I live in Ireland but do not speak Irish, and once had the temerity to sing a few verses of The Lament of the Three Marys at a gathering of singers in a mini-Gaeltacht area of Cork (Glanmire). I had been through it translated line by line and buttressed by the few words and phrases I know, and was kindly coached by Tomás Ó Canainn, who could not have been nicer or more supportive. (It was his version on an old Na Fili album that first made me love this song.)

I got through it without major mishap and the audience (which included a lot of Irish-speakers) gave me a truly lovely reception. I had put a lot of careful work into it as well as listening to several native performers sing it, and I DID know what every word I was singing meant; but I felt apprehensive that my California/Boston/20-years-in-London-tinged accent might be so wrong as to be jarring. But the overwhelming reaction I got was positive, and the main underlying attitude seemed to be that people were happy to see singers embracing this material and helping to keep it alive. My offering was done with great respect and as much learning as I could muster, which clearly makes a difference. Vocalising a line of random-seeming syllables meaningless to the singer would diminish the song and rob it of half its value.

For the record, I have lived here for nearly 17 years and never NEVER encountered cultural snobbery from an Irish person in this matter. That seems to be reserved for outsiders -

PS: Catherine Anne MacPhee took the trouble to write out by hand the verses of a song of hers which I loved, and she doesn't know me - I sent her a letter out of the blue, asking where I might find them. What does that tell you?