MetaFilter posts tagged with gaelic

Mouth music

Callicvol — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 08:36:26 -0800

Canntaireachd (Scottish Gaelic: literally, "chanting"; Scottish Gaelic pronunciation: [kʰãũn̪ˠt̪ɛɾʲəxk]) is the ancient Scottish Highland method of noting classical pipe music or Ceòl Mòr by a combination of definite syllables, by which means the various tunes could be more easily recollected by the learner, and could be more easily transmitted orally. Teaching pibroch through the traditional means of canntaireachd, by introducing a new system of mnemonic gestures coinciding with the canntaireachd vocables as well as the attributes of the bagpipe scale as suggested by Thomas Pearston in 1973. Performed here by Barnaby Brown. Visual Canntaireachd 1 Visual Canntaireachd 2 Visual Canntaireachd 3 Visual Canntaireachd 4: And with accompaniment. Band-Re: Hihorodo hiharara Mouth music traditions from Scotland and India are combined in this arrangement of "Struan Robertson's Salute", a Highland pibroch considered to be ancient in 1838. More from Barnaby Brown via his YouTube channel.

Pangur Bán

Joe in Australia — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:02:37 -0800

I and Pangur Bán, my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
[...] (spoken version, set to music) Better far than praise of men Tis to sit with book and pen; Pangur bears me no ill will, He too plies his simple skill. Tis a merry thing to see At our tasks how glad are we, When at home we sit and find Entertainment to our mind. Oftentimes a mouse will stray In the hero Pangur's way; Oftentimes my keen thought set Takes a meaning in its net. 'Gainst the wall he sets his eye Full and fierce and sharp and sly; 'Gainst the wall of knowledge I All my little wisdom try. When a mouse darts from its den O how glad is Pangur then! O what gladness do I prove When I solve the doubts I love! So in peace our tasks we ply, Pangur Ban, my cat, and I; In our arts we find our bliss, I have mine and he has his. Practice every day has made Pangur perfect in his trade; I get wisdom day and night Turning darkness into light. This poem seems to have been written by an anonymous Irish monk around twelve hundred years ago, perhaps at the Benedictine monastery of Reichenau. The poem was written at the bottom of the second page (page 1 verso) of the Reichenau Primer (about the primer). It may have been a collection of work the monk did for practise; we don't know. You can hear the poem read with text and translation at The Great Book of Gaelic and you can practise your own pronunciation here. The first critical translation of this poem was by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, but the most popular one (quoted above) is by Robin Flower. Translating Pangur Bán seems to be is a popular exercise for poets working from the Gaelic: here is Seamus Heaney's recent version (another link) and two translations by Frank O'Connor and Eavan Boland. A musical version was also written by W H Auden for Samuel Barber as part of his Hermit Songs.

Keeping Celtic languages alive on TV and the Web

joeclark — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:21:14 -0800

Since 1980, the Celtic Media Festival has brought together people who broadcast, and now Webcast, in Celtic languages. Videoblog Gwagenn.TV provides a report (with autoplaying video) from the 2009 festival whose clips and interviews are spoken and subtitled variously in Breton, French, English, Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Irish, Catalan, and Basque, not all of which are actually Celtic. Special feature: Man-on-man kiss during Catalan soap opera. (Poke around at Gwagenn.TV and you’ll find such amusements as a rocket launch carried out entirely in Breton with Beastie Boys soundtrack, an interview with an Occitan-language reggae band subtitled in Breton [Flickr snippet], and a report from a Manx-language workshop.)

These marks in printer's ink

Abiezer — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 02:04:59 -0800

The Táin lithographs In 1967 Louis le Brocquy was commissioned to illustrate Thomas Kinsella's translation of the great Irish prose epic the Táin Bó Cuailnge. The resulting collaborative volume is widely acknowledged as the great Irish Livre d'Artiste of the twentieth century; Le Brocquy's "brush drawings merged seamlessly with the text; stark, fluent images, they expressed with great economy of means an epic breadth, evoking the movement of vast masses of people. Individual participants in the drama were also pulled into close focus."

Julie Fowlis

weapons-grade pandemonium — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 13:58:33 -0800

I had not heard of Julie Fowlis until this morning. Yes, I live in a igloo.

Gaelic Psalm Singing

brautigan — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:08:36 -0800

THE church elder’s reaction was one of utter disbelief. Shaking his head emphatically, he couldn’t take in what the distinguished professor from Yale University was telling him. "No," insisted Jim McRae, an elder of the small congregation of Clearwater in Florida. "This way of worshipping comes from our slave past. It grew out of the slave experience, when we came from Africa." But Willie Ruff, an Afro-American professor of music at Yale, was adamant - he had traced the origins of gospel music to Scotland. The distinctive psalm singing had not been brought to America’s Deep South by African slaves but by Scottish émigrés who worked as their masters and overseers, according to his painstaking research. Ruff, 71, a renowned jazz musician who played with Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie, is convinced the Florida congregation’s method of praise - called ‘presenting the line’, in which the psalms are called out and the congregation sings a response - came from the Hebrides. While this leaves Hebridean Scots uncomfortable with their predecessor's past, it is an interesting, if unproven, connection between the two musical traditions. In Presbyterian Free Church's across Lewis you can here some of the finest examples of spiritual Free Heterophony in the world, where the psalms are sung a cappella (without musical accompaniment), and led by a precentor (literally ‘one who sings beforehand’). In Gaelic psalm singing, the precentor leads the praise by commencing the tune, which he sings along with the congregation for two lines of a four-line stanza. On the third line, the precentor sings the line solo, which is then repeated by the congregation; this occurs for each line until the end of the item of praise. The result is a unique musical event, full of the traditions of Celtic religious culture, and deeply moving in its praise of God. While a very different entity from the often joyous expressiveness of Baptist Gospel (The Hebrides have decades or miserable weather and even more miserable bible preachers to thank for that) it is surely as spiritual. Some examples for you to listen to: Psalm 133 [mp3] Psalm 16 5-7 [mp3] Psalm 16 6-9 [mp3] [Originally posted as a response to this Askme]

The Inaccessible Oscars

Abiezer — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 05:42:51 -0800

Seachd (English title: The Inaccessible Pinnacle) [main movie site, incl. embedded video. Loads of resources on Gaeldom] is the first Scots Gaelic feature film to receive mainstream distribution. Despite good reviews, BAFTA won't be nominating it for a foreign-language Oscar. Not that they thought a different film was better, it seems they just couldn't be arsed.

Voice from the Cave of Gold

Abiezer — Tue, 22 May 2007 08:26:51 -0800

Sorley MacLean Probably best known for Hallaig, MacLean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain) was one of the finest poets of the twentieth century and has been credited with a renaissance in the literature of his native Scots Gaelic. The site has information about his life, critical writings and poetry, and some audio and video of the great man reading and talking about his work.

The Great Book of Gaelic

plep — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 10:13:13 -0800

The Great Book of Gaelic. Illustrated poetry.

Bhí Pádraig agus Michéal sa teach tabhairne

jfuller — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 16:22:00 -0800

Should Gaelic be an official EU language? As a happy member of the SCA I promise to revise all my past snarkiness and negative thinking about the EU if this happens. I will read (ploddingly and with a dictionary) all those speeches by Chirac and Schroder--as soon as they're translated into Gaelic. If Maltese can be an EU language of diplomacy, why not Gaelic? While the world around us rages, we'll return to the Middle Ages. (From crookedtimber)

How Do You Say ASSALAMU ALAIKUM in Gaelic?

turbanhead — Tue, 11 Mar 2003 18:17:32 -0800

How Do You Say ASSALAMU ALAIKUM in Gaelic? Plans have been announced in the Irish Republic to translate the Koran, Islam's most sacred text, into Irish. The ambitious project aims to bring Ireland's Gaelic-speakers and Muslim communities closer together, Leslie Carter of the Islamic Cultural Centre in Dublin said.

Roll Your Own Curses in Gaelic

rschram — Fri, 18 Aug 2000 11:56:08 -0800

Roll Your Own Curses in Gaelic
Confirming my long held suspicion that the best the Web can do is automate and diversify Mad Libs functions.