While reading P.L. Henry’s 1995 edition and translation of Amrae Chon Roí, I noticed that in a footnote (180 n. 7) he suggests a different reading of a passage from Version 1 of Aided Chon Roí. The passage in question is close to the beginning of the text and it has a significant impact on our understanding of the relationship between Bláithine and Cú Roí.
Thurneysen gives the following reading of the passage:
Con·diacht (?) Bláithine ingin Conchobuir, conda·bert dia daim. Nos·car si ind ammait ⁊ in corrguinech Cú Roí mac Dáire.
He translated this passage into German as follows:
Er verlangte Blathine, Conchobar’s Tochter, und führte sie mit ihrem Willen weg. (Doch?) liebte sie der Hexenmeister und Zauberer Cú Roí, Dare’s Sohn.
I translated this passage into English as:
He asked for Bláithine daughter of Conchobar, and he brought her away by her consent. The witch and sorcerer Cú Roí son of Dáre loved her.
(The “he” in question here is Echde Echbél, who came to Emain Macha and asked that Bláithine be given to him.)
Henry, however, offers the following reading of these lines:
Con[d]ieth Blaithini, ingen Conchobuir. Con·epert dia daim: “Noch carus-[s]a in [n-] ammait ocus in corrguine[ch] Con Roi…”
He gives the following as a translation:
He brought away B., C.’s daughter. She said of her own accord: “But I have loved the wizard and sorcerer Cú Roí…”
The sense of the first few words remains the same – that Echde Echbél took Bláithine, Conchobar’s daughter, away from Emain Macha. In the next sentence, however, Bláithine either goes with Echde of her own free will, although Cú Roí loved her, OR Bláithine declares of her own free will her love for Cú Roí. This offers two very different perspectives on Bláithine’s relationships with Echde Echbél and with Cú Roí. So which is the correct reading?
R.I. Best produced the following transcription of the passage, in which he attempted to reproduce the text as it occurs in the manuscript without editorial interference:
conieth blaithine .ī. ɔcħ ɔdept̅ diadhaimh nō̇ carusa inamuψ ⁊ in corrguine ɔruio m̅ daire.
We are very fortunate that so many medieval Irish manuscripts are now digitized and freely available to view online. This text is found only in one manuscript, Egerton 88, where this passage occurs starting at the end of the second line in the first column of folio 10r. Looking at the manuscript, I have very little to add to Best’s transcription. He has used <h> in conieth, blaithine, and dhaimh where the manuscript uses the punctum delens (a dot above a letter), but that is an unambiguous symbol – an <ṁ> indicates a lenited m, pronounced something like English v, and the standard transcription for this is <mh>.
The first verb form in the manuscript is conieth. Thurneysen and Henry both insert a <d>. Thurneysen emends this to con·diacht and reads it as a form of con-dïeig “asks, seeks, demands.” Henry instead reads it as con·dieth and translates it as “brought away.” I am not certain which verb he had in mind here.
There are certainly forms of con·dïeig that show assimilation of the d to the preceding n, so things like condaigi and connaigi both exist, and the nn can be also simplified to a single n in forms like conatig and conaitech. Thurneysen’s reading here seems reasonable, although I do wonder if conieth could be a form of the verb con·éitet “goes with, accompanies, yields to.”
Regardless of the exact verb, the sense of the passage is clear. Bláithine is given to Echde and goes with him.
The next sentence or clause begins with a verb that Thurneysen takes as conda·bert and Henry as con·epert. Both start with co “so that, until” with following nasalization. Thurneysen gives the feminine infixed pronoun da next, and this is the object of the following verb, which is a form of the verb beirid “brings, carries, takes, etc.” Thus: “he brought her.” Given this reading, the following words dia daim “by her consent/assent/will” suggest that Echde took Bláithine and Bláithine was willing and agreed to this.
Henry instead reads the verb as epert, a form of the verb as·beir “speaks, says,” thus “she said of her own accord.” He takes the remainder of the sentence as direct speech, and it consists of Bláithine’s freely given declaration of her love for Cú Roí.
The manuscript here has ɔdept̅. The use of ɔ for con is standard, and the line over the t indicates the need to expand the word. Both Thurneysen and Henry expand –er– here. The question then is the –dep-. The use of p for b in Thurneysen’s reading is not a problem here, as this is not unusual and occurs again just a few lines after this, where the form as·mberar appears as amp̅ar, with the line over the p expanded as -er- again. For Thurneysen’s reading to be correct, we must take the e as an a. For Henry’s reading to be correct, we must explain the d. Henry ignores it, but one possibility is that it is a third singular neuter infixed pronoun. We might then translate cond·epert as “so that she said it.” Neuter infixed pronouns are often “fossilized,” however, meaning that they are present but no longer have any force or meaning and are best simply ignored in translation.
The following words can help with the determination of which of these two options is best. First the manuscript has nō̇, which Henry expands as noch “but, however, and yet” and Thurneysen as nos: the preverb no, used with imperfect verbs, and the feminine infixed pronoun s, indicating that “her,” Bláithine, is the object of the following verb. That verb is presented in the manuscript as carusa. Taken as is, we have caru, the first singular present indicative active of the verb caraid “to love,” with -sa the first singular emphasizing pronoun agreeing with the subject of the verb. This is how Henry reads this verb, and since a first person verb indicates direct speech, epert is a good reading for the preceding verb. Thurneysen instead emends carusa to car si, with car the preterite and perfect (or past tense) third singular of the verb and si the third singular feminine form of the emphasizing pronoun, here agreeing with the object of the verb. My inclination is to take the manuscript at face value, especially where the reading is so clear.
The crucial question, of course, is who is the subject of the verb “to love” and who is the object? Thurneysen takes Cú Roí as the subject and Bláithine as the object: Cú Roí loves Bláithine. Henry instead takes Bláithine as the subject (and speaker) and Cú Roí as the object: Bláithine loves Cú Roí. On this point, the manuscript is entirely clear: ɔruio must be read conruio, or Con Ruí, not Cú Roí. Cú is the nominative form, used to indicate subject, and Con is the accusative, used to indicate object. Con Roí cannot be the subject of the verb, and therefore this passage is telling us that Bláithine loved Cú Roí, and not the other way around. Of course, given that he twice pursued her, first to reclaim her from Echde Echbél and then to claim her from the Ulaid when they reneged on their promise to give her to him, it is safe to say that the feeling was mutual.
We could therefore translate the passage as follows:
He asked for Bláithine, daughter of Conchobar, and she said it of her own accord: “However, I love the sorcerer and magician Cú Roí.”
I do find it slightly strange that Bláithine is described as speaking with her own assent though. Here the manuscript again offers an alternative. Both Thurneysen and Henry emended the manuscript reading from dia dhaimh to dia daim. The difference between mh and m is merely a spelling variation. The difference between dh and d, however, is a grammatical one. In dia we have a form of the preposition de, di “from, etc.” with a possessive pronoun. If that pronoun is feminine, then we have “from her, by her” and dia daim is the correct reading. If, however, that pronoun is masculine, then we have “from his” and we would expect lenition on the following consonant: dia dhaim. Given that this is what the manuscript has, we might be better off reading this as “from his assent” or “according to his will.” We might then translate this passage as:
He asked for Bláithine, daughter of Conchobar, and she said (it): “According to his will. However, however I love the sorcerer and magician Cú Roí.”
That is, she will follow Echde’s will, but she loves Cú Roí. In the manuscript there are no quotation marks, and so it is for the editor to determine where the direct speech begins here. I do also think that if conieth is a form of con-éitet, then the following is also possible:
Bláithine, daughter of Conchobar, yielded (to him), and she said (it): “According to his will. However, I love the sorcerer and magician Cú Roí.”
In other versions of the text, Bláithine, elsewhere called Bláthnait, loves Cú Chulainn rather than Cú Roí, and he loves her in return – this is what drives her to help Cú Chulainn to kill Cú Roí. In this version, however, she does love Cú Roí, and Cú Chulainn gains her assistance by appealing to her loyalty to her father and to her people. This is only one sentence, but it is crucial to the plot and offers another significant difference between this story and other versions of Aided Chon Roí.