franc 91 wrote:
This is the beginning of the story 'Rí na mBréag'
Do bhí baintreabhach ann, agus do bhí mórsheisior mac aici.
There was (once) a widow, and she had seven sons. (so far so good)
Bhí an cead mac comh ísiol san ná feudfadh capall Lá Márta breith ar mhullach a chod' gruaige, bheith ag inbhíor 'san pháirc is loime d'á bhfeacaidh súil riamh;
This is of course, a description of her first son. Why isn't it - an chéad mhac (with a fada on the 'e') ? I'm guessing that ísiol means low or short. Mullach a chod' gruaige is the top of his hair, capall, a horse, but what has it got to do with a day in March? páirc obviously is a field, but apart from that, I'm having difficulty in understanding the sentence as a whole, virtually none of these words are in the dictionary. Could somebody help me out please?
This is complex, fair play for doing this well.
Ísiol does mean short, it's not a Munster spelling though, but an attempt at "Classical" Irish. This is a Munster text originally, which has been converted to the sort of "Caighdeán" they had pre-1950s.
Cead mac is a typographical error, in the original Munster text (1908) it's "chéad mhac", it's also missing an "agus" between gruaige and bheith, without which the sentence does not make sense. The edition you have is unreadable.
Overall:
The first son was so short that a young horse/foal wouldn't be able to catch the top of his hair, and him grazing in the barest field an eye ever saw.