{"id":6058,"date":"2009-12-31T15:06:27","date_gmt":"2009-12-31T21:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/12\/31\/a_pictish_ballad\/"},"modified":"2009-12-31T15:06:27","modified_gmt":"2009-12-31T21:06:27","slug":"a_pictish_ballad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/12\/31\/a_pictish_ballad\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pictish Ballad"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Merlin's<\/div>\n

I had to write a ballad in Pictish <\/strong>for my current work in progress, Merlin’s Shadow. The problem is that we don’t know what language, exactly, the Picts spoke. <\/p>\n

Many scholars think it was related to Gaelic<\/strong>, while my daughter, Adele, is of the persuasion they spoke a Germanic language older than English, and this became the lowland Scots of today.<\/p>\n

The real difficulty<\/strong> is that my book is in English, and I need to portray three languages:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Merlin’s language (“translated” into standard English, of course)<\/li>\n
  2. A northern form of Merlin’s language<\/li>\n
  3. Pictish, an even further northern dialect.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    To do this, I am going to write (2) as if it were Scottish, and (3) as if it were a “gaelicized” form of English.<\/p>\n

    Gaelicized English?<\/strong> By this I mean I am changing the spelling of the English words based on some VERY simple rules of Gaelic (with the help of my daughter and a lot of her books), as well as replacing a few words here and there. My goal is to make the speech sound and look strange, while still making it readable by an English reader.<\/p>\n

    Anyway, see if you can figure out the meaning of the following short ballad.<\/strong> (Note: If you know Gaelic, use English pronunciations for best results.)<\/p>\n


    \nOver an land, from mount and glen
    \nChame we peiple, across am fen.
    \nWhere is an king, O where is he?
    \nTha’ fhights for you, tha’ fhights for me?<\/p>\n

    Chame we to Tull, to Twylloch-Scwane
    \nTo shee his light, our fleish and bain!
    \nTo mhake a king, a king to thrain
    \nTo shwear our aith, air hill and plain.<\/p>\n

    Upon am mound, upon an stone
    \nBhled he his blood, our hiearts to own
    \nCrithan-Tuath! Crithanas-Mor!
    \nMhade we a pact, in diays of yhore.<\/p>\n

    Member’ive, sons! Member’ive, men:
    \nYiur king, yiur oath! Yiur fealty ken!
    \nTake’ive yiur shpears! Take’ive yiur bhows!
    \nAnd come’ive now, to Duntarv Rhows!<\/p>\n

    \"The<\/center><\/p>\n

    Views: 91<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \nI had to write a ballad in Pictish for my current work in progress, Merlin’s Shadow. The problem is that…\n<\/div>\n
    Continue reading “A Pictish Ballad”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,15,45,29,32,82,31,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-merlin-spiral","category-2-merlins-shadow","category-merlin-related","category-my-book-excerpts","category-on-celtic-history","category-on-cornwall","category-on-scotland","category-research-for-the-series","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Merlins_Shadow26.jpg?fit=450%2C450","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67v0M-1zI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}