Bríd Mhór wrote:
I thought - "go ndéana" was used for prayers and blessings ?? Módh fóthuiteach something??
It is, yes—it’s the subjunctive mood (
an modh foshuiteach, which is just a calque on the Latin:
sub- =
fo- +
-ject(um) ‘thrown/placed’ =
-suite), which means ‘may XYZ happen’.
In Old Irish, all verbs had both absolute and conjunct endings, which where used in different contexts, and the endings were a bit different (the conjunct ones being shorter and more compressed). The subjunctive in the third singular (i.e., ‘may (s)he/it do XYZ’) had the absolute ending
-aid(h); but the conjunct ending
-a.
When Irish eventually lost this silly distinction between absolute and conjunct forms, they were rather randomly distributed: sometimes, the absolute form became the more common one; other times, the conjunct form became the more common. And in some cases, like the subjunctive here, some dialects generalised the absolute form (Ulster), while other dialects generalised the conjunct (everywhere else, basically).
With this particular verb (
déan, which has always been hopelessly irregular and bothersome), the Ulster form is a more recent innovation: Old Irish never had a subjunctive ending in
-aidh in this verb. The absolute form was
do·gné (which has been lost), and the conjunct form was
-déna (=
déana).