Giollaí na freagrach
From the testimony of Dr James McDonnell, it seems that Arthur O' Neill, who taught the harp for
the Belfast Harp Society, was the last to teach in the native language, so that, down the line,
Patrick O' Byrne (taught by one of O' Neill's pupils, Edward MacBride) knew very few of the Irish
terms for the strings of the Gaelic harp. Patrick O' Byrne apparently intended to acquire some
of the names from a Miss Reilly of Garva, Co. Down (perhaps Bridget O' Reilly from Virginia, Co.
Cavan, another of O' Neill's pupils). According to McDonnell, he believed that all the strings had
names and gave the following term 'Gilli ni fregrach ni Kaulai', 'the servants of the answers to
the-Sisters', as an example demonstrating this.
The form "Gilli ni fregrach ni Kaulai", through comparison with its English counterpart 'the
servants of the answers to the-Sisters', appears to reflect the grammatical construction of
English by having the definite article in Gaelic, 'na', appear twice. This is a grammatical fault in
Gaelic. It is impossible to determine whether MacDonnell's or Byrne's Irish is at fault here, either
in the written form or in the given interpretation. The complete set of components of this Irish
and their possible interpretations, whether erroneous or not, are
In short, we cannot tell from this Irish whether there should be two servants or one, nor whether
there should be two answers or one. Concomitantly it is not clear that the English translation
represents genuine string names in Irish.
'Giollaí...' (servants)
'Giolla...' (servant)
'...na freagach...' (of the answers)
'...freagrach...' (of the answer)
...na comlaí (of the sisters)