The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #20528   Message #661219
Posted By: GUEST,JTT
02-Mar-02 - 05:34 AM
Thread Name: The Saddest Song Ever written
Subject: RE: The Saddest Song Ever written
Has to be Liam O Raghallaigh, which starts:

An chuimhin leat an oiche ud...

(Do you remember that night)

the night in question being the night of the wedding that the widowed bride is remembering; she says (I translate): "Do you remember that night, the streets full of action - priests and brothers talking about our wedding..."

It goes on into a desperate and tragic lament; in the second verse she sings: "A bride and a widow I was left on my wedding night..."

By the third or fourth verse she's describing in graphic detail how the body of her beloved must be: "The eels have your eyes, and the crabs your sweet mouth; your two long, bright, bright-shining arms are under the harsh discipline of the salmon".

And she ends with a curse on the craftsmen who made the boat, saying that if they'd gone to a place known for its good quality wood, the boat would not have sunk, and "My thousand-times treasure would not have drowned on the coast of Malbay".

The tune, too, is a keen, beautiful, eerie and tragic.