Hi Nick,

I'll check this song out. The words remind me of one or more of Shakespeare's sonnets. One of his most well known, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day..." and my all time favourite of his sonnet's, "Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day..."

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.


Sonnet 34

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke.
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak,
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief,
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss,
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence's cross,
Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.


Leeneia, I don't think that there is enough information in Antaine Ó Faracháin's song to be able to pass judgement on either party, so we all may make assumptions based on our own experiences, but we cannot make reasoned decisions. In my opinion, it would be a shame to dismiss a beautiful song because of a personal judgement based on minimal available information on who is in the right and who is in the wrong in the story.

Helen