A big challenge to any translator is figuring out exactly what a word means and how to best represent that meaning in another language, and the realm of the supernatural can be particularly complex in this respect.  We don’t have a complete and clear taxonomy of different types of magical beings or practitioners of magic in the Old and Middle Irish used in the medieval texts. This is true of English too, of course.  What, for example, is the difference between a magician, a wizard, a sorcerer, and an enchanter? A thesaurus will list these as synonyms.  This is a problem I encountered while working on the translation of Version 1 of Aided Chon Roí “The Violent Death of Cú Roí” that I posted last week. Early in the text, Cú Roí is described as ind ammait ⁊ in corrguinech, which I translated as “the witch and sorcerer” based on the definitions of these words in eDIL, the online version of the Dictionary of the Irish Language. (As always, I provide links to eDIL when discussing specific words and to CODECS when discussing particular texts. I link directly to texts sometimes also, where I think it will be useful.)

The second word, corrguinech, is defined as “magician, sorcerer.”  We might not know exactly what kind of magic the corrguinech practices, but it is enough for us to know that Cú Roí has some form of magical power.  One of the examples cited for this word comes from the Corpus Iuris Hibernici, the collection of Irish Laws, and tells us about the penalties for the corrguinech who steals old milk on May Day.  This tells us at least one of the things that a corrguinech might get up to, but it is quite difficult to imagine Cú Roí stealing old milk!

The word ammait is more puzzling here, because according to eDIL it means “a woman with supernatural powers, witch, hag; spectre.”  While Cú Roí clearly has supernatural powers – shown most frequently in his ability to disguise himself – he is most definitely not a woman.  So why is the word ammait used here?  It does have the secondary meaning of “foolish woman,” but we can certainly rule that out. Before jumping to the conclusion that Cú Roí is practicing some sort of transgressive gendered magic, we should take a closer look at the word ammait and the history of our understanding of it. That is, how was it determined that the word ammait is specifically used of women?

Thurneysen made the following comment on this word in his edition and translation of Aided Chon Roí:

Ammait bezeichnet neben der weiblichen Hexe auch männliche Wesen (s. Meyer, Contrib.), aber vielleicht war das Wort seinem grammatischen Geschlecht nach weiblich; darum habe ich ind ammait geschrieben. (190n4)

Ammait refers not only to the female witch but also to male beings (see Meyer, Contrib.), but perhaps the word was feminine in its grammatical gender; therefore I have written ind ammait.

Like Latin, German, and many other languages, Old Irish had three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Thurneysen here provides the feminine article ind before ammait because the grammatical gender of the word is feminine – ammait is quite definitely an ī-stem feminine noun. That said, and citing Meyer, Thurneysen states that the word can apply to both men and women.  When Thurneysen made his edition and translation of the text, the Dictionary of the Irish Language did not yet exist. He therefore consulted Kuno Meyer’s Contributions to Irish Lexicography. Meyer’s entry for amm(a)it can be found on p. 86. He gives the following definitions:

amm(a)it m. and f. (1) a witch, wizard; a hag, crone. […] (2) an idiot […]

He provides several examples for the first meaning and one for the second. So why did Meyer decide that the word ammait could describe both male and female beings?  The best way to know is to examine the examples that he provides of uses of this word.  I’m not going to go through these quite in order because the first example Meyer uses involves the Morrígan and has some added complexity.

1. ar amaid ná ar drochduine (SG. 107,8)
   This is a passage from the edition of Acallam na senórach “The Dialogue of the Ancients” found in Standish Hayes O’Grady’s Silva Gadelica (SG). O’Grady translates these words, in context, as “neither have anything at all to do with either a mad man or a wicked one” (SG II 115).  He takes amaid, an alternate spelling of ammait, in a meaning closer to “foolish woman” here with his translation “mad man,” but also clearly reads it as masculine rather than feminine. The more recent translation of Ann Dooley and Harry Roe instead renders this passage as “Keep well away from these two, the witch and the evil man” (19).  Both translations work in the context of the advice being given, so this example isn’t particularly helpful, as no specific individual, male or female, is being designated by the word ammait.
2. amait chaillige (SG. 181,8)
   We’re still in Acallam na senórach here, and St. Patrick has asked Cáilte to explain the name of the place glenn na caillighe “Glen of the Caillech” or “Glen of the Hag.” Cáilte responds “It was a day that Finn and the Fianna were here, and we saw a daft thing of a crooked-shinned grimy-looking hag that made for us.” (SG II 204).   Again, the Dooley and Roe translation differs: “Once when Finn and the Fían were here we saw a bow-legged, jet-black hag of a witch coming towards us.”  The person being described here is definitely a woman, and amait is modified by chaillige, the genitive form of caillech “hag, witch, crone.”  There is certainly some significant overlap in the meanings of ammait and caillech.
3. plural na hammiti (LL 145 a 37)
   This example comes from a poem in the Book of Leinster that has not yet been translated and the only edition is to be found in the diplomatic edition of the Book of Leinster. The poem in question is “Arí richid, réidig dam” by the 11th c. poet Gilla in Chomdid úa Chormaic.  It’s unfortunate that there’s no translation of this, because it looks like the following line of the poem also contains ammit, the singular form. Based on context though, this seems to be the story of Conall Corc, which involves several different witches, and which I will mention again below.  Hopefully we’ll get a translation of this poem at some point.
4. plural na teora ammiti (LL 120 a 11)
   This one is easier!  It is also from the Book of Leinster, but now we’re in Brislech Mór Maige Muirethemni, a.k.a. “The Death of Cú Chulainn.” In fact, forms of ammait get used several times in this text. This is unsurprising because a key point in the narrative is Cú Chulainn’s encounter with three witches (na téora ammiti) who are described as túathcháecha, which is a compound of “left” and “blind” and usually translated as “blind in the left eye,” although Jacqueline Borsje has argued that it should instead be translated as “with a sinister eye,” and may be understood as a form of the evil eye.¹ These witches trap Cú Chulainn by offering him the meat of a dog. His gessi or “magical prohibitions” mean that he can neither eat the meat of a dog nor refuse food that is offered to him.  By forcing Cú Chulainn to violate one of his gessi, they weaken him critically before his final battle.  When they are referred to individually, the feminine pronoun sí is used for these witches.
5. plural na hamaidi nó na maidi (RC XVI, 145)
   This is from the Rennes dindshenchas, specifically the Dindshenchas of Slíab nGam. I include the full text as it is quite a short article.

Gam the Bright-cheeked, a servant of Eremon the Great, son of Míl of Spain, ‘tis he whom the crones outraged as to his head, and they struck it off him, and they cast the head into the lake or into the well. And from the disturbance which the head caused to the well it has at one time a bitter taste and at another it is pure spring-water. Wherefore from that Gam Sliab nGam is so called.

Stokes translates na hamaidi as “the crones” but leaves out the second part of the phrase nó na maidi “and the maidi,” whatever maidi might be.  Stokes’ note on the passage reads “maidi is obscure to me; but amaidi seems = ammiti of LL. 120^a 11 … .” The latter is of course the passage from Brislech Mór Maige Muirthemni discussed above.  eDIL does have an entry for maidi but it is preceded by a question mark and this is the only example listed. They remark “prob. a scribal dittology,” meaning the scribe has simply repeated the word.  A similar phenomenon is the dittography, in which a scribe repeats a few letters.

In all the examples listed above, the ammait is either unambiguously female or of indeterminate gender. For the meaning “an idiot,” Meyer gives only the following example:

urlabhra amaidi “the language of an idiot” (MR. 294, 21)

In this meaning, the word ammait is usually seen as connected to the word ammatán “a fool, and idiot,” but that word has no connection to witches, wizards, or any other kind of magic, nor is it gender specific.  If you’re interested in learning more about the etymology of this word and the semantic link between “witch” and “fool,” you can take a look at Anders Richardt Jørgensen’s 2009 article “Irish báeth, báes, bés, ammait and Breton boaz, amoed.” A more detailed discussion of the etymology can be found in T.F. O’Rahilly’s “Notes, Mainly Etymological” in Ériu 13 (1942).

Let’s go back now to Meyer’s actual first example, which is the following:

in benammait = Morrígan, LL. 168 a 38
This passage is located in the Book of Leinster prose dindshenchas. There is no translation available of the LL prose dindshenchas, but this particular article is the Dindshenchas of Odras, which is also found in the metrical and Rennes dindshenchas, although in a clearly different version. These other texts do not refer to the Morrígan as benammait.

The form benammait is interesting because it is a compound of ben “woman” and ammait. Why would you prefix “woman” to a noun that is already explicitly female?  That could explain Meyer’s understanding of ammait alone to apply to both men and women. eDIL points to another use of this compound in Cóir Anmann and suggests that the function of the prefix is “merely intensive,” because like the Morrígan, the people described using forms of banammait in Cóir Anmann are unambiguously women.  In Cóir Anmann, the compound can be found in the item giving the origin of the name Conall Corc. He is the foster-son of one witch and his ear is burned and made red (“corc”) when other witches try to steal him away. In Whitley Stokes’ edition, cited by eDIL, this is number 54 and appears on p. 310-313.  In the more recent edition of Sharon Arbuthnot, this item can be found in both the earliest version of the text, which she calls CA2, and in the longest version of the text, which she calls CA3.  In CA2, which is in the first volume of Arbuthnot’s edition, the story of Conall Corc is item 61 (p. 93-94 and translation p. 132).   CA3 is in the second volume and this is item 57 (p. 16-17, translation p. 93-94).

There are a few other insights to be gained from considering some of the other uses of the word ammait listed in eDIL.

In the text In Cath Catharda, an adaptation of part of Lucan’s Pharsalia, ammait is given as a clarification or explanation of bandraí:

lines 3900-3901: ar ro sail a fhis cinnte d’fogbail o bandruidib in tire i m-boi .i. o ammaitib na Tesaili.
p. 254: for he thought he would obtain his certain knowledge from the druidesses of the land wherein he was, that is, from the witches of Thessaly.

In Togail na Tebe “The destruction of Thebes” the word is used to describe the Fury Tisiphone.  Interestingly, in Táin Bó Cúailnge Rec.1, the Morrígan is referred to as Alecto, another Fury and sister of Tisiphone (l. 995 of text, p. 152 of translation).

Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh “The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill” contains the phrase geliti glinni ⁊ amati adgaill “wild-men of the glens and injuring hags.”  Funnily enough, I actually wrote about this passage in an article published in 2013: “The Description of the Dond Cúalnge in the LL Táin Bó Cúalnge and Indo-European Catalogue Poetry.” I discussed this example in the context of a discussion of the phrase bánánach nó bocánach nó geniti glinni, which O’Rahilly translates as “spectre or sprite or spirit of the glen.” The grouping of these three beings, whose exact natures are far from clear, occurs in many places and I suggested that they are particularly associated with the sounds of battle.² In some texts though, the list continues past the geniti glinni.  In the description of Cú Chulainn’s combat with Fer Diad, we get bánanach ⁊ bocánaig ⁊ geniti glinni ⁊ demna aeóir, adding “demons of the air” at the end of the set.  In Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh we have a much longer list: bananaig ocus boccanaig ocus geliti glinne ocus amati adgaill ocus siabra ocus seneoin ocus demna admílti aeoir ocus firmaminti ocus siabarsluag debil demnach. Based on various discussions of these types of creatures in eDIL and elsewhere, I translated this passage as “battle-spectres and goat-like battle spectres and wild-men of the glens and injuring hags and phantoms and ancient birds and destroying demons of the air and of the firmament and ominous phantom hosts of demons.” Here geniti is replaced by geliti “wild men.” 

James Henthorn Todd, the original editor and translator of the text instead translated this passage as: “the satyrs and the idiots and the maniacs of the valleys and the witches and the goblins and the ancient birds and the destroying demons of the air and of the firmament and the feeble demoniac phantom host.” Here we see that in trying to translate the names of supernatural beings, we have the same problem as in trying to translate the names of practitioners of magic.  We know that these are supernatural creatures, and so Todd tries to map them to the names of creatures that we know in English – like satyrs and goblins – without any real rhyme or reason. At the very least, I would have used “satyr” for boccanaig rather than bananaig, since boccanaig (eDIL s.v. bocánach) seems to be connected to words like boc and bocán “he-goat.” The point here, of course, is that the ammait belongs with various types of harmful and even malevolent supernatural creatures, including various types of demons, and so is not only a name for a type of practitioner of magic.

The association of the ammait with the demonic and supernatural is found also in the phrase na n-amaidead n-ifernaidi in “The banquet of Dun na n-Gedh and The battle of Magh Rath.”  O’Donovan translates the phrase “infernal agents,” but “infernal witches” might be more accurate.  These “infernal witches” are pressing destruction against the high king of Ulster, and the text goes on to identify them further.  They are na tri h-úire urbadacha ifernaidi … .i. Eleacto, ocus Megara, ocus Tisifone … “the three destructive infernal furies Electo, Megaera, and Tesiphone” (166-7).

In spite of Meyer’s assertion that the word ammait could be used for men and women, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence for that, and the use of the word to describe Cú Roí seems to be something of an aberration.  The beings referred to using forms of the word ammait are for the most part unambiguously female and although some do not have a specified gender, none, other than Cú Roí himself, are explicitly male.  Those described using ammait or benammait seem to fall into two main categories: 1) supernatural women, including Furies, the Morrígan, and other infernal beings, and 2) practitioners of magic.  Cú Roí clearly falls into the latter category.  But why the word ammait? There are many words that describe practitioners of magic that could have been used here, even if the storyteller was particularly avoiding the word druí “druid,” because Cú Roí does not seem to have been a druid.  In fact, although he is often shown to have magical abilities, I have not seen words for practitioners of magic used of Cú Roí elsewhere.

So, is it better to translate ind ammait ⁊ in corrguinech as “the witch and the sorcerer” or as “the wizard and the sorcerer”?  I think the question is really this: would the original audience of the story have found the use of ammait to describe Cú Roí jarring and disconcerting, or would they have understood it as a neutral way to describe him as practitioner of some form of magic, particularly in combination with in corrguinech?  If the use of ammait is meant to be jarring, then “witch” is best to produce the same effect on readers of the translation. If not, then “wizard” is likely a better choice. In translating the word as “mad man,” “wizard,” and “Hexenmeister,” O’Grady, Meyer, and Thurneysen made the common sense choice of using a male word to describe a being they knew or believed to be male.

Ultimately, dictionaries can only provide a theory about the meaning of a word based on the available evidence.  We do not have a complete collection of all uses of forms of ammait, nor any of the other words for practitioners of magic that might allow us to distinguish between them. Neither Meyer’s Contributions to Irish Lexicography nor the Dictionary of the Irish Language includes the example of ammait as used to describe Cú Roí. There may well be other similar examples of men described as ammait, but maybe this is just one of the ways in which Cú Roí is something of a strange and mysterious figure, perhaps even to the storytellers who crafted and transmitted his legend.  The use of ammait of Cú Roí in the earliest version of his death tale is just one of the many interesting features that this text has to offer us.

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In my next post, I’ll be taking a closer look at one of the other distinctive features of Version 1 of Aided Chon Roí: that his soul is hidden in a golden apple and that he is tricked into revealing this secret, which make it possible for him to be killed.