"Silent Night" (Western Ireland ??Brigidian?? Version)

See the bottom of the post for some interesting reflections on the language from Quora.

As far as I can piece together, this Christmas hymn, which does not mention Brigit at all, could perhaps have been written by Bishop Moel Brigid (or Brigidian O'Brolcan), who died in 1097. (Not to be confused with Bishop Moel Brigid ((also nicknamed Brigidian)) who died in 1042.)* Which would make it of interest because of the name, very similar to my own and meaning "Devotee of Brigit."** It is interesting to know there is a "nickname" for Mael Brigde.

More likely, it is simply that the hymn is written in the "Brigidian" language, or presumably dialect. I am at a loss as to what is going on here. I have found a couple of references to it online, but not much. One is a plea for information posted in 2003 and never answered:

"I have run across a language that appears to be Gaelic-English-Romance-Germanic in origin. It is called "Brigidian." Does anyone know about it? All I could find on the internet were several sites having to do with "how to say...in 2 billion languages.

"I think that this language was made up, but you never know. Supposedly, it is, or was, spoken in western Ireland."

I found one of those sites, too:

"Thank you" in more than 465 languages:

Brigidian (western Ireland)                Boche'

from 

Jennifer's Language Pages

Well, I have certainly never heard of the Brigidian language before, but it is fascinating, so I post this here to ask you if you have ever heard of such a thing.

The query above came from a Lowland Scots listserve, and there may be something to this connection, as hinted in this from Wikipedia:

Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster (where the local dialect is known as Ulster Scots).^[7] It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language which was historically restricted to most of the Highlands, the Hebrides and Galloway after the 16th century.^[8] The Scots language developed during the Middle English period as a distinct entity.^[9][10][11]

The interesting thing for me is, if there really is, or rather was, a non-Gaelic language in Western Ireland named Brigidian, whether it came over from Scotland, and why it is called this. Is there a connection to Brigit, or is it a superficial resemblance, with a different etymology?

Anyway, here is the hymn that started all of this:

Nóçhé' Nóël, Nóçhé' Cúna / Silent Night / Stille Nacht (Western Ireland Brigidian Version)***

Nóçhé' Nóël, Nóçhé' cúna, 

Gah íes án sa' la xana 

Na íes Marí äte Swíe Loddy, 

Bébé Nuäfóna, ham äte ódí, 

Dòrméz, Crístús, dòrméz! 

Dòrméz, Crístús, dòrméz!

Nóçhé' Nóël, Nóçhé' cúna, 

Rí'ins Sôlí def Aíah, 

Haíshner fröuçh Two bal nuäfóna 

Fwothsòneth mwos salvins hóra; 

Jäésús, a' Two Rúbins, 

Jäésús, a' Two Rúbins.

Nóçhé' Nóël, Nóçhé' cúna, 

Salvatem 'nggósèa 

Fröuçh Cqíëlós-el óró haígnèh, 

Shóveth gratzía-el lánèh; 

Jäésús, yinmöu Húmanäé! 

Jäésús, yinmöu Húmanäé!

Nóçhé' Nóël, Nóçhé' cúna, 

Waléróhs vwons essèa 

Ló Angelícque Halelúya 

Haútèa íet éerigçhaba: 

Ló Meshíach íes ní! 

Ló Meshíach íes ní!

(English literal translation)

Christmas night, Quiet night, 

All is bright in the stable. 

There is Mary and Her Boy-child, 

Holy Babe, little and lovely. 

Sleep, Christ, sleep. 

Sleep, Christ, sleep.

Christmas night, Quiet night, 

Laughing Son of God, 

Love from Thy holy mouth 

Sounds forth our saving hour. 

Jesus, at Thy Birth. 

Jesus, at Thy Birth.

Christmas night, Quiet night, 

Salvation brought 

From Heaven's golden height 

Shows grace's fullness. 

Jesus truly Human! 

Jesus truly Human!

Christmas night, Quiet night, 

Shepherds who heard 

the Angelic Alleluia 

Shouted it everywhere 

The Messiah is here! 

The Messiah is here!

P.S. 24 February 2018

This response on Quora is interesting. There are some other answers that are good, as well.

Is there really a "language" (or possibly hybrid language) called Brigidian? I stumbled across a prayer written in this language, said to be spoken in West Ireland. Never before have I heard of such a thing.

http://brigitssparklingflame.blogspot.ca/2018/02/silent-night-western-ireland-brigidian.html

Allan Miles, B.A. Anthropology & Linguistics, New Mexico State University (2021)

Answered 14h ago

Right, so just to start this off, I want to say that I, too, have never heard of a language called Brigidian, nor has the Glottolog (as another answer already stated), nor has Google.

Various sites claiming to teach you “how to say thank you/good morning/yes/no in 100+ languages” have heard of it, evidently, but offer no background, and all other sources mentioning the supposed language are some reference to the same translation of “Silent Night,” or a religious order founded around St. Brigid. That obscurity is precisely what made me so immediately fascinated with this question— if there’s one thing I like, it’s a good linguistic mystery!

Fair warning, however: since there is a painful lack of resources regarding this, I’m pretty much just theorizing. I honestly can’t tell you if there is such a language as Brigidian or not, but I can analyze it and make an educated guess as to what Brigidian might be, if it isn’t made up entirely. So that’s what I’ll be doing from here on out. (What follows is the long-form answer; for the TL;DR, you can go ahead and skip to the last paragraph if you want.)

First, let’s look at some specific words.

As Eugene Kuznetsov's answer to Is there really a "language" (or possibly hybrid language) called Brigidian? I stumbled across a prayer written in this language, said to be spoken in West Ireland. Never before have I heard of such a thing.states, there are some words that stand out as being derived from either Latin or Gaelic. The words nóçhé', nóël, dòrméz, salvins, hóra, cqíëlós, gratzía, húmanäé, salvatem, and angelícque all sound distinctly Latin to me, and (based on the provided English translation) have the same meanings in Brigidian as I would expect them to in languages where they were borrowed or derived from Latin. I’m much less versed in Gaelic languages, but nuäfóna in particular stands out to me as being similar to the Gaelic and Breton words for “heaven.”

There are also two words that, to me, scream “Indo-European!” Those are íes(which I took to be a cognate of Indo-European verbs for “to be” like “is” and es) and two (which fits in with many Indo-European second-person pronouns such as du, to, ty, etc.). Beyond that, there are the religious terms Crístús (Christ), Halelúya (Hallelujah), and Meshíach (Messiah), but they don’t help us define this language very much, being so commonly shared. Something that may be significant, however, are the words shóveth and haígnèh, both of which appear similar to their English translations (“show” and “height,” respectively).

Another important thing to take note of is grammar.

The grammar apparent in the Brigidian “Silent Night” is characteristically Indo-European. Adjectives appear to come after the noun they describe, as in Spanish. For example: Nóçhé' Nóël, Nóçhé' cúna (literally: “night Christmas, night quiet”).

The word order seems to be SVO, as evidenced by how smoothly the Brigidian lines can be translated and transferred into English. For example: Ló Meshíach íes ní (literally: “the Messiah is here”).

Interestingly, there appears to be a suffix (-el) used to indicate possessiveness. For example: Cqíëlós-el óró haígnèh (literally: “Heaven’s golden height”) and gratzía-el lánèh (literally: “grace’s fullness”). Notice that the -el appears in the same place as the “’s” in the English translation. I’m not expert enough to say whether -elitself is physically similar to any possessive suffix in another language, but I wanted to point out its presence.

Now, a brief note on the orthography, or how it’s written.

As I said earlier, I’m no expert in the native languages of England, but based on my research, the orthography would appear to be similar to (if not actually the same as) the orthography of the Manx language. I specifically would like to point out the use of the digraph çh (presumably pronounced as the “ch” in “church”) to differentiate from ch (which, based on the apparent Gaelic influence, should probably be pronounced as in the word loch). It would make sense that, supposedly being spoken in western Ireland, Brigidian would take on Gaelic-style orthography.

But what does all this mean? What conclusions can we possibly draw from all this information?

My first reaction upon reading the poem in Brigidian was that I was looking at “Gaelic Spanish,” and that’s still what it feels like. Even upon closer inspection, one finds a largely Romance-feeling and sounding language with some Gaelic input. But the other components, those that are similar to English and those that don’t seem similar to anything at all, are what really filled in the details and drove me to my final hypothesis: that this language called Brigidian is (or was) a language spoken by a Romani population in west Ireland around the 19th century.

To support this, I would like to introduce you to the Shelta language, a dialect spoken by the Irish Travellers, the descendants of native Celts and Romani immigrants to Ireland. Now, I’m not meaning to say that Brigidian and Shelta are related to each other— they aren’t even very similar, physically speaking. My theory is rather that they were produced in the same way (via the mixing of a migrant Romani population and their language with the local native Celts and their language) and I bring up Shelta to show that there is precedence for it. It seems entirely possible to me that a Romani clan or clans originally from France or Spain made the trip to England at some point, and then to Ireland, where they settled and mixed with Irish Gaelic speakers. Over time, they invented their own creole language, a way the Romani and the Irish could talk to each other without fully learning each other’s tongues, and what we see here— “Brigidian”— is that creole.

That would explain both the Romance sound and the rather heavy Gaelic influence, and could very well also explain the presence of words that don’t seem to fit in either grouping (possibly derived from a Romani dialect, and thus descended from an Indo-Aryan language, not a Romance or a Gaelic one). As for the words and grammatical conventions that sound similar to English, these are why I pinpoint the 19th century: by then, this creole language would have had ample time to be subjected to English-language influence, and naturally took some on (similar to the way the previously mentioned Shelta language has developed, or the Scots language in Scotland). Besides, the poem “Silent Night” dates from that time, so the way we see Brigidian in that translation is likely contemporary to the poem.

I apologize that this answer became so long— my excitement at the investigation got the better of me, I guess! To sum it up briefly: if Brigidian is (or was) indeed a real language, I believe it was probably, or at least could have been, a creole spoken by a hybrid Irish-Romani population as late as the 19th century and likely for some time before that, in various forms. If anyone has more expertise and could provide information that affects this theory of mine, or just wants to discuss this little enigma called “Brigidian,” please do!

Cheers

*Source: Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Vol. I, Fifth Series, Vol. XXI, Consecutive Series 1890-1891, (1892), pg. 518.

** To learn more about the name, go here.

*** Source: Gaelic Rosary Prayers (2011). Bit of a misnomer there.

Image: "Erin makes a Christmas pudding marked 'Home Rule', while Pat brings international support as ingredients,"by John Fergus O'Hea [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Admittedly, this image has nothing to do with the post, but when I looked for an Irish Christmas image on Wikimedia, this came up, and I thought it was too cool to pass by.