The Rorate Coeli desuper thread brings me back to the old question of a lost poem behind Ruari Dall O'Cathain's Da Mihi Manum.

BEFORE well-meaning but ignorant Gaels start saying "Oh, but there are wonderful Gaelic or English versions" - which they are quite welcome to discuss on the existing threads on the subject to be found by using the search box above - let me point out that Malcolm Douglas has established that none of these predate 1840 and that the work is only known by its Latin name before that, which perfectly fits the first notes. It is to be emphasised that Rory Dall O'C spent most of his life in Scotland, moreover, so a well-documented case would need to be made if any Hibernian interpretation could be considered. ie Butt out Woolfe Tones and the rest, this is Scottish!

What I'm interested in is getting back to the practice of the circle Dunbar was part of, to improve the quality of knowledge about the practice used by Dunbar and his circle, which O'Cathain was almost certainly on the edge of. They were writing in a no-Renaissance Latin (which distinguishes from Church Latin, to settle the Irish RC angle) - but where was this coming from? To show that they were at least as cultured as the English? Or was it an English importation? Or derviative of Mary Stuart's affiliations? As we see in the Rorate Coeli instance, it was often hybridised with a soft form of Doric English, was Latin ever hybridised with Scots Gaelic?

One of the approaches to setting a piece like the Rorate is to take the natural beat of the words as the rhythm, and adjust it to bar lengths to see where extreme rubato has to be applied to fit the words in. That done, the question then arises of the notes, and that starts with the natural pitch of the text. And so might it be done backwards?