2005-09-09

Seven Soldiers: Guardian #4

[Insert inappropriate sexual analogy regarding how much this series pleases me here.]

Having read the translations (via) of the Sheeda dialogue in Shining Knight #4, I decided to try my hand at the single line in this issue.

Using one Ogham alphabet, I ended up with Muin Muin Muin, Luis Eadhadh Ailm Fern Beith. Mmm, leafb? Well, I figured the last one could maybe be an Uilleann, which, as long as I'm making things up, might be a Y. Leafy is a word.

Then I looked on Barbelith and saw that I was way off. Once I finally Googled 'ogham roman alphabet' and found a page with Ogham's Roman equivalents, I was able to work back from the new transliteration, and I noticed that I'd been looking at the original alphabet page the wrong way. I thought the characters had been rotated counter-clockwise from the vertical, when they were actually rotated clockwise, meaning the Luis was actually a Dair, the Fern was a Tinne, and the Beith was really an Uath, or Huath.

If I had paid closer attention to the original translation while looking at the alphabet, I would have caught my mistake much sooner. But that would have deprived me of wondering what, exactly, was 'leafy' about what was happening.