Longing/Saudade/Hiraeth

Someone asks about saudade. Yes, I answer, it's longing, yearning (melancholia/nostalgia). He is yearning for home = tá cumha air i ndiaidh a bhaile (literally, "there is loneliness on him after his home"). There are at least five words for that ephemeral state of being in Scots Gaelic.

In Welsh, it's hiraeth, a homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to, the nostalgia and the grief for the lost places of your past, places that never were.

The Breton for the French nostalgie is hiraezh. This could be a cognate, or borrowed from the Welsh. Hiraeth (first recorded in 1499) corresponds with Cornish hyreth, and Irish sireacht." Someone said it appears in the Book of Aneirin 'Blwydyn hiraeth er gwyr catraeth' ('a year's longing for the men of Catraeth'), which dates it to the late 13th c. Unfortunately I did not keep my reference.

The Welsh and Breton come from the Celtic root siros, from Proto-Celtic *sīr-axto-, akin to Gaulish siraxta (“longing”). I thought it was related to Latin serus. But someone astutely pointed out that the Latinate cognate is solitas.

Regardless, it’s still a full circle to Saudade.

Hiraeth