Chantal
Kobel
2020
DIL s.v. forrind ‘point (of a weapon), barb’ provides three examples. One of these is taken from a quatrain preserved in the late Middle Irish prosimetric tale Aided Guill meic Carbada 7 Aided Gairb Glinne Rige (hereafter AG), edited by Stokes (1893). The word in question is found in the final line of the second couplet: ni ḟail díb ar talmain tend / crecht arna fagbaim fairrend, ‘Of them on the firm earth there is none for which I do not leave a spearpoint’, LL 12881 (trans. Stokes 1893, 423). Stokes’s translation of fairrend as ‘spearpoint’ suggests he understood it as a word consisting of for- + rind ‘a point, tip, apex’ (DIL 1 rind), an i-stem. The editors of the Dictionary suggested emending tend … fairrend to tind … fairrind, presumably on the basis that a palatalised final -nd would be expected for an acc. sg. i-stem and therefore emendation to tind would also be needed to fulfil the requirement for deibide rhyme. In this note I revisit this proposed emendation in the Dictionary and provide a new analysis and interpretation of the second couplet in AG, suggesting that fairrend has a more nuanced meaning than forrind ‘barb, spearpoint’ and that perhaps no emendation is needed.
DIL s.v. forrind ‘point (of a weapon), barb’ provides three examples. One of these is taken from a quatrain preserved in the late Middle Irish prosimetric tale Aided Guill meic Carbada 7 Aided Gairb Glinne Rige (hereafter AG), edited by Stokes (1893). The word in question is found in the final line of the second couplet: ni ḟail díb ar talmain tend / crecht arna fagbaim fairrend, ‘Of them on the firm earth there is none for which I do not leave a spearpoint’, LL 12881 (trans. Stokes 1893, 423). Stokes’s translation of fairrend as ‘spearpoint’ suggests he understood it as a word consisting of for- + rind ‘a point, tip, apex’ (DIL 1 rind), an i-stem. The editors of the Dictionary suggested emending tend … fairrend to tind … fairrind, presumably on the basis that a palatalised final -nd would be expected for an acc. sg. i-stem and therefore emendation to tind would also be needed to fulfil the requirement for deibide rhyme. In this note I revisit this proposed emendation in the Dictionary and provide a new analysis and interpretation of the second couplet in AG, suggesting that fairrend has a more nuanced meaning than forrind ‘barb, spearpoint’ and that perhaps no emendation is needed.
