Triad 25 of 32 · 2026-10-18 · Difficulty 3 · Genealogy/influence, Same subject, Conflict
The thread
Friel’s Translations (1980) borrows close to verbatim from Steiner’s After Babel (1975): ‘signals and conventionalized counters’, the ‘linguistic contour’ that no longer matches ‘the changing landscape of fact’, cultures that ‘expend on their vocabulary and syntax acquisitive energies and ostentations’, the ‘private core’, the ‘pass-word’, ‘hermetic’, even Jimmy’s exogamein against Steiner’s ‘linguistic exogamy’. Ó hAodha’s ‘Insubordinate Irish’ (2011) reports that Shelta, the Travellers’ Cant/Gammon, was probably ‘formed in the modern period, possibly at that juncture when the language shift from Irish to English was taking place’, the same shift the Name-Book stages: Irish words hidden inside English grammar by metathesis, syllable reversal and prefixes. Steiner makes concealment the genius of language; the Gypsilorists read Shelta as ‘of the backslang order’ and valued it only if ancient, the same romance of antiquity that has Yolland admiring ‘Termon, from Terminus’.
The three books
- Translations, Brian Friel; 1980. Anchor: the scene the other two books theorize (1833 Name-Book; a closed speech-community opened by translation)
- After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, George Steiner; 1975. Source: the theory Friel borrowed close to verbatim (genealogy edge)
- ‘Insubordinate Irish’: Travellers in the Text, Mícheál Ó hAodha; 2011. Oblique edge: Shelta as a living private core, likely formed in the same Irish-to-English shift; its outside ‘discoverers’ as the philologist’s counterpart to the sappers
Notebook
- The ledger exercise: from the three Lancey/Owen pairs (Act One), write a fourth pair for a document from your own present, with an ‘Owen’ column for the people affected. What does Owen’s softening protect, and whom? Compare Steiner’s ‘safeguard of obliqueness’ (Ch. 3).
- Restitution, missing: read Steiner’s four beats (trust–aggression–incorporation–restitution, 1992 preface) as the plot of Translations; write the withheld fourth beat as one scene or page. If it won’t work, record where it breaks.
- Gammon and the Gesturalist: using Meyer’s devices (metathesis, apocope, syllable reversal, prefixes; Ó hAodha p. 20), draft a cant for one of your concepts (gesture, utterance). Is it a private core in Steiner’s sense or only ‘backslang’? What’s the difference?
Rabbit holes
Links as checked on the day of the reading.
- F. C. McGrath, ‘Irish Babel: Brian Friel’s Translations and George Steiner’s After Babel’ (Comparative Drama, 1989) — https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/english/167
- Charles G. Leland, The Gypsies (1882), incl. ‘Shelta Thari’ — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22939
- Logainm, Placenames Database of Ireland: sources (OS Parish Name Books, John O’Donovan) — https://www.logainm.ie/en/about/sources
- Fiachra Mac Góráin, ‘Language politics in the Aeneid and Friel’s Translations’ (PVS 30, 2020) — https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/10120100/1/Mac%20G%C3%B3r%C3%A1in%2C%20Fiachra.%20PVS%2030%20%282020%29%20The%20politics%20of%20language%20in%20the%20Aeneid%20and%20Friel%27s%20Translations.pdf
- MoLI, Brian Friel Papers exhibition — https://exhibitions.moli.ie/brian-friel/m/has-language-failed-these-people
- Peter Bakker, review of Kirk & Ó Baoill (eds.), Travellers and Their Language (Language in Society, 2006) — https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/article/abs/john-m-kirk-donall-p-o-baoill-eds-travellers-and-their-language/D96B3507D46651401F097C6C688341F3
To carry
“In the beginning the word was largely a pass-word, granting admission to a nucleus of like speakers.” — George Steiner, After Babel, Ch. 3, ‘Word against Object’
Themes
Aeneid · Anglicisation · anti-language · backslang · Cant · Carthage · Field Day · Friel · Gammon · Gypsiology · Gypsy Lore Society · hedge-school · hermeneutic motion · hermeticism · interpreter as censor · Irish Folklore Commission · Irish language shift · Kuno Meyer · Leland · linguistic exogamy · Macalister · Name-Book · naming · onomastics · Ordnance Survey · pass-word · place names · privacy of language · private core · Sampson · secret languages · Shelta · Steiner · Tinker Questionnaire · translation · Travellers · Ó Baoill
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