The Wee Book Series. The Wee Book of Irish Blessing, Proverbs and Toasts

Awakening sweet memories, calling the heart back home. May your days be as sparkling as an Irish smile, The dew on the shamrock and the Emerald Isle. May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face And rains fall soft upon your fields. And, until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

The Wee Book of Irish Blessings, Toasts and Proverbs.

Gratitude is an attitude that lifts your spirits. Toasts and blessings remind us of abundance. Use these tips to Escape the Scarcity Mentality Jungle if you want to focus more on prosperity. Patrick's Day , St. Patrick's Day toasts , the best Irish toasts , toast. On March 17, , posted in: Blog by drjulie Tags: Perhaps it is best that there is no 'as Gaeilge' version of The Wizard of Oz.

If you only learn one seanfhocal this week, this should be the one.

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A familiar English language equivalent might be: This can be taken on a superficial, physical level such as when people elicit the help of others to find a lost object or person. On another level, this seanfhocal refers to the deeper understanding which can be obtained when multiple people examine consider a problem or situation. The sharing of ideas and perspectives among a group of people can often develop insights which would otherwise have been missed by an individual. In normal "running" speech, neutral vowel sounds tend to get "swallowed up".

For instance, although the speaker here is pronouncing the words here deliberately and distinctly for your benefit, conversational speech would sound somewhat different. As a result the two words would sound almost like one word, "duin-a-mhain. In general, neutral vowels tend to fall off the end of words that are followed by words beginning with another vowel. Since at least the time of Strongbow and probably longer disunity has left Ireland open to her enemies.

This seanfhocal expresses the still unfulfilled dream of Irish unity, be it political or cultural. Likewise, even when speaking English, it is often said that someone has "the Irish" meaning the Irish language , which mirrors the Irish reference to "an Ghaeilge". Literally, this proverbs means, "May God leave your health at you. God is an active agent in one's life.

Please God and your health is spared. Anger God and your health could be withdrawn. According to an earlier proverb, live long enough and God will take it away from you in the Fiche bliain ag meath. This idea of supernatural cause and natural effect goes back to the ancient Druids. Druids never composed anything comparable to the Book of Job. They never wondered why there is misery in life. Every thing in nature happens for a supernatural reason. Gods of the underworld controlled the seasons.

Planting began only after asking these gods for permission. Harvesting had to be completed before the end of the season when the gods would take back the land. That is why is is still considered bad luck in some part of Ireland to eat wild berries after Lughnasa.

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May the devil make a ladder of your backbone [and] pluck apples in the garden of hell. A great curse seeks to conjure the worst fate that can be conceived for the cursed. This week's proverb goes beyond the common curse, "Go to hell. May his evil hooves crush your spine as he picks apples to lure your friends and relations to join you. If Adam and Eve could not resist the devil's apples, what chance does your loved ones have? In addition to the pain, you would bear the guilt of being an instrument of the devil. Compared to this curse, simply going to hell would be a walk in the park.

Toast (honor)

The verb 'go ndeine' is the subjunctive form of the irregular verb 'dein. Consequently, the subjunctive mood is most often used to curse, to bless, and to pray. It has been said that Irish toasts are like prayers. This week's seanfhocal is a toast that follows in that tradition. Like most prayers it asks God for something. Like most prayers it uses the subjunctive mood to do this, i. This is a popular toast that is often given in two parts.

Irish protocol requires the women to give themselves a greater toast. The version above used the older dative plural, 'chuig na fir' to the men , which used to be required by the preposition 'chuig' or 'chun'. However, to the delight of beginners and the despondency of purists, the dative form of the noun has practically disappeared from the Irish language.

It survives in some old sayings. Eclipsis occurs in certain grammatical contexts when an initial consonant is phonetically replaced by another consonant. For example, to form the subjunctive form of the verb 'beir' give birth to , it is eclipsed, the vowel 'e' is appended, and the particle 'go' is put in front. The consonant 'b' is always eclipsed by the consonant 'm'.

Eclipsis means that the 'm' is now pronounced instead of the 'b' in 'go mbeire' making the eclipsed 'b' silent. Therefore, 'go mbeire' is almost pronounced like 'go maire'. The verb 'go maire' is also in the subjunctive form. However, the letter 'm' is never eclipsed. Don't go out of your way to get in trouble.

Never trouble trouble until trouble troubles you. Do not meet troubles half way. Troubles are like the rough in golf; the trick is not staying out, but getting out after we are in. It will put an h before a following verb that begins with a vowel.

Don't drink sour milk. Nach can be used either as an interogatory verbal particle or as a relative verbal particle. In either case, it requires the following verb to be eclipsed. There is another variation to this week's proverb. Don't show your teeth in a place you may not be able to take a bite out. In Scots Gaelic, there is a slight variation. Sun Tzu knew this in B. In the two Irish versions of this week's proverb, there are two different plural forms of the word 'fiacail,' namely 'fiacla' and 'fiacail.

In parts of Donegal, you will see the non-standard plural, 'fiacail. Such is not the case. In fact, nobody speaks the official standard. The official standard is a standard for spelling and grammar, not pronunciation. There was a bell in the church and it wasn't very sweet sounding. But another bell came to the church and made a sweet bell of the first one. This week's seanfhocal is a play on words and a parable. The word bell appears in two sentences as both the subject and the object of the sentence.

In the first sentence, the clock in the church is not sweet. In the second it is. This word play seems designed to confuse. It begs the speaker to say it again. The parable has a simple moral. No matter what the situation, it could always be worse. Or on this case, we have an example of Robert Burns' adage, "The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft a-gley.

Our thanks go to Brendan McSherry for this week's proverb. In is simplest sense it is a lesson in masonry. A spall or gallet is a small flake or chip of stone produced by splitting a larger stone. Practiced masons can create any size and shape chip they want. A deft blow of the hammer will create a chip to fit any whole in a wall.

In fact, the word spall comes from the Old German word spell which means to split. Therefore, walls, especially walls made without mortar, need many of these chips if they are to stand for any length of time. On a deeper level, it is a metaphor about society and about life. There is the American expression "all chiefs and no Indians" used to deride a group with all leaders and no followers.

Such a situation is comically doomed to failure. You obviously need more of the latter than the former to be successful. Another interpretation of this metaphor concerns a healthy balance in life. It is easy to focus all of our attention on the big things in life and forget the little things.

For example, many spend all their energy on advancing their careers. They lose sight of the little things in life, like watching your daughter's first goal in a soccer match, taking your son to the museum, or simply enjoying a quiet sunset. Their lives, like walls without spalls, will soon collapse under their own weight. The Scots have a similar proverb, "Wiles help weak folk. Consider two other proverbs. Strength is not enduring. Sense does not come before age. Given these cultural beliefs, it is not surprising that most of these tales involve clever old seers.

The tradition spans centuries from the ancient mythic personification of wisdom, the sear Find in the Fionn mac Cumhaill sagas, to the later tales of Merlin the Magician. However, some may be troubled by this negative particle. Continuing last week's theme that silence is golden, we present a proverb that goes back to Roman times.

The Latin version is, "Audi, vide, tace; si vis vivere in pace. It becomes apparent that French derived from Latin in this Gallic proverb, "Oye, vois, et te taise, Si tu veux vivre en paix. Spanish has a more curt, imperative variation, "Ver, Oir, y callar. Benjamin Franklin put a little twist on the theme,"He that speaks much, is much mistaken. The oral tradition of Ireland has always maintained that the Gael came to Ireland from Spain. Perhaps this week's proverb has the same author as this Spanish proverb, "En boca cerrada no entran moscas.

A similar Spanish proverb may have its origin in the bible, "El pez muere la boca. The fool takes no delight in understanding, but rather in displayng what he thinks. The fool's lips lead him into strife, and his mouth provokes a beating. The fool's mouth is his ruin; His lips are a snare to his life. The Book of Proverbs, 18;2,7,8. We have seen the idea of a mouth provoking a beating before.

It's often that a person's mouth broke his nose. Is minic a ghearr teanga duine a scornach. It is often that a person's tongue cut his throat. George Bernard Shaw adapted this theme to the English mouth. This week's seanfhocal is universal, as many proverbs are. Leabhar na Seanfhocal It is an honor for a person to cease from strife: The Book of Proverbs This seanfhocal exhibits the wide semantic range of Irish verbs and their semantic extension under the influence of prepositions. One of the difficulties students of Irish encounter early in their studies is the different semantic range of Irish and English words, i.

In this case the verb 'bain' has many different meanings. Extract from bed in the ground, dig out" to "8. This seanfhocal plays with two equivocal meanings of 'bain do,' namely 'interfere with' and 'concern'. He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.

Frost lived in New Hampshire where the fences are like those of Ireland, made over a long period of time from rocks without mortar. The rocks were extracted from a stony soil by persistent farmers. Frost goes on to wonder:. Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. But there are cows in Ireland. Is it fences that will prevent plunder? There is another meaning of "foghail", trespass. Considering the current politics of Northern Ireland, Frost was correct when he concluded that:. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down This might be more colorfully be said as: Note also that although the seanfhocal speaks of a "person" duine , it goes on to refer to "his throat".

Much as in English in the days before political correctness , when it is necessary to ascribe gender to a person or people, the masculine gender is used. This can be viewed as either giving the subject "the benefit of the doubt", or as a subtle statement that males come closest to the non-descript neuter gender. This is a play on the multiple meanings of words. In this case the mouth does not physically break the nose in question. Rather, the mouth sets a chain of events in motion by speaking offensive words by being "mouthy" which results in injury to its neighbor, the nose.

Most people are familiar with the Modern English proverb, "Practice makes perfect. It conjures up the image of the beginning musician struggling to learn the cords of her instrument. Perhaps, it evokes the scene of a budding Gaeilgeoir listening to a tape of spoken set phrases and repeating them over and over again. But there is another subtle semantic variation of this week's proverb that is better captured in the Old English version of this proverb, "Use maketh mastery.

It also means experience. In this sense, mastery comes from doing.

The maestro masters his instrument by performance, not just through the repetition of practice exercises. The Gaeilgeoir becomes fluent not from just doing her lessons regularly but by using the language. Join us at an immersion weekend. Use the language you are practicing and you will gain mastery. This week's proverb appears in almost every European language. The first known writing of it is attributed to Puplilius Syrus, a first century Latin writer, "Saxum volutum non obducitur musco. Italian -- "Pietra mossa non fa musco. The idea is that if you keep yourself busy, if you keep moving, you will be free of the hindrances and distractions that afflict the sedentary.

Like the rolling stone, you will not be swallowed up in useless moss. In the parlance of the Television Age, you will not become a couch potato. You are not likely to find the word 'reatha' in an Irish dictionary, at least not directly. It is not a headword. The head word in this case is 'rith' which means 'run. This proverb, like many, is equivocal. It could be interpreted in two different ways. On the one hand, it could be used as a indicator of a good worker. She gets the job done. On the other hand, this could also mean that unless one speaks up one is likely to be exploited.

Like the horse in George Orwell's "Animal Farm", he can passively accept more and more work until his health fails him. He needs to know when to say no. He can not do everything. This proverb is akin to the American one, "Wishes won't wash dishes. While it is wise to plan ahead, to think of the best way to accomplish a task, it can be foolish to dwell upon it.

Pondering an unpleasant task only makes it worse. If one has to eat a toad, it is best not to stare at it for too long. This proverb is also an Irish version of the rule. The rule is based on the Pareto Distribution. This skewed distribution of wealth has been generalized into other areas, e. So don't start with the end of a job, with the tail of any job; jump into the meat of it first. This weeks' proverb contains an idiomatic homage to St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland and the first bishop of Armagh.

So the allusion is to a young St. Patrick was a slave of an Antrim chieftain named Miliucc, who ruled an area around Slemish Mountain. Tending the flocks, far from his home in Celtic Britannia, he prayed and fasted for redemption. In Patrick's Confession, he wrote of a dream in which a voice told him "Thou fastest well, soon thy will go to thy Fatherland. In northern Gaul, young Patrick and his party wandered in a dessert on the verge of starvation. All were amazed that Patrick always eat less than his comrades. On the verge of starvation, Patrick convinced his party to pray for redemption.

Shortly afterward, they chanced upon a wild herd of pigs. Patrick brought this fasting devotion back to Ireland to his ministry of the Gaels. Each Lent, he would fast in solitude at "the places where no man dwells. There he abstained from meat and fasted, living on meager roots, for forty days and nights. Pilgrims climb this mountain every March 17 in his memory, some barefoot, others on their knees.

His memory is further honored in the Irish idiom that equates "Patrick's share of the root" with the "smallest part of anything. One cannot be at two places at once. This is the usual English translation for this week's proverb. It has become an idiomatic expression in the Irish language. For example, suppose one wanted to say in Irish, "He is trying to do two things at once. He is trying to attend to the two beaches.

Another form of the proverb uses an older present tense form of the verb 'tar,' namely 'tig. In addition to spatial limitations, there is also a sense of temporal limitations in this week's proverb. Birds, especially marine birds like the sandpiper, had a mystical, almost divine place, in most ancient European cultures.

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6. Seanfhocal na Seachtaine.

They lived in the four Greek elements of nature; earth, air, fire, and water. They could walk on the earth. They could fly through the air. They could swim in the water. Some believed they flew into the sun at dusk and out of it at dawn. Ancient Celts shared this Greek world view. Druids believed nature's elements could be reduced to fire and water. Birds, like the Phoenix, could live in either. In any case, one could thus 'divine' truth from the observation of these ornithological 'divinities.

You will never get anything accomplished like mastering 'an Ghaeilge' by just sitting around thinking about it. Active people reap the benefits of their exertions. The Irish language has terms for parts and areas of the body which go nameless in other languages. That being said, it is curious that the word "cos" can refer to either the leg or the foot; and it is often used without really differentiating which portion of the appendage is in question. A person with a positive attitude might say that "A penny saved is a penny earned" while a cynic might say that "Money comes to money".

This seanfhocal, in any event, encourages saving, whether it be in a mattress, piggy bank or with your friendly nieghborhood banker. It is uncertain whether this seanfhocal will be "devalued" when Ireland switches her currency to the Euro. This seanfhocal serves to encourage hard work. The Irish as a people much prefer working with family and friends as opposed to solitary labor.

A group of people which comes together to help a neighbor or to accomplish some community project is known as a "meitheal". It would put one in mind of the "barn raisings" which were common in American pioneer days. An English language saying with a similar theme might be "Anything worth doing is worth doing well". Especially in rural areas, the people are very conscious of who accomplished particular pieces of work.

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It is common in Connemara, for instance, for people to refer to whose father, great-grandfather, etc. This is reminiscent of the English language proverb "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise". One obvious difference, however, is that the seanfhocal only gives advice on when to sleep, but does not go on to say what the benefits will be such as health, wealth and wisdom.

Perhaps this is indicative of a lack of conviction about the true value of the advice. The Irish reputation for enjoying the benefits of late night revelry certainly runs contrary to the dour advice offered in this seanfhocal. The English language equivalent, obviously, is "Strike while the iron is hot. It is not as though the Irish lack the capacity to be descriptive. The language has, for instance, many words for the various shades of green much like the Eskimos who have many words to describe the various kinds of snow.

Note also that although the Irish word "Is" looks exactly like the English word "Is", the pronunciation is not the same. The Irish sound rhymes with "hiss", as when you let the air out of a tire. You have to take the bad with the good. Even the Spring has cold. You can not have one without the other. You can not have good without bad. You can not have cold without hot. This is a Celtic duality alluded to an in a Scots variant of this week's proverb, "Cha tig fuachd gu 'n tig Earrach.

The Celtic year begins in winter when it is cold. But in a sense, you can not know it is cold because you do not have warm to compare it with. In the Spring, however, you have both, warm and cold, and each acts as a point of reference for the other. Each allows you to know the other. The wisdom of this proverb is self-evident to many. This is true of any caregiver, any parent, any babysitter, who has been imprisoned with children due to inclement weather.

These people have discovered that the walls of any enclosure are not capable of releasing the vast stores of energy pent-up in every child. This proverb is also a word-play on the genitive case. Irish is an inflected language. This means that the role a noun plays in a sentence is determined by a case ending. For example, if a noun is the subject of the sentence, it would require a nominative case ending. If it were the object of the sentence, it would require the accusative case ending. Consider the following sentence.

The sentence is about the car.

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On the other hand, the wall was the object of the action of the car. The ritual forms the basis of the literary and performance genre, of which Mark Twain's "To the Babies" is a well-known example. The toast as described here is rooted in Western culture , but certain cultures outside that sphere have their own traditions in which consuming a drink is connected with ideas of celebration and honor. While the physical and verbal ritual of the toast may be elaborate and formal, merely raising one's glass towards someone or something and then drinking is essentially a toast as well, the message being one of goodwill towards the person or thing indicated.

According to various apocryphal stories, the custom of touching glasses evolved from concerns about poisoning. By one account, clinking glasses together would cause each drink to spill over into the others' though there is no real evidence for such an origin. The word originally referred to the lady in whose honor the drink was proposed, her name being seen as figuratively flavoring the drink. Toasts are generally offered at times of celebration or commemoration, including certain holidays, such as New Year's Eve.

Other occasions include retirement celebrations, housewarming parties, births, etc. At a wedding reception , the father of the bride , in his role as host, regularly offers the first toast, thanking the guests for attending, offering tasteful remembrances of the bride's childhood, and wishing the newlyweds a happy life together. The best man usually proposes a toast in the form of best wishes and congratulations to the newlyweds. A best man's toast takes the form of a short speech 3—5 minutes that combines a mixture of humor and sincerity.

The actual "toast" is then delivered at the end of the speech and is a short phrase wishing the newlyweds a happy, healthy, loving life together. The maid of honor may follow suit, appropriately tailoring her comments to the bride. The groom may offer the final toast, thanking the bride's parents for hosting the wedding, the wedding party for their participation, and finally dedicating the toast to the bridesmaids.

Typical traditional wedding toasts include the following: May you both live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live May the best of your yesterdays be the worst of your tomorrows. Toasts are also offered on patriotic occasions, as in the case of Stephen Decatur 's famous "Our country! In our intercourse with foreign nations may we always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.

Toasts may be solemn, sentimental, humorous, bawdy, [11] or insulting. At a gathering, none should offer a toast to the guest of honor until the host has had the opportunity to do so. In English-speaking countries, guests may signal their approval of the toast by saying "hear hear". As toasts may occur in long series, experienced attendees often make sure to leave enough wine in the glass to allow participation in numerous toasts. Putting one's glass down before the toast is complete, or simply holding one's glass without drinking is widely regarded as impolite, suggesting that one does not share the benevolent sentiments expressed in the toast, nor the unity and fellowship implicit in toasting itself.

Toasting traditionally involves alcoholic beverages. The person giving the toast should never do so with an empty glass, even if the glass contains nothing more than water. Teetotalers may view the drinking of toasts to be abominable and incompatible with their stand, as witnessed by this narrative from The Teetotaler This gentleman, after dinner, said "he had subscribed to the Teetotal Pledge, which of course was incompatible with the drinking of toasts;" when the Rev.

Blackburn, minister of Claremont Chapel, Pentonville, said "he was not a teetotaler,— he was not in bondage, [23] —and on that subject he had very recently been preaching. Gentleman mean by this, but that he had recently been preaching against Teetotalism?