This is a little interruption to my series on canntaireachd. It is not altogether unrelated. Keith Sanger recently sent me a cutting from The Scotsman that set me thinking.
Dastaram gu seinnim pìob (PS 91) literally means ‘I am seized by passion to sing the pipe’, or ‘Hurrah that I sing the pipe!’, or possibly ‘I am mad about singing the pipe’. In any case, the pipe is sung.
The idea that you sing the pipe rather than play it is very old. The Latin Bible was revised by Saint Jerome between 382 and 405. In it, two verbs are used for playing a pipe: canō (five times) and cantō (once). Both mean ‘sing, play, recite, sound’. Cantō has the additional sense of performing an enchantment or incantation.
Here are all six instances where musical pipes of some sort or other are sung in the version of the Bible that shaped European language and literature for over 1200 years. The verbs meaning ‘sing/play’ are marked in bold.
❧ 1 ❧
et nomen fratris eius Iubal ipse fuit pater canentium cithara et organo [Genesis 4:21]
His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes.
Genesis 4:21 (NIV) Other Translations
❧ 2 ❧
et ascendit universa multitudo post eum et populus canentium tibiis et laetantium gaudio magno et insonuit terra ad clamorem eorum [3 Kings (1 Kings) 1:40]
And all the people went up after him, playing pipes and rejoicing greatly, so that the ground shook with the sound.
1 Kings 1:40 (NIV) Other Translations
❧ 3 ❧
cecinimus vobis et non saltastis
lamentavimus et non planxistis [Matthew 11:17]
We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.
Matthew 11:17 (NIV) Other Translations
The Latin here does not actually state what instrument is played. The translator may have considered that the aulos/tibia specified in the Greek (Ηὐλήσαμεν [Ēulēsamen] – we piped) was implied by the context of dancing. Note that in Latin and Ancient Greek, as in Gaelic, the pipe is generally treated as singular, even when the instrument consists of two pipes, one in each hand.
❧ 4 ❧
In the equivalent passage in St Luke’s gospel, this Old Latin translation also omits the instrument they were ‘singing’:
loquentibus ad invicem dicentes: can
tavimus vobis & non saltastis lamen
tavimus & non plorastis.
Luke 7:32 in Codex Usserianus Primus, IE TCD MS 55, folio 98r
This in one of the earliest surviving Gospel Books thought to have been made in Ireland, controversially dated to the 5th century. What it reveals is that Saint Jerome inserted the word tibia, a mouth-blown doublepipe, in his revision of the Old Latin, giving us the standard ‘Vulgate’ version:
cantavimus vobis tibiis et non saltastis
lamentavimus et non plorastis [Luke 7:32]
We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not cry.
Luke 7:32 (NIV) Other Translations
This is the only time the verb cantō is used in the Bible to ‘sing’ the pipes. Elsewhere, it is canō.
❧ 5 ❧
tamen quae sine anima sunt vocem dantia sive tibia sive cithara nisi distinctionem sonituum dederint quomodo scietur quod canitur aut quod citharizatur [1 Corinthians 14:7]
Even things without life that give sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction of sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? 1 Corinthians 14:7 (DR) Other Translations
❧ 6 ❧
et vox citharoedorum et musicorum et tibia canentium et tuba non audietur in te amplius
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 18:22]
And the voice of harpers, and of musicians, and of them that play on the pipe, and on the trumpet, shall no more be heard at all in thee; Apocalypse (Revelation) 18:22 (DR) Other Translations
Two Gaelic verbs meaning ‘sing/play’: seinn and can
The column in The Scotsman that Keith sent me (above) implies that you only sing the pipes, not other instruments. This is wrong. A quick search on DASG for the word sheinneas shows that in Scottish Gaelic (as in Irish and Latin) all instruments are sung. Or at least they used to be. For example:
Ciamar sheinneas mi fidheall? Tha mo chridhe ro-bhrònach.
How can I play the fiddle? My heart is too sorrowful.
The former Gaelic Editor of The Scotsman, Ronald Black, kindly answered a query I put to him by email:
To say that the pipe is “not played but sung” is an excess of purism, in my view. Most people talk about a’ cluich na pìoba. I dare say a purist would describe that as English-based phraseology. I’m not entirely sure.
It isn’t only the verb seinn that is used to ‘sing’ instruments; there is also the verb can, meaning ‘sing, rehearse, say’. Across Europe, it was the cantor who rehearsed the choir. J.S. Bach was the Thomaskantor (Cantor at St. Thomas). Canntaireachd is what the cantor does. That includes rehearsal.
Between 1792 and 1840, Edward Bunting collected the technical terms used by harpers born in Ulster. Among them are the names of the highest and lowest strings:
Uachdar-chanas, ‘Highest note’ (lit. ‘which sings highest’)
Crònan iochdar-chanas, ‘Lowest note’ (lit. ‘hum which sings lowest’)
For more on these musical terms, including audio pronunciations in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, there is a wonderful resource built by one of our members, Simon Chadwick: Irish harp terms.
I am pleased to see that the cutting stimulated you to write this interesting expansion but it is best to start on firm ground before entering the quicksands which surround this subject area. Your biblical quotes are fine as long as they are well qualified. For example the translations of the various forms of ‘Cithera’ as ‘harp’ are unsound. The best that can be assumed for the word ‘Cithera’ , especially for that period is that the instrument so described had strings.
At the other end of the scale the musical terms described by Bunting were mostly compiled at the urging of Dr James MacDonnell shortly before the 1840 publication and included a ‘starter pack’ from the good doctor as well as words taken from a number of published dictionaries. My copy of the reprint of Buntings work is covered with my own annotations identifying where it is possible to tell the sources of those word definitions and few of them can with any certainty be pushed back beyond the 18th C.
This of course does not mean they are not ‘old’ but without firm dates we are in the realms of supposition before even entering the ‘quicksand’ that is the fact that words in any case can change meanings over time.
However to return to basics it has to be mentioned that there is actually no word for ‘sing’ in Gaelic, which like there being no actual direct words for ‘yes’ or no, you get there by other ways. Rather than make this too long and save further writing the ‘note’ should perhaps be read in conjunction with the paper by the late Alan Bruford on ‘Song and recitation in early Ireland’ which can be found in the online library here: http://www.wirestrungharp.com/library/author.html
Thank you! I read Alan Bruford’s ‘Song and recitation’ article in 2013, when developing the music for the Delphian CD In Praise of Saint Columba. I was deeply impressed – his analysis of possible performing approaches is incredibly helpful. I would encourage every performer of old Gaelic material to read it. His insights are brilliant, as relevant to Scottish material as to Irish material.
Bruford’s opening statement does not contradict the point I am making in the post above. Together, both truths illuminate the difference between Gaelic idiom and English idiom, helping readers unfamiliar with the Gaelic language to cross a bridge. This is part of learning any new language – grappling with something complex and remote. Foreign.
You wrote:
This is valuable research. If any of it is in the public domain, could you give us a reference? If not, could you substantiate a little – perhaps in a couple of blog posts, rather than in comments to this one? Then we can cross-link…
I wanted to avoid the quicksand of biblical translation by quoting the New International Version (NIV) and linking to other translations. Where the NIV substantially differed from the Vulgate, however, I quoted the Douay-Rheims Bible (DR). This 1582 translation contains the word ‘harped’ which disturbed you in the 5th passage. Disappointingly, only three of the many translations quoted at Bible Gateway correctly translate cithara as a lyre: the CEB, LEB and NTB. The CEB contains an even more serious mistake, rendering tibia as harp! In the Old Testament, you are correct – we can’t exclude the harp or even some form of lute – but we can be fairly confident that the instrument Paul is referring to in Corinthians is a lyre. This would also be the instrument Jerome had in mind, unlike the translators of the Douay-Rheims Bible. They were more familiar with triangular harps.