Finding the Words: Translating Medical Texts in the Late-Medieval Gaelic World

Deborah Hayden

Sharon Arbuthnot

Historical linguists and lexicographers in search of novel terms and uses of language are richly rewarded by time spent on the medical manuscripts of late-medieval Ireland and Scotland. A substantial number of these manuscripts survive (more than 120 have come down to us from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries), but few have been transcribed or published and only a small amount of medieval Gaelic ‘medicalese’ is recorded in any dictionary. All of this means that a dip into these medical texts is likely to reveal words and phrases which are not widely known or not known in the senses suggested by physicians and scholars in the past.

The vocabulary which is now coming to light in medical texts seems to include a number of long-standing native terms. Memorable, alliterating phrases such as brat boinne, a name for the placenta or afterbirth (Arbuthnot 2021), and greaban na gcos, a name for varicose veins (Nic Dhonnchadha 2016: 139 n. 91), are found in earlier narrative texts, but these were not properly understood until they emerged in an exclusively medical context. It seems, then, that there is more medical terminology in early-medieval tales than was initially thought and that some of this continued over into the dedicated medical texts of later centuries.

A good deal of the late-medieval medical material was translated from Latin, however, and the Gaelic-speaking scholars involved in this enterprise were faced with the considerable task of generating new terminology to cope with names for parts of the body, diseases, instruments and concepts which they were encountering for the first time in writings by the likes of Avicenna, Hippocrates and Constantine the African. The terms these Gaelic scholars invented, borrowed and repurposed offer fascinating glimpses into their methods and resourcefulness, as they sought to extend their native language into a previously-unexplored domain. By way of introduction to the linguistic treasures to be found in the texts they composed and translated, I have selected some examples, mainly from the Gaelic version (Wulff 1924) of the Trotula texts on women’s medicine which were adapted into numerous European vernaculars from the thirteenth century onwards.

Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 F 19, fol. 89v: a page from the Irish version of the Trotula text on women’s medicine. Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

  1. Ga copa. Early tales occasionally employed the phrase gae cró to refer to a ‘tent’, a roll of textile which was inserted into a wound to apply medicines to the innermost part and to absorb discharges. In later medical texts, ga cop or ga copa was used more commonly to denote a tent for a wound, and this came to be applied also to a pessary and a suppository – devices which were similar in shape and function to a tent (e.g. RIA 24 P 26, p. 338.26; 23 F 19, fol. 103ra51; TCD 1436, p. 360b19). One remedy attributed to the Trotula recommends that pessaries made of linen, cotton and wool could be dipped in liquid and covered with powered plant and animal products like greater plantain and the fur of a hare (Wulff 1934: 52–54).
  2. Ballán. An abundance of words and phrases for everyday items were pressed into service in a medical context. Beangán usually refers to the branch of a tree, but in a text on anatomy, it can identify a bone such as the clavicle (e.g. Ní Ghallchobhair 2014: 94.10–11). Feadáin ‘pipes’ proved useful as a term for the bronchi, those large tubes which bring air to the lungs (e.g. Ó Ceithearnaigh 1942–44: 1591). Ballán is known from Old Irish as the name of a particularly small, probably round, drinking vessel. It features also in later references to cupping therapy (Wulff 1934: 22.20), presumably denoting a different kind of medical practice to that involving the adharc or horn.
  3. Nemhneachtardha. Every now and then we catch sight of a word which usually belongs to an entirely different genre of text. Nemhneachtardha is one of a group of terms which were pulled into medical discourse from the fields of grammar and linguistics. Meaning literally ‘neither of the two’, Old Irish nemnechtarda was a name for a neuter noun, one that is neither masculine nor feminine; later, it was repurposed to refer to someone who has been ill but is now on the mend and also to a previously-well person whose health is declining (e.g. Wulff 1929: 116.24; 1931: 48 §1).
  4. Uisgeamhlacht. Medical terms in English often end in –itis, –ectomy and –ostomy; similarly, suffixes like –amhlacht and –mhuireacht abound in late-medieval Gaelic medicalese. Uisgeamhlacht ‘moistness’, olamhlacht ‘oiliness’, gumamhlacht ‘stickiness’ and gaothmhuireacht ‘flatulence’ are just a few of the many, sometimes-diffuse, abstract nouns which seem to have been invented for the sole purpose of expressing new medical concepts (e.g. Wulff 1929: 282.2; Shehan 1938: 70; Ó Ceithearnaigh 1942–44: 2530, 5370).
  5. Fuil dreagain. Some of the terms employed in Irish medical texts are simply word-for-word translations from Latin and it is difficult to know how these were interpreted by readers of the texts in question. Fuil dreagain, literally ‘dragon’s blood’, is an interesting case-in-point (e.g. Wulff 1934: 22.14). This translates Latin sanguis draconis, the name of a kind of red plant resin, mainly of Southeast Asian origin but obtainable in the Mediterranean basin in medieval times. The occurrence of the term, in a cure for an ulcerated womb and elsewhere, inevitably raises the issue of whether people in Ireland or Scotland were able to get hold of such substances or whether fuil dreagain was an exotic-sounding but relatively-meaningless phrase to them.
  6. Pessarium, ga copa, plástra. To refer to pessaries and suppositories, Gaelic medical texts sometimes simply made use of Latin words like pessarium and suppositorium (e.g. Wulff 1934: 66.28–29). The second element of the phrase ga copa seems to derive from Middle English. Terms like treta and plástra, both used to denote a plaster or a poultice (e.g. Wulff 1934: 4.19), may have been taken directly from either English or Norman French. In short, borrowings and influences from a variety of languages sit side-by-side to produce a single, distinctive language of medicine. The derivations from English and French are probably indicative of the channels by which Latin texts were conveyed to the Gaelic-speaking world.
  7. Finally, yet another ‘language’ has left its mark on these texts. The apothecaries’ system of measurement communicated in symbols rather than words to specify how much of any particular ingredient ought to be added to produce an effective remedy. The most common abbreviations used in the Gaelic texts are ℥ ‘an ounce’, ʒ ‘a dram, a drachm’ and ℈ ‘a scruple’ (e.g. RIA 23 F 19, fol. 89rb12–13 = Wulff 1934: 34). These are supplemented by a range of verbal expressions to indicate weight, mass or volume, including lán léighe ‘a spoonful; a cochleare’ and méid mesóige ‘the size of an acorn’ (e.g. Wulff 1934: 24.36, 52.7). Very often, though, the remedies suggested in the texts which have come down to us give no clue as to the amount of product to be used; so, it is not clear whether a medieval Irishwoman would know how to measure out ‘dragon’s blood’, even if she could get her hands on that exotic resin!

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