"It was one o'clock."

Translation: Bha e uair.

[Coiseam]

what's wrong with "bha uair e"?

[silmeth]

The word order. The subject is it, e. It comes after the verb: bha e uair (it was one hour, one o’clock).

This sentence breaks the rule that a noun phrase cannot be a predicate of the verb bi (and not a copula). I don’t know exactly why uair is special here, perhaps it could be used adverbially (like at one hour, one o’clock) and this is a remnant of that?

(If it were the copula here, then the sentence would be b’ uair e, but that would mean it was an hour, as in, whatever it is, it was literally an hour; an hour is it’s definition.)