The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #2284   Message #8898
Posted By: LaMarca
17-Jul-97 - 11:44 AM
Thread Name: Strange words in Irish and Scottish songs
Subject: RE: Strange words in Irish and Scottish songs
Just a caution on lyrics in the DT; many of them are contributed by folks who have listened to a recording of the song, and then written down their best guess of what THEY think the lyrics are. This is subject to the usual amount of human error, especially if the listener isn't a native speaker of the language the song is being sung in. Many of the transcriptions are done by Americans listening to songs sung by Irish, Scottish or English singers, and the transcriber disn't familiar with the accent or the idiomatic expression being used in the song. (See the thread on Mistakes in song lyrics for some funny examples). I wish that one of the fields at the bottom of the song would state whether it's a transcription from a recording or taken from a written source (and which recording or written source was used). So, don't take a DT version as Gospel truth for the lyrics; contributors are doing the best they can, but a lot of the database is, as we would say in my research field, unsubstantiated data!