I have recently discovered an intriguing phrase from Diarmuid Ó Sé's Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne, which I'm having some difficulty translating:

dá raghfá 'on scioból agus do dhreas a bhualadh (Ó Sé, 2000, § 28)

I have an urge to translate it as something like 'If you go to the barn you shall be hit', though it doesn't seem to correlate to the original phrase. The next best thing would be something like 'If you go to the barn to hit someone', though this makes even less sense.

I'm sure that this will be one of those complete duh moments in which the translation will make total sense when I finally understand, but right now my head is just not working right

If this helps at all he also later wrote, which I can easily translate:

(caint a thug sé leis ón máistir scoile a bhí ann lena linn)

Help greatly appreciated
S

Without context I can’t really tell (and if it’s a saying he took from the school-master, then I guess it’s supposed to have some metaphorical meaning I won’t be able to decipher), but literally I’d take it to mean: ‘if you went to the barn when it’s your turn/time to thresh (grain, presumably)’.

At least grammatically/structurally that’s what it looks like to me. I might be way off though.

"...agus do dhreas a bhualadh" = "agus dá mbualfá do dhreas" - If you went to the barn and "did your turn" (?) (threshing?).

FGB has "dreas a bhualadh ar dhuine" - to take turns beating s.o/to give s.o. a beating"

Thank you both a lot. I'm at least somewhat glad to see that I'm not the only one struggling with this. The author doesn't give much more context, but here's the whole paragraph that it came from (it doesn't particularly pertain to anything about the sentence):

When there are two conditions (if ... and if ...) only the first starts with dá or má.
The second condition is rephrased as an infinite clause "do dhreas a bhualadh" or as a that clause "go mbualfá do dhreas"
Both conditions are combined by agus.

That makes much more sense. So would this simply be 'If you went to the barn and if you did your threshing'?

Still wonder what dreas a bhualadh means here (beating a round)
It might be threshing because it happens in a barn but it could be any beating.

I remember dreas a bhualadh used in churning butter.

From examples in FGB (dreas a chodladh ‘to sleep a while’), Dinneen (s.v. greas, eg. buail greas ‘thresh for a while’, dá ngáirinn greasa ‘should I take my turn of weeping’), and Croidhe Cainnte C[h]iarraighe (s.v. greas, eg.: Dheineas greas beag codlata, dhá uair an chluig nó mar sin: babhta, seal. Bíodh greas den bpíp agat: bí ghá hól ar feadh scataimh. An bhfuil aon ghreas rinnce agat?: an bhféadfá babhta beag nó mór do dhéanamh? Dheineamair greas maith rámhaidheachta i gcoinnibh na taoise a’s na gaoithe nár fhág aon fhuacht ar na mailidhibh againn: seal te, pras.) it seems that the construction dreas (or greas) a ⟨VN⟩ just means ‘to ⟨verb⟩ for a while’ (dreas a bhualadh ‘to thresh for a while, to take a turn threshing’, greas a chodladh ‘to sleep for a while’, etc.).

I had no idea about the infinitival form after agus connecting conditions.

It's all there in GGBC.

I believe you. Might be in Gnás na Gaedhilge, O’Nolan’s New Era Grammar, and other resources – but the thing is, I haven’t read and memorized all of Irish grammars out there, cover to cover. ;-) (Maybe I should…)