Looking around for the English translation of this wonderful old Gaelic poem by Cathal Bui Mac Giolla Gunna, I've drawn a few blanks, or else found a less convincing versions (to my ears!) to the one sung (& translated?) by Paddy Tunney, here transcribed from the singing of Clive Powell:


Was the break of day but no bitterns horn filled the waking morn with its hollow boom
For I found him prone by the bare flag blown by the lough shore lone where he met his doom
His legs were sunk in the slime and slunk; a hostage held in the fangs of frost
O you of knowledge lament his going; for want of liquor his life was lost

O yellow bird it's my bitter grief I'd as lee or lief that my race was run
No hunger's tooth but a parching drouth that has sapped your youth after all your fun
Far worse to me than the sack of Troy that my darling boy with the frost was slain
O no want nor woe did his wings bestow as he drank the flow of a brown bog drain

Ah degrading vile was the way you died, o my bittern beauteous of glowing sheen
Was at dawn of day that your pipe you'd play as content you lay on your hillock green
O my great fatigue and my sorrow sore that your tail is higher than heart or head
And the tipplers say as they pass your way: had he drunk his fill he would not be dead

O bittern bright it's my thousand woes that the rooks and crows are all pleasure bound
With the rats and mice as they cross the ice to indulge in vice at your funeral mound
Had word reached me of your awful plight on the ice I'd smite and the water free
You'd have all the lake your thirst to slake and we'd hold no wake for the Bunnan Bui

O it's not the blackbird that I'm bewailing or thrush assailing the blossom bray
But my bittern yellow that hearty fellow who has my hue and my wilful ways
By the loughshore bank he forever drank and his sorrow sank in the rolling wave
Come sun or rain every drop I'll drain for the cellar's empty beyond the grave

Anyone got anything to add to this I'd be most appreciative!