Tá blas searbh ar mhallacht Ghaeilge
CÉ go bhfuil sé i gcónaí go deas bheith go deas, uaireannta tagann am nach féidir bheith deas agus go gcaitheann duine malairt poirt a sheinnt.
Tá an Ghaeilge lán le náthanna deas a úsáideadh duine chun beannú do chomharsan nó do chara.
Ach ní miste a lua go bhfuil corr mallacht ann freisin a chaithfeá, mar a chaithfeá cloch, le namhaid, nó duine éigean a rinne dochar duit.
As much as it nearly always nice to be nice, sometimes the time comes to play a different tune. Irish is full of lovely phrases with which you can bless your friends or family or just someone you’ve just met (at a social distance) on your daily 5 km walk
But the language also has a dark side and it’s important to know that we have some marvellous curses as well. Not just Irish versions of anglo Saxon terms but real, wishing your enemy a fate worse than death, stuff.
Tugadh na mallachtaí seo chun solais ar na meáin mí shoisialta le déanaí agus cheap me gurb fhiú iad a roinnt anseo.
These were recently brought to light on the anti-social media and I thought they were worth sharing here.
The first one, sent to a fellow journalist, is particularly piquant. It calls the intended target ‘ the finished article of a fool’ while wishing an eternity in hell where the Devil might make a ladder of his back bone.
The other comes from the Waterford Gaeltacht via Ráidió na Gaeltachta presenter Helen Ní Shé who collected it there in her travels.
Suffice it to say that it wishes an adverse health outcome on you as you are out in the garden. It’s a curse, in poetic verse, which would not gladden the heart of an environmentalist.
Ná raibh tú riamh ar an dtaobh mícheart de mhallacht mar seo!