Setting a Course for Lewis, Travelling Towards Lewis - it's a song about sailing home to Lewis, one of the Western Isles of Scotland. The song describes the places and sights you would see on the way - mountains, moorlands, machair (sands), lighthouses, fishermen ...

There is a translation from Gaelic to English at the Celtic Lyrics site http://www.celticlyricscorner.net/mactalla/togail.htm

As Runrig Fan has noted, the tune is often played without the lyrics. You can find sheet music for a few settings at https://thesession.org › tunes › 19583.

The author of the song, Donald Morrison aka Dòmhnull Mac Ghille Mhoire, was from the Ness area of the Isle of Lewis. Here is another translation, from Tom Thompson. Verse 4 in the translation is not included at the beginning of the discussion, so I'll add it here. Verses 5 and 6 are reversed in order in this version.

TOGAIL CURS AIR LEODHAS Translation

1 Come [1] along with me, make haste, and we'll go across over there
To the proud Gaelic island where [2] we were raised as children;
The land of the bravest [3] heroes who won a reputation amongst foreigners,
And we'll go together, my darling, over to the land of bracken [4].

2 We'll go [5] boldly westwards [6] over the hills and the straits;
We'll get a ferry safely over to the place I love;
And when it lands at the harbour [7] there you'll hear Gaelic all round
And we'll get a welcome and a hospitable greeting [8] in the friendly
heather island. [9]

3 You'll see sea, you'll see moorland, you'll see peat mosses round about,
You'll see green hills and slopes that we once knew well;
You'll see level coastal plains and plenty of them are under cultivation
In Ness, a beautiful place, where I was brought up when young.

4 Nuair thig sèimheachd an t-samhraidh 's e 'n taobh thall àit as bòidhch',
Bidh gach struthán le sunnd air 's aig gach alltán bidh ceòl;
Bidh gach neòinean is flùrán ri dùsgadh 'nan glòir,
'S thig am feasgar 'gan crùnadh le ùr-dheal is ceò.

When the mildness of summer comes the other side [10] is a most beautiful place
Each streamlet is joyful and each little brook has its music
all the daisies and little flowers waken [11] into their glory
and evening comes to crown [12] them with fresh dew and mist.

5 You'll see skillful fishermen, the best at sailing and at casting nets,
Out from the shore at Port-nan-Giuran, that's what they were always famous for;
That's the town where you were brought up, and you got love and protection there,
And you'll see the home that you left, unchanged since long ago.

6 You'll see ancient Tiumpan [13] defying [14] the waves,
Its light [15] often gives deliverance to brave seamen;
It's many a boat that had been driven off couse and had lost its way [16] at a bad time
that that light guided into the security of Broad Bay [17].

7 Now agree with me, love, and make an end straight away,
Make your goodbyes, with no regrets, to the foreigners' land,
To go to the land of our ancestors who strived so ardently on its behalf
And we'll stay in that country as long as we live [18].

Translator's Notes

1. Tiugainn isn't historically a verb, but a personal preposition (delenited palatalised from of thugainn, towards us); however, so far as current Gaelic is concerned it behaves just like an indeclinable defective verb (1st person plural and 2nd person singular & plural imperative); it has displaced rachamaid (1p pl. ipv of rach) to some extent, but not completely. (I wonder if that's how irregular verbs come to exist in a language: are we seeing a step in the evolution of thig from irregular to even more irregular?)

2. literally: " the island which raised us", but that's just poetic license, not a normal Gaelic idiom.

3. "is calma"; as usual the superlative has to be buried in a relative clause; usually the relative copula is written "as" instead of "is".

4. Places in the western isles are often known by some descriptive phrase as an alternative to their name, usually only in poetry and not in ordinary speech; tìr an rainich (the land of bracken) is the northern half of Lewis; other examples include eilean a' cheò (the isle of mist, = Skye), tìr a' mhurain (the land of maram grass, = North Uist), tìr an eòrna (the land of barley, = Tiree), and eilean fraoich (the isle of heather, = Harris and Lewis)

5. Nì sinn gluasad: literally we shall make a movement.

6. Suas: Westwards; usually suas means up (away from the speaker) but "up the hills and the kyles" wouldn't make sense.

7. The most common meaning of buail is strike, but "bhuail an aiseag am bagh" means "the ferry landed at the harbour" rather than "the ferry crashed into the dock" which is what translating it as "strike" here would suggest. Also "bagh" means either harbour or bay according to context, here it's where the ferry touches land so it's harbour.

8. aoigh: either a guest, or a stranger, or the welcome given to one.

9. Isle of heather here means the whole Island (Harris & Lewis) as opposed to N. Lewis (tìr an rainich)

10.the other side - - the other side of the water, ie the island. Or perhaps it means the other side of the island, the Tolstas, Stornaway, and the Eye instead of Ness.

11.ri dusgadh is Lewis Gaelic, standard Gaelic is a' dusgadh; in standard gaelic the use of "ri" in the indicative forms a sort of infinitive of intent, or an imperative: they are to wake, rather than they wake.

12.I've taken 'gan as meaning gu + an rather than ag + an; if it's ag it means "comes crowning them" instead of "comes to crown them".

13.Tiumpan rather than Siumpan in English presumably comes from some phrase like "Solus an t-Siumpan" (Tiumpan Light) where there's a T sound in the Gaelic.

14.literally "on the face of the waves"

15.this is the light at the NE end of the Eye peninsula, not the Butt of Lewis light near Ness.

16."air a sgiursadh" = driven off course; "gun curs" = without a course, ie lost.

17.Loch-a-Tuath (The North Loch) is called Broad Bay in English; it's impossible to translate names like this unless you just happen to know what the place is called, there's no point in learners trying to remember name equivalences unless they intend to go to the places (and then they'll need them; although a seaman will understand Broad Bay because that's what's on the charts, a land-lubber may well use Loch-a-Tuath even when speaking English.

18.literally: until we are stretched out in it.

19."dhiubh" is what Morrison wrote (and is the standard Gaelic word" but you may hear people singing "dhaibh" instead, because in some Lewis dialects they confuse the rest of us by saying "for them" when they mean "of them".

http://www.geocities.ws/Paris/LeftBank/4843/tocal.html