I wonder what our mathematical friends would say of a language in which the same word is used for a square and a point! As tí is also glossed circle, it would prove a very inconvenient term for the geometer. I believe it means a line: the first passage should be, “its lines are straight,” and the second passage makes an ethical application of these straight lines.
In LB. 119 α 28 it is used of the blue scars [lines] which the poisonous serpent left on the body of Goedel Glas, o na títhib glassa do-s-gní in nathair nemi i n‑a thímchell. The singular of this word occurs in the poem attached to this account:—LB. 119 α 49 a tíí glass ní dechad de, “the blue line never left him”; BM. 18 α 20 an tí glas ni dhechaidh dhe (cf. Keating, Halliday, p. 236; Mahony, p. 163.) Therefore we may fairly infer that tí pl. títhe means lines of any kind, the special meaning being determined by the context, straight as in Cormac, jagged as in LB., or curled, cf. the coil of a tail, as in the Amra (p. 68, Crowe), co tabair tíí di a erbul immpo, and “he puts a line [coil] of his tail around them”.[1]
LB. 137 α 34 indar Hum, a meic (ol se), is celmaine druad ocus methmerchurdacht dogniat, uair ni berait oen chois-cem cen fégad suas, ocus attat oc taccra ocus oc comrad fri araile etarru fen. Before translating the passage, we may consider some other instances of its occurrence : cf. O’Donovan’s Three Fragments, p. 202, is minic do gní mioċélmuine ḋúinn, “it is often thou hast boded evil for us”; F. Mast. iii., p. 2226, tarla ní neṁġnaṫaċ, ⁊ célṁuine ċinneṁnaċ don ḟoslongport, “an unusual accident and a sad fatality occurred to the camp;” ibid., p. 2292, ro baḋ dóiġ lais gur ḃó célṁaineṁ ṁór maiṫes dó, “he deemed it to be an omen of good success ; cf. LB. 152 α 40, ba celmaine maithiusa moir do’n cathraig in ní atcess ann; LB. 152 β 37, ba celmaine cuil ⁊ corpaid ⁊ digla De for in popul in ní-sin, “it was an omen of vice and corruption, and
- ↑ I do not know why Windisch has added to Crowe’s failings of translation in this case. Crowe was publishing the text of LB., and he edited senite from that text, with the translation of nets, for which no doubt he held Cormac’s sén, bird-net, as sufficient warrant (“sén .i. lín a ngabar eoin”, p. 41, Gloss. Cor.), but Windisch, sub voce ti, quotes the Lib. Hymn. text of Stokes (in which the LB. senite is side thí), and then stigmatizes with a ! Crowe’s rendering nets, as if Crowe had read tí. No doubt the Lib. Hymn. text is the better, but Crowe was rendering the LB. text, and should not have been scourged here.
