Fame is more enduring than life.
Note: The most enduring fame achieved in the Irish ‘seanchas béil’ (oral tradition) is when a ‘file’ (poet) composes a poem to commemorate the deeds of a hero. It is a tradition dating from the earliest myths of the Ulster Cycle to the ballad of Kevin Barry. It is even part of the language. The word for hero, or warrior, in Irish is ‘laoch’. Poems about heros are so pervasive in the oral literature that the Irish word for narrative poem is derived from it. A narrative poem in Irish is a ‘laoi’.
Note also: The adjective ‘buaine’ is the comparative degree of ‘buan’, the root word one finds in the dictionary. An adjective’s root form is the nominative singular form (ainmneach uatha) or positive degree (bunchéim). Like all Irish adjectives, ‘buan’ has two different genitive singular forms, one masculine (ginideach firinscneach), is é sin, ‘buain’, and one that is feminine (ginideach baininscneach), in this case, ‘buaine’. The feminine genitive form is used as the comparative form (breischéim) except for a few irregular adjectives.
