Dear Aine,

(About presenting stanzas of Mo Ghile Mear in English) I'd like to applaud your gracious but resolute tone in the face of some kind of intemperate responses. I for one have been moved by the Chieftains' cut of Mo Ghile Mear to take a lot more interest in Gaelic than I ever had before, starting with at least memorizing and understanding the chorus but also getting interested in looking for recognizable relationships to other languages I know anything about (English, Scandinavian, etc).

And the three stanzas Sting sings on that cut are, of course, only three out of the six there seem to be in the original, and are, of course, translated liberally in order to rhyme and scan in English. But I really can't see that they're such a disservice to the original. If I compare them to literal (and therefore unsingable) translations (such as that offered at http://ingeb.org/songs/moghilem.html), the stanzas are completely identifiable and I don't find the poetic meaning to be any different.

However, I do have an alternative transcription to offer which I think is more accurate here and there. It's not by me -- it's from

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=875857

which I found by googling on the translator the Chieftains credit, named Sean MacReamoinn. I guess that that posting either has access to a printed copy of the lyrics (which would be my bet) or else was done by someone with a more lucky ear than most -- to me it agrees well with a careful listen, and by the way, the other four or five sites on the same googling don't. But even the person who posts it also carps about its supposed lack of faithfulness to the Gaelic, calling it "a different work altogether" which again I think is tripe.

It turns out to include a couple of expressions left as Gaelic, which your transcriber didn't suspect and consequently (I would say) forced some English syllables to fit. The three stanzas used are:

Grief and pain are all I know
My heart is sore, my tears aflow
We saw him go our buachaill beo
No word we know of him, ochon.

Chorus

A proud and gallant chevalier
A high born scion of gentle mien
A fiery blade engaged to lead
He'd break the bravest in the field

Chorus

Then we'll sing his praise as sweet harps play
And proudly toast his noble frame
With spirit and with mind aflame
So wish him strength and length of days

Chorus

-- And then for something a bit different, in the other Chieftains song in this thread (Changing Your Demeanour), I haven't made a careful study but I do notice one word I hear differently,

But woe is me, he TOSSED the blooming jockey.

thanks --

Crispin Miller