(no subject)

[gothwalk]

Getting up this morning was immensely difficult, but I made it.

Those of you who are on blogshares (that's wyvernfriend and bastun, as far as I know) - ye need to divest all stock like now, as blogshares Beta ends today - it'll probably switch to live between 10:00 and 14:00 GMT.

Today will be insane, or fairly quiet. It hasn't yet decided which.

Aoibhneas na Bhealtaine aguibh go leir.

Comments

[ailbhe]

Agus aoibhneas Bealtaine agaibh fhein.

A.
GrrBeltaneGnashGrr.

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

*grins* I was wondering when the first growl would appear about that. I've just decided that "Beltane" is the English for "Bealtaine", same as "Galway" is the English for "Gaillimhe".

(Excuse my spelling. I'm border dyslexic in Irish, I think.)

[niallm.livejournal.com]

If ever there was a language to encourage dyxlexia...

Niall, wondering if it would be possible for him to write a poem in Irish

[elorie.livejournal.com]

Isn't that something of a requirement? If you speak Irish, you must write poetry? something like that? :)

According to my "word of the day" from Merriam-Webster, the origin of the "Beltane" spelling is Scots Gaelic.

I actually grew up celebrating Beltane, in a somewhat desultory fashion. Because I'm from Georgia, y'see, and here in the South of the US once we get hold of a tradition of any kind we never let go of it....

There is a tree in Athens, Georgia that owns itself. It has a little cordoned-off area and a plaque that tells the story and everything...of how a man who had sheltered in its shade as a boy, when he grew up wrote into his will that he deeded the land around the tree to the tree itself.

The whole story, apparently, was made up. The man this act of tree-hugging is attributed to was indeed a professor at the University of Georgia in the late 1800's, but he never owned the land in question and didn't grow up there.

But the tree has owned itself for the better part of 100 years. The tree that's there now is not the original tree, actually, but a seedling grown from the original which died in the '40's. The Son of the Self-Owning Tree owns itself, because the story says it does; and knowing my fellow Southerners as I do, there will be a tree that owns itself in that spot forevermore....

And that, in a roundabout way, is how come I wound up dancing a May pole as a child with the First Baptist Church kindergarten :)

[hkim.livejournal.com]

Possibly a stupid question: Are they pronounced the same?

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Gaillimhe is pronounced "Gol-i-va", approximately.

Bealtaine is "Be-owl-tin-ah"

Not sure which you were looking for. :)

[hkim.livejournal.com]

Hehe! Sorry, I meant is 'Beltane' pronounced the same as 'Bealtaine'? (Have never heard the former said out loud). My Irish is pretty good, my knowledge of pagan feasts is not. :)

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Ah, ok. No, Beltane is pronounced as written, usually.

[ailbhe]

I quite like thinking of it as "Galway" is to "Gaillimh", actually. That might help my blood-pressure a lot. It's just a plain ordinary anglicisation.