Transcript

File ó chontae Phort Láirge é seo a bhíodh ag díol prátaí a dtugaidís wisers orthu. Agus tháinig file ó chontae Chorcaí chun iarracht a bhaint as 'na choinne ar an mbóthar. Agus shid[1] é mar a dúirt sé:

"An tusa an garsún bán ó Chom Seangán athá ag dul go hEochaill ag díol wisers?"

"Dhera, prátaí bána athá i mo mhálasa agus nín[2] aon fhios cá raghaidh siad."

"Bhfuil siad inniúil chun bídh, chun dí agus chun margaidh?"

"Thá siad gan criochán gan sciollán gan falcaire."

Translation

This was a poet from county Waterford who used to sell potatoes they called 'wisers'. And a poet from county Cork came up to him on the road to take a rise out of him. And this is how he spoke:

"Are you the white-haired boy from Coumshingaun who is going to Youghal selling wisers?"

"Yerra, the potatoes in my bag are white and it is not known where they will go."

"Are they fit for food, for drink and for market?"

"There isn't a small potato, a cut-off potato or a dried-up potato among them."

Footnotes

Commentary

This short story and accompanying quatrain is of a type that is very old in Ireland, whereby a half-quatrain is composed, and another person completes it. It is a popular device in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century stories surrounding poets and clever people. For a series of related narratives, see Gearóid Ó Murchadha, 'Eachtraí, véursaí agus paidreacha ó iarthar Chorcaí', Béaloideas 3 (1931), 212-39. A good example of a contest between two persons competing through quatrains can be found in Douglas Hyde, The love songs of Connacht (5th ed., Dublin, 1909), 88-92.

It is related to motif P427.7.1 Extemporaneous composition by poets, in Stith Thompson, Motif-index of folk literature (rev. and enlarged ed., Bloomington, Ind., 1955-8). See also Tom Peete Cross, Motif-index of early Irish literature. (Bloomington, Ind., 1952).

A transcription of this track and a longer telling of the same story appear in Máirtín Verling, Leabhar Mhaidhc Dháith (An Daingean, 2007), 503 and 394.