Alec Finlay: A poem of namings, from Gaelic and Norn
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 in 2018) and Norn — the dialect of Scots and Norse spoken in Orkney and Shetland Norn c. 1800 (from MinnMouth, forthcoming in 2017). This sequence derives from a performance given at the 2016 O-I/I-O Poetry Festival in Glasgow 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 Northeast England scar, from sker, ON, reef can refer to rocks at the foot of sea cliffs, a narrow beach, or a 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, trans. 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 sixteenth century; 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 known 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
John J. Graham, Shetland Dictionary
Bill Griffiths, Anglo-Saxon Magic
Bill Griffiths, Fishing and Folk
Jákup Jakobsen, The Place-names of Shetland
Velimir Khlebnikov, trans. Charlotte Douglas & Paul Schmidt: The King of Time
Velimir Khlebnikov, trans. 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 Dial
Poems and poetics