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PAGES 68, 69
A translation of Emer's "Awakening of Cuchulain" may be found in Thurneysen, p. 92 but there are one or two points that seem to be noted as differing from the rendering there given.
Lines 3 and 4 seem to mean: "Look on the king of Macha, on my beauty / does not that release thee from deep sleep?" Thurneysen gives "Look on the king of Macha, my heart! thy sleep pleases him not." Mo crath can hardly mean "my heart."
Line 6 is in the Irish deca a churnu co comraim! "see their horns for the contest!" Instead of comraim Thurneysen seems to prefer the reading of the second MS., co cormaim, and translates "their horns full of beer." Churnu may mean trumpets as well as drinking-horns, and Emer would hardly call on Cuchulain to throw off a drunken sleep (line 21) and then take to beer!
The following translation of lines 17 to 20 seems preferable to Thurneysen's:
"Heavy sleep is decay, and no good thing;
it is fatigue against a heavy war;
it is 'milk for the satiated,'
the sleep that is on thee;
death-weakness is the tanist of death."
The last line is tanaisi d'ec ecomnart. The tanist was the prince who
stood next to the king; the image seems too good a one to be lost;
Thurneysen translates "weakness is sister to death."
Line 14 seems to mean "see each wonder wrought by the cold"; Emer calls Cuchulain's attention to the icicles which she thinks he is in danger of resembling.
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