INTERPRETING SHANEO'S LYRICS

[IrishRover]

Hmm... this could be a great thread... anything ya ever found unknown and wanted to ask about Shaneo's lyrics Oi could start asking... for example: figure of Father Emmett (dirty priest as Shaneo says) that appears in several lyrics... Donegal Express, Ceilidh Cowboy... any views on that, is it a real priest, smn who Shaneo met or just poetic character?

[philipchevron]

Hmm... this could be a great thread... anything ya ever found unknown and wanted to ask about Shaneo's lyrics Oi could start asking... for example: figure of Father Emmett (dirty priest as Shaneo says) that appears in several lyrics... Donegal Express, Ceilidh Cowboy... any views on that, is it a real priest, smn who Shaneo met or just poetic character?

Father Emmett is widely believed to be based on Terry Woods or, at least, Mac's rather fanciful impression of Terry Woods.

[IrishRover]

thanks, so oi guess its based upon Shane's impression of Terry Woods - not upon Shane's own experience although the song(s) somehow points in that direction(its hard for me to imagine that character in Donegal Express is or its refered to smn else but Shane) lol anyway, is there a background, why is it the dirty priest, Father Emmett... there has to be a origin of that phrase?

[dawsonn]

Hmm... this could be a great thread... anything ya ever found unknown and wanted to ask about Shaneo's lyrics Oi could start asking... for example: figure of Father Emmett (dirty priest as Shaneo says) that appears in several lyrics... Donegal Express, Ceilidh Cowboy... any views on that, is it a real priest, smn who Shaneo met or just poetic character?

Father Emmett is widely believed to be based on Terry Woods or, at least, Mac's rather fanciful impression of Terry Woods.

terry woods must be a lucky man

[James]

Hmm... this could be a great thread... anything ya ever found unknown and wanted to ask about Shaneo's lyrics Oi could start asking... for example: figure of Father Emmett (dirty priest as Shaneo says) that appears in several lyrics... Donegal Express, Ceilidh Cowboy... any views on that, is it a real priest, smn who Shaneo met or just poetic character?

Father Emmett is widely believed to be based on Terry Woods or, at least, Mac's rather fanciful impression of Terry Woods.

Ah, to see the world through Shane's eyes for just one day...

[IrishRover]

K, tis toime for Sayonara
If smn would be koind enough to translate:
Som-yat-zu, som-yat-zu..

[Eckhard]

K, tis toime for Sayonara
If smn would be koind enough to translate:
Som-yat-zu, som-yat-zu..

Perhaps he thought of Sun Yat-Sen?

[Sober]

I have a question. As a non-english speaker, I was just wondering, do Irish really write like IrishRover or you just write like this because you feel like it or to look cool? No offense there, I am just wondering. Because I know you speak somewhat like that, but I didn't know for the writing.

[Mick Molloy]

Haha no this man is one of a kind!

[Sober]

Personally, I find it quite anoying. But who am I to judge? I guess I post comments that people find anoying from time to time.

[philipchevron]

I have a question. As a non-english speaker, I was just wondering, do Irish really write like IrishRover or you just write like this because you feel like it or to look cool? No offense there, I am just wondering. Because I know you speak somewhat like that, but I didn't know for the writing.

We wroite as da fancy does take us. Not even da queen of all the englands was after puttin' paid to it, the dirty oul virgin.

[Sober]

Well, this is just a stereotype, isn't it? I spoke to many Irish people when I was in Europe and most of them spoke proper English. Those who had a bad English speaking were the exceptions actually. But I didn't even go to Ireland, maybe that when you are on the continent you make special efforts to speak in an intelligible manner.

And I don't know this to offend anybody, I am the first to admit that I don't know shit (about that matter, at least). It is just that as a North-American, I've been told so many times that life isn't long enough to understand the Irish. This is a pretty strong stereotype over here.

[philipchevron]

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland,
Then maybe at the closing of your day,
You will sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh,
And see the sun go down on Galway Bay.

Just to hear again the ripple of the trout stream,
The women in the meadow making hay.
Just to sit beside a turf fire in the cabin,
And watch the barefoot gosoons at their play.

For the breezes blowin' o'er the sea from Ireland
Are perfumed by the heather as they blow
And the women in the uplands diggin' praties
Speak a language that the strangers do not know.

Yet the stangers came and tried to teach us their way.
They scorned us just for bein' what we are.
But they might as well go chasing after moon beams,
Or light a penny candle from a star.

And if there's is going to be a life hereafter,
And somehow I am sure there's going to be,
I will ask my God to let me make my heaven,
In that dear land across the Irish sea.



(galway bay)

When I was a boy, we always had Christmas at my grandmother's home in Ballybough, Dublin, a flat above a bookie's where my father grew up. Every year, a very elderly neighbour called Bridgie Moran was also present for the Christmas Dinner. She had been a polio victim since childhood and otherwise lived alone, in the flats across the road. Every year, after a few post-prandial whiskies, she always gave us a song or two, and the first one was always "Galway Bay" and she always changed the last lines of the third verse to "And the women in the uplands diggin' praties/speak a language that the English does not know", spitting them out with some venom. Who knew what hardships this old Dublin woman experienced in her life?

In any event, this was the first I ever knew of "Galway Bay" and I still have a tape recording of her performing it. She's long dead now, but the meaning she attached to the song made a huge impression on me. I think the idea was, if the English were going to colonise the Irish, at least they would never colonise their hearts, their art, their modes of communication or, for that matter, their grammar.

[Mick Molloy]

Lovely childhood story!

[Sober]

As a French-Canadian I guess I should understand, since the goddamn Brits did much to assimilate us, too. They never managed to do it, but after Canada fell to the hands of the Brits, Christianity has been made illegal, for example, and it was impossible to be educated in French. So we've been illiterate for quite a long time. The Brits have always been quite racist, even to this day. They tried to crush anybody trying to be set free from their Empire. Americans, Scots, Paddies...