Talk:Fulacht fiadh

What about England????? And lets have a MERGE, or two
According to the article "A Fulacht fiadh is a type of archaeological site found in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man". Nope. A Fulacht fiadt is a type of archaeological site found in Ireland. Similar sites are found in Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man where they are commonly called Burnt mounds (who knows what they call them in Scottish Gaelic speaking areas, or in Welsh, but it doesn't stop them from being the same thing). Strangely enough these are also found in England but the article misses that out. Why? We are talking about pre-historic structures, before the concept of Scotland or Wales, or England came about. Whoever wrote the bulk of this should ask themselves why they missed this out. Burnt Mounds are common across these islands. If they appear to be more common in Ireland, it is more to do with the nature of the Archaeological record.

The article states that "Fulachtaí Fia are also known as "burnt mounds"." So lets Merge, Merge, Merge, Fulacht Fiadh and Burnt Mounds. The great thing about Wikipedia is that both can point to the same page. We are talking about the same phenomena, so lets have one page. And if there are regional differences, lets bring them out in the article, not obfuscate them by pretending they are different things, and that there aren't any in England.

Merge Fulachta Fiadh
The article Fulachta Fiadh seems to duplicate this one (Fulacht fiadh), although there are diferences in spelling, and the capitalisation of the second word is probably wrong (unless it is a proper noun). If a consensus could be reached on the correct, most commonly understood, name, then alternatives could be set up as redirects.

There is also a similarity to Burnt mound, which has a massively greater Google hit, and therefore probable greater acceptance as a name on an english language encyclopedia. I am not an expert and am not suggesting that these are identical to burnt mounds, nor that these articles should necessarily be merged to Burnt mound.

Any comments? Oosoom Talk to me 13:14, 5 October 2006 (UTC)


 * "Fulachta" & "Fulacht" are two different regional spellings of the same word - it's common in Gaeilge, there are a number of dialects, and they are often fairly disparate. I checked two archaeological texts, and both used "Fulachta Fiadh". But there's no right or wrong here; I'd suggest, arbitrarily, merging the shorter article into the longer. More or less, Fulachta Fiadh are the same as the burned mounds of the third article, but there are differences to the British examples, and are far more more prevalent in Ireland than there. Very few Irish people would know them as a 'burned mounds', and most would be aware of 'Fulachta Fiadh'. I'd prefer to see the "Fulachta Fiadh" stand on it's own, and this would probably be a difficult merge as both articles are relatively detailed, but strictly speaking, they are variations of the same thing


 * So, basically, I support first merge proposal, and am sitting on the fence for the second ;) - Coil00 22:43, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That was my guess. I notice that you capitalize both words. Would that be common practice? Oosoom Talk to me 09:33, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, it's not dialect, it's plural ("Fulachta", "Fulachtaí") vs singular ("Fulacht"). The rewrites missed this fact so right now parts of this read like gibberish.  I'll go fix them.  However, one inconsistency we will have to resolve is "Fulachta" vs "Fulachtaí".  My understanding is that "Fulachta" is the older version of the plural.  Therefore it is found in more books, and ranks higher in Google searches.  However, I believe "Fulachtaí" is the more correct spelling in Modern Irish.  I will get confirmation on this, but that is what I'm going with in the cleanup.
 * As some archaelogy and general information books refer to the Fulachtaí Fia without calling them "Burnt Mounds" I think we need to have two articles that cross-reference each other. And I'm pretty sure Wikipedia convention is that we go with the singular over the plural in the name.   I think that would also help with the "Fulachta" vs "Fulachtaí" issue, and we can put redirects from those. --Kathryn NicDhàna 19:37, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok, I stand corrected - Irish was never my stong point in school. I side with Kathryn on keeping the singular article title, and also on retaining two articles, Fulacht fiadh & Burned mound. Coil00 21:41, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Etymology
From the article;

"The word 'fulacht' denotes a pit used for cooking. 'Fiadh' meaning 'of the deer' or 'of the wild', is derived from the early word 'fian' [3] - 'of the Fianna or Fionn Mac Cumhail.'"

I'm a bit wary of this. 'Fia' is certainly the modern Irish word for 'deer' and Na Fianna got their name from this; "the deer". etc, etc. The word 'wild' however, is 'fiáin' in modern Irish and I'm not sure in this case that the latter has anything to do with Fulachtaí Fia. Comments? - Alison&#9997; 22:30, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll admit I'm slighly out of my dept here in terms of the eymology of old Irish, but my intention in creating the section was to draw debate and expansion from those better informed than me. Not never having been good at Irish at school ever, probabally the easiest way to reslove this is to quote my source in full and let ye decide from there:


 * "A review of the use of the term 'fulacht' in early Irish literature and of references to 'activities that may have taken place at such sites', suggests associations with the 'cooking and eating of food, washing and bathing, music and sex'. The word 'fulacht' means pit used for cooking. The second element can be intrepreted as either 'fiadh' meaning 'of the deer' or 'of the wild' or 'fian' meaning 'of a roving band of hunters or warriors' or ' of the 'Fianna' or 'Fionn Mac Cumhail'. Taken from Power's book cited in main article - Coil00 00:15, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Several points: First, the meaning of this quote from Power has been misrepresented in the article, through changing the punctuation, from

'fian' meaning 'of a roving band of hunters or warriors' or ' of the 'Fianna' or 'Fionn Mac Cumhail'

to

"fian"[4] - 'of the Fianna or Fionn Mac Cumhail.'

The distortion is this: the latter makes it seem that 'fian' means 'of the Fianna or Fionn Mac Cumhail', whereas the original punctuation indicated that the word 'fian' should be familiar to us through the name of the famous warrior-band. It is misleading to suggest that there is any connection between Fionn MacCumhail and either the modern term Fulacht Fiadh or the thing itself.

Second, it is incorrect to assert that 'fiadh' is 'derived from' 'fian' -- they do not even appear to be related, 'fiadh' relating to Old Irish 'fid' meaning 'forest'. There seems to be little consensus on the origin of 'fian', but check here: http://www.dil.ie/results-list.asp?mode=BAS&Fuzzy=0&searchtext=fian&findlet=F&findcol=&sortField=ID&sortDIR=65602&respage=0&resperpage=10&bhcp=1

All this stuff can be found at www.dil.ie, which is the dictionary of Old Irish, and Modern Irish should not be trusted to steer you in the right direction.

I have edited the article. Botta Perbus (talk) 10:45, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with this. Fia is deer, Fianna was a roving band (possibly based on the word deer, but certainly not a literal translation to "deer" in English). They do seem to have over-lapped during the conversion of irish to a written language and latin alphabet. Certainly, I would edit the article to continue the use of "Fulacht fiadh" throughout and not "fulacht fia" which appears prevalent in the article. 83.70.170.48 (talk) 08:41, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Picture
A picture of a Fulacht fiadh would really help a lot understanding what it is. Anybody? Soczyczi (talk) 17:27, 2 March 2008 (UTC)