Modern Irish - Naomh Pádraig agus na Saoir Chloch

St. Patrick and the Stonemasons

‘Naomh Pádraig agus na Saoir Chloch’, in Risteard B. Breatnach, The Irish of Ring Co. Waterford: A Phonetic Study (Dublin 1947), p. 115.

The word saer referred to an ‘artificer’ or ‘craftsman’, and later more particularly to carpenters and masons. This story accounts for the hard life of the stonemason (saor cloiche), who travels far from home, laying and fashioning stone.  It also recalls hagiographical depictions of St. Patrick pronouncing a curse (mallacht), and prohibitions against working on Sunday (Domhnach).  St. Patrick meets three stonemasons building a house on Sunday. He generously gives them a day’s wages and tells them to go to Mass and to desist from any further work on that day. However, they spend the money on drink and resume working. Accordingly, the saint pronounces a collective or ‘mass curse’ (sluagh-mallacht) upon them, and those who adopt their trade bear the distinctive traits of that curse: long walking and worn out, broken shoes. The story was told by Míchéal Ó Cinn Fhaoladh (†1956), a native speaker from Ring (An Rinn), Co. Waterford, a region known as na Déise. Listeners will hear the interrogative dé chúis ‘why’, and the reduction of the preverb do to dh’ before vowels—distinctive features of the dialect.  The story is read by Professor Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha in the dialect of Ring, Co. Waterford. (Recorded at the University of Cambridge Language Centre by Saimon Clark, Media Editor, March 2014)