Alec Finlay: A Poem of Namings, from Gaelic and Norn

River Dee: photograph by Hannah Devereux, 2016 (from gathering)

Alec Finlay is a Scottish poet and artist based in Edinburgh. These texts come from a series of ongoing projects derived from research into place-names, in particular Gaelic (from his book gathering, forthcoming from Hauser & Wirth, 2018) and Norn – the dialect of Scots and Norse spoken in Orkney and Shetland Norn c.1800 (from MinnMouth, forthcoming 2017). This sequence derives from a performance given at the O-I/I-O poetry festival, Glasgow, 2016, as a closer to the whole event.

 

(1) 

a name means nothing to a place 

place-names are necessary relations 

a name recovered returns the claims of human affection for a place 

place-names identify a field of biotic relationships 

place-names are allied to habitat restoration 

listen to a place-name, hear the dead speak 

some place-names follow speech but run counter to meaning 

names change when the guard of speech alters 

some place-names are all that remain of lost languages 

our place-names un-name older names 

most people lives in places, a few dwell in names 

the meaning of a name may go into oblivion long before the name itself

 

(2) 

the oldest names

belong to rivers

the glen’s flowers  

Geldie

Shinewater 

Humber

Shadewater

 

numen swim

hidden within names 

Uisge Dé
River Dee
Water of the Goddess 

“the river is the goddess” (WJ Watson)

 

oldest of all

flowingofwaterriver

from -er, -or – to cause, to move

 

a place-name is an intensification of awareness 

Maighdean Mhonaidh
The Lassie on the Hill 

place your finger here

on the flower

of the mountain

 

place-names are social signs                  

for natural forms

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                   

Cairnsulendoo

Dark-eyed Springs Cairn

 

 (3) 

place-names exist in space 

they evolve in speech

over time 

speech steers names

into new forms 

ears become tongues 

the translation of a place-name

is a matter of sound and sense

exemplifying the tidal

nature of meaning

 

the wave the rock-reef makes: bōd

the rock-reef that makes the wave: ba

– we sink or swim by such distinctions

 

in place-names the mouth - minn -

     is bay

mouthful of sand and pebbles

mouth of the river

   and mother

minn, sought on the child’s

   tongue

 

on Shetland

Banna Minn

Tether Mouth 

BANNA: band, fetter

MINN: mouth 

Burra teddirt

by a sandy rib )

puckerin da lip

skornin da bod 

soonds a mooth

n ammas th childers

murmurashen

needfu fir mynnye

 

Score Minni

Mother Sound

also on Shetland 

Skōr: hollow in the seabed, sound

MINN: mouth  

soonds ascar / markéd inda / sea-boddam 

 da brimtuds fløddin

   da mooth fuwi

      soonds  faain

   laumin      swinklin

beatin      onda chord

                 oda aert

 

south to Suffolk

Minsmere

Mouthaven 

MYNNI: firth

MERE: sea-pool 

shippin owt

   somethin deep

      in th bloo-O 

or havin more

   ova bowl ov

      sumthin tidal

 

Notes 

 

With thanks to Harry Giles, Katrina Porteous, Ian Duhig, and Laura Watts for their guidance in terms of dialects 

 

Banna Minn (for Jen Hadfield) 

 

Burra, tethered by a sandy tombolo, puckering the lip, imitating the waves – sound is a mouth, and amma is the children’s discontented murmuring, needful for their mum, minn 

 

Tombolo connecting Kettla Ness to the rest of Burra, Shetland. Band, N. band or fetters; band, Sc, string together; tether, bond; means of restraint, confining force or influence. Minni, mynni, ON, mijin, Sh, mouth of a stream, inlet; munnr, the mouth, from PIE *ment-. Minn, mijn, Sc, minni, Sh, the mouth, a child's word. Mynnye, OSc, mother, said to be a child’s instinctive utterances; also a bay or inlet, arm of the sea, sound or strait. Teddirt, OrN, tethered. Skoarn, skoarnin, Sh, imitate someone, repeat what someone says. Bod, Sh, onward motion of the waves. Soond, Sc, sound. Mooth, Sc, mouth. Childer: Sc, children. Amma (Ind), mother. Murmurashen, Sh, murmur or discontented muttering. Needfu, OrN, needing, needy for.

 

Score Minni 

 

sounds is a scar marked in the sea bottom – the bay of tidal breakers is the mouth as it fills with sounds, falling, flowing, splashing, beating, on the chord of the earth 

 

Formerly Skora Minn, bay by Outer Score, between Bressay and Skōr Head, Shetland. Skōr, ON, sound, hollow in the seabed; skord, Sh, crack, fissure; mark or notch for keeping count. In North-east England scar, from sker, ON, reef can refer to rocks at the foot of sea-cliffs, a narrow beach, or shore-based reef. Bodd’am, Sh, sea-bottom. Minn Sc, mouth; Jakobsen gives mynni, minni, Sh, ‘opening into which a stream of firth disembogues’. Brimtud, Sh, sound of breakers on the shore. Flød, Sh, tide. Laum, neologism devised by the Russian poet Velimir Khlebnikov, defined as “broad, flowing over the broadest area, knowing no confining shores”, from the l sound of lit and lodka, flow and boat. Swinkle, Sh, splash gently. Baetin, Sh, beating. Opo da, Sh, upon the; oda, Sh, of the. Aert, Sh, earth.

 

Minsmere (for Guy Moreton) 

 

“lagu byp leodum   langsum gepuht / the sea by (lands)men is deemed everlasting”, The Old English Rune Poem, tr. Bill Griffiths 

 

(July) shipping out something deep in the blue O [the sweep of the sea’s horizon]. (March) or having more of a bowl of something tidal [the safety of harbour]. 

 

Suffolk village lost to the sea in the 16^th c.; the name survives in Minsmere Levels and Minsmere Haven. The name is a Scandinavian-English hybrid; it means River-mouth Lake, from OScand, mynni, mouth of the river; mere, OE, pool, sea; ME, haven, OE, hoefen harbour, inlet with good anchorage. The River Minsmere is know as the Yox, River Yoke, in its upper stretch. Lida, AS, July, the mild month of calm weather for voyages; Hredmonath, AS, March, the fierce month, wise to stay in harbour. Sheeppin, sumffin, haffin, Suff, shipping, something, having. Mo+wa, Suff, more. Bowlow, Suff, bowl of. The blue O is the sea orisounde, ME, horizon, which John Clare thought could be reached in a day’s walk. Bill Griffiths suggests that The Old English Rune Poem was Anglian, sharing characteristics with the riddling of Old Norse kenning. East Anglia was among the earliest places where English was spoken, as the dialect spoken by of Frisian, Angle, Saxon, Jute, and Swabian language communities became ‘islanded’, and eroded or absorbed Brittonic.

 

Bibliography

 

James Stout Angus, A Glossary of the Shetland Dialect

Keith Briggs and Kelly Kilpatrick, A Dictionary of Suffolk

     Place-names

AOD Claxton, The Suffolk Dialect of the Twentieth Century

Dictionary of the Scots Language/ Dictionar o the Scots Leid,

     http://www.dsl.ac.uk

John J. Graham, Shetland Dictionary

Bill Griffiths, Anglo-Saxon Magic

Bill Griffiths, Fishing and Folk

Jákup Jakobsen, The Place-names of Shetland

Velimir Khlebnikov, tr. Charlotte Douglas & Paul Schmidt: The

     King of Time      

Velimir Khlebnikov, tr. Charlotte Douglas & Paul Schmidt:

     Theoretical Writings

David Mills, Suffolk Place-names

Walter Skeat, The Place-names of Suffolk

John Stewart, Shetland Place-names

Peter Trudgill, The Norfolk Dialect