Cawle
A lyric of ten couplets relating to the harp is found in Leabhar an Deathain (the Book of
the Dean of Lismore). The poem was made by Gearoid Iarla, the 3rd Earl of Desmond
and it does not survive elsewhere. Like the rest of the material in Leabhar an Deathain,
Gaelic orthography was not used to dictate this poem; the vaguaries of English spelling,
plus occasional ommissions, mean that any attempt to transcribe the text involves a
significant degree of guesswork. This naturally implies that no conclusive statements can
be made about certain sections of the text.
The poem may describe being unable to tune a harp because one important string was
untunable. The word 'cawle' appears twice in the text, at the beginning of the first and
third couplets.
start of first couplet: Ne eaddowme cawle zlaß
start of third couplet: Di zlassin cawle not
In the manuscript as a whole, the appending of the letter E to a word is often a mannerism
of English spelling and not an indication of a further vowel. After the combination AWL, an
E is normally silent. A sounded vowel after this combination would normally be written as
an A or I. However, terminal E after a consonant is also often used to indicate an /i/ vowel.
The word 'cabhlach' (fleet of ships) would normally be spelled 'cawlyth' therefore the word
represented by the spelling 'cawle' might not have had a CH ending in standard Gaelic
orthography.
The AWL combination, indicating the presence of an /a/ vowel, stands in opposition to the
OWL combination which represents the vowels /o/ and /u/. A straightforward transliteration
would therefore result in the Gaelic words 'call' or 'cabhal'. 'Cabhla' or even 'cabhlaigh',
may also be possible if the E was to be sounded.
'Call' (hazel) is the Gaelic word denoting the letter C and therefore the musical note C.
Consequently, it would be possible to transliterate the first line as 'I cannot tune C' and the
third line possibly as 'I would tune a new C'. The plural of 'call' is 'caill'. The manuscript
often does not mark the palatalisation of consonants, here indicated by the additional
letter I, so the spelling 'cawle' may represent either the singular 'call' or plural 'caill'.
It would also be possible to transliterate the first line as 'ni fheudam cabhlaigh [do] ghleus'
(I cannot tune 'sisters'), perhaps referring to the two sister strings on the Gaelic harp. The
grammar here would seem strange as, in other ancient texts, the sisters take the definite
article, which one would expect in either Gaelic or English in relation to two specific strings.
Tthe last syllable of 'eaddowme' would be more normally spelled '-wm'. The OWME
combination cannot represent an OMNE combination (releasing the possibility that NE is
the plural article) as the W is clearly written as such. Furthermore, the plural article is
normally spelled 'ni' in Leabhar an Deathain.
There is the possibility that the poem was copied from another (perhaps unclear) textual
source which originally had something like 'ne eaddom ne cawle [di] zlas' (I cannot tune the
Cs). If there was such a copying error, it might imply that this scribe had little technical
knowledge of the Gaelic harp.
The words 'glassim gi eine teyd aċ E' (I can tune every string but it) at the beginning of the
second couplet, seems to indicate that only one string, or one note, is being referred to
and not a plurality of two. However, the plural article would seem the most appropriate if
the word 'cawle' is to represent the sister strings on the Gaelic harp. From the second
couplet, one would expect the first couplet to read, 'ne eadowme cawle di zlaß' (I cannot
tune C) or 'ne eaddom in cawle di zlaß' (I cannot tune the C) - even 'ne eaddom ni cawle di
zlaß' (I cannot tune the Cs) as C is at least one, single note, regardless of octave or of
how many times it appears. To say that one cannot tune 'the sisters' but can tune 'every
string but it' does seem a less natural use of language.