Thursday 11 February 2010

Oro, Se Do Bheatha Bhaile

As I was watching The Wind that Shakes the Barley tonight, I heard a song that I recognized faintly from somewhere. I may have played some variant of it before, I'm not certain. But the tune was beautiful and the words (all in Gaelic) were quite haunting. So I looked it up.


This song was very popular with the rebellion groups in Ireland in the early twentieth century. I found translations of the lyrics, and found that the song is all about getting the foreign British out of the country and leaving Ireland at last in the hands of the Irish, and this being done by the Irish themselves. Not the French. Not the Spaniards. For those would only be changing the foreign controllers.

It's interesting to hear real Gaelic music, and I think I may have discovered the topic for my next speech.

1 comment:

  1. I love Gaelic songs! They have a lot of rebellion songs; I find the story of Ireland pretty compelling, and of course I love the music. It's intriguing to me that Irish National pride is so similar to Hawaiian pride. Both have such sad stories behind them and such beautiful music!

    By the way, what did you think of the movie? I am not a fan of the strong language, but I thought the film itself was very compelling and interesting . . . I love Cillian Murphy's acting :)

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