ext_17913 ([identity profile] ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] sovay 2009-11-23 04:37 am (UTC)

And if that didn't guarantee that I wish those verses had survived . . .

I'll take a look round on your behalf.

There's a good chance that they have survived, although it's not unlikely that the version Petrie didn't keep* would have been an interesting one to have. I'm fairly well sure that "An Buachall Caol Dubh" is still extant in Irish, and, while I don't have a clear picture of the other one (and am also not sure what the proper modern spelling of it is), I'd expect there's at least a chance that I could find it somewhere.

Petrie was a piece of work, in case you've not guessed--he was entranced with the concept of Irish song, but almost completely unable to face the reality of it.

*Then again, there might be a chance that whatever materials Petrie worked from have survived somewhere, as IIRC there's said to be a lot of his notes and manuscripts which remain uncatalogued. Petrie had little Irish, although precisely how little seems to be uncertain--this was actually a minor thread in the paper whence I pulled the quotes (easier than digging out the photocopied bits of his book which I have in a box somewhere); P.W. Joyce, who handled some of the lyrics for him, was, if anything, even worse of a prude than himself, but I suppose it's possible that someone like Eugene O'Curry (a fine scholar in the old Irish tradition) might have contributed material which Petrie might have kept about, somewhere. Maybe.

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