turn leads to the main entry, causey, and the required definition. As many variants as

possible are given: car

naptious has six, which reflect the wide variation of pronunciation of the word

throughout the province.

While the Dictionary covers all aspects of life, it is particularly impressive when it comes to names of plants, birds and animals; no fewer than twenty-one variants of the quaint and archaic pismire are identified. The Antrim version for the common ant is the resounding pishmucker. Those Shakespearean words still current in Ulster speech are to be found:

Because I cannot flatter and speak fair,

Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive and cog,



Review Articles 101

Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,

I must be held a rancorous enemy...

says Gloster in Richard III (1.3.48). The Ulster schoolboy, in less noble fashion, will still cog his friends' homework, probably because he has been playing tru

ant or mitching ?see Hamlet (III.2.156). Also present are those useful words like

coldrife or throughother, still in existence in other European languages but not in

Standard English. While the editor points out that, as a one-volume dictionary, the work has concentrated on individual words and apologises for the fact that

"phrases are rather neglected"(xvi), I was delighted to find "a face as long as a

Lurgan spade" and the less common "as black as Toal's cloak." A little ingenu

ity enables the reader, through word connections, to revisit whole areas of Ulster

life.

There are absences: words which one would expect to find do not always appear, and some meanings have been omitted for words which are there. Such

absences are inevitable, since choices have had to be made and it may be that the

missing terms are to be found in the database in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. Although many less than charitable names for people are included?

ganch and gulpin spring to mind?an editorial decision was made to omit

obscenities "where it was thought they might cause offence" (xix). I looked in

vain under tory for its local meaning "flea" and although half-tore, "not quite drunk," is present, the possible cause of the condition, a few wee half'uns, is

noticeably absent. The vocabulary of marbles is also underrepresented, though taw is there, meaning "a large marble" and, secondly, "a testicle," which latter

word leads us to crig. But here we verge on the obscene, I suppose. Any search

should be supplemented by consulting Todd's Words Apart and Fenton's The

Hamely Tongue, excellent for Ulster-Scots.

The search for missing words is, of course, part of the pleasure which the Concise Ulster Dictionary brings. Indeed, as we are told in the Introduction, it is one of the aims of the publication. "It is our sincere wish that you, the dictionary user, will be inspired to commit these [memories of the speech of childhood] to

paper and forward examples of Ulster speech that do not appear in the dictionary to the Ulster Folk Museum." While awaiting a second and enlarged edition of the

work, we must be grateful to Dr. Macafee and his team for producing this excel

lent Dictionary, which, as well as having academic uses, will also stimulate a

brave lock of crack around firesides where the greesagh yet glows. Outsiders will either become interested in the way Ulster people speak or will just have to

thole.

The Dictionary may also prove useful to those who undertake to translate the poetry of Seamus Heaney. As a 1994 symposium organised by the Irish

Translators' Association showed, these are many in number and come from a

remarkable variety of countries. For Heaney sprinkles his work with words like

glar, glit, clabbery and slabber}', in his lines we hear the wheep of a bird and the



102 The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies

ploutoixdim. He recreates the sounds of his South Deny birthplace. Ireland itself

has long been, and continues to be, a land of translation, as Michael Cronin's excellent new work Translating Ireland makes very clear. Like the Dictionary, this is a work whose time had come, for now that the Republic of Ireland is an

important member of the European Union, translation has an increasingly impor tant economic role. Ireland is the home of flourishing software and audiovisual

industries and this, with other economic developments, means that there is a

demand for translations from and into a variety of languages. Ireland, as Cronin

points out, is uniquely situated to respond to this challenge since, as history has

decreed, "Translation is our condition" (199).

Translating Ireland examines the origins of this condition and the vital role

played by translators through the ages: "Architects of literatures and languages, channels of influence, ambassadors for the Other, they embody at the same time

many of the painful dilemmas of Ireland's troubled history" (1). Cronin takes us

from the Middle Ages, through the period of conquest, Antiquarianism, the Celtic Revival and the emergence of a new Ireland. Translators in Ireland, we learn, have faced the same challenges as translators elsewhere, having to choose between literal renderings and dynamic or communicative versions of their source texts. But Irish translators, working as they did in a colonial context, had an additional burden: they literally had the responsibility for shaping the linguis tic future and hence the culture of their country. Repeatedly, they found them selves in a "no-win" situation. By making old Gaelic texts available in transla

tion to the English-speaking Ascendancy class, for example, they promoted Gaelic culture but also undermined it, since they removed the necessity to learn

Irish. This in turn led to a situation where modern Irish speakers tended to have access to Old Irish texts only through the medium of English translations, many of them undertaken by non-Irish experts. "The act of Irish-English translation remained inescapably political" (133).

Cronin's work reveals formidable erudition not only in the fields of histo

ry and culture but also in translation theory. He does not hesitate, for example, to

take issue with the ideas of Lawrence Venuti on the translator's invisibility and "fluent strategies." Translating Ireland is, however, an eminently readable book.

Who will read it? Not just those involved in translation studies, but also those who are interested in all aspects of Irish culture, history and literature. Their

knowledge will be broadened and deepened and they may well find some of Cronin's deftly-expressed ideas provocative.

Presumably, like the Anglos for whom much translation activity has taken

place, many of these readers will not be Irish speakers. From a practical point of view it might have been advisable to take such readers into consideration by pro viding translations of the frequent Irish quotations as footnotes which can be

quickly consulted rather than placing them at the end of chapters. This recom mendation along with the correction of some eccentric punctuation and typo



Review Articles 103

graphical errors?the 17th century translator of the Psalms of David was Nahum, not Natum, Tate?should be taken into account when a second edition is pub lished. These, however, are only minor technical complaints about a work which

lays a foundation for future culture and translation studies in Ireland and estab

lishes its author in the forefront of those involved in Translation Studies. The news from Ireland, from a linguistic point of view at least, has been

good in 1996.

NOTES

1. Joe Joseph, "Nowt so queer as the words some folk use," The Times (6 August 1996).

WORKS CITED

Atlas of English Dialects. Oxford: OUP, 1996. A Concise Ulster Dictionary (C.I. Macafee ed.). Oxford: OUP, 1996.

Cronin, Michael. Translating Ireland. Cork: Cork UP, 1996.

Fenton, James. The Hamely Tongue. Newtownards: Ulster-Scots Academic P, 1995.

Henry, Alison. Belfast English and Standard English. New York, Oxford: OUP, 1995.

Kingsmore, Rona K. Ulster Scots Speech. A Sociolinguistic Study. Tuscaloosa and London: U of Alabama P, 1995.

Marshall, W. F Tyrone Ballads. Belfast: The Quota Press, 1944.

Milroy, James. Regional Accents of English. Belfast. Belfast: Blackstaff, 1981.

Patterson, D. The Provincialism of Belfast and Surrounding Districts Pointed Out and Corrected. Belfast: Mayne, 1860.

Patterson, W. H. A Glossary of Words in Use in the Counties of Antrim and Down. London: English Dialect Society, 1880.

Simpson, B and McBride, D. Talking Proper. Banbridge: Adare Press, 1994.

Todd, Loreto. Words Apart. A Dictionary of Northern Ireland English. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1990.

Brian E. Rainey

Department of French

University of Regina



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