In 4.04 Fear, Itself Willow guesses that the book from which the frat boys took the occult symbol is written in “Gaelic” (which she can, handily, translate). We later see, however, that it’s written in English - describing various aspects of exorcism.
The only apparently “Gaelic” bit, as Giles confirms, is the inscription under the drawing of Gachnar. This reads “Fir Meit”. As anyone who’s been to an Irish pub toilet will tell you, “Fir” means “Men” (being the plural of “fear”). “Meit” doesn’t, as far as I know, mean anything.
What I think it should have read (at least if it’s Irish Gaelic) is “fíor meid”: “fíor” meaning “true”, and “méid” meaning “size” (or “amount”). Even still, the normal word order in Irish is to have the adjective after the noun , as in “an méid fíor” (”the true size”), so zero points all round for the Buffy prop linguists!
Related episodes: 4.04 Fear, Itself
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decken on April 13th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
“Fir meit” is an attempt at Old Irish, not modern, but as you said, the word order should be reversed. They also missed both accents, though that was not uncommon for scribes of the time, either. Méit seems to be a feminine noun in Old Irish (though it’s masculine in the modern language), so the following adjective should probably be lenited. I’d guess “méit ḟír” (with a dot above the f) would be more correct.