a charaidh,

The gentleman who refers to this as a paen to Prince Charles Edward is correct. It is by Sean Clarach mac Dhomhnuill, the great Munster bard, written in 1745 to incite the Irish to rise and join the Jacobite cause.

The name refers to the "shining darling" (as I received the tune in Cul aodh from Sean Dineen some 20 years ago).

Though Phillipa's thoughts are not wrong per se - I follow her reasoning - it is just that in the original, the words were gile and mear, def. not gille or any variation thereof.

I had all 40 verses once, but they were in a briefcase that was stolen. I have assembled some more recently, though not all. I believe they are all in "Love Songs of Connaught" by Douglas Hyde.

The Sting version, (no disrespect to him per se, or anyone who likes him) is frankly bloody awful. Not only is his rendition wrong, but his verses have almost nothing to do with the Gaelic. Micheal O Dhomhnaill did a far superior version, but I can't recall which recording - I believe it was compiled on The Celts Will Rise Again.

The longish Gaelic version shown somewhere in this thread is correct barring some spelling errors that may be a function of "reading" the diacritical characters wrong as also discussed elsewhere.

However, i have the verses correctly rendered, minus the diacritical marks - I have not gone through and re-worked them, as I don't need them myself, and hate the "front/back-slash" convention used in some places - but I would be happy to give them to anyone whon wants them as is - perhaps someone who has time and/or a proper type-set can enter them.

Tioreadh.

S

seamus@peak.org