Several questions:

1) According to some other mudcaat threads, such as this one, the Gaelic parts of the chorus of the Eriskay Love Lilt (in the English translation) are actually mouth music and are meaningless. But another site I found here claims the Gaelic words of the chorus can be translated as:

I am wet and
I am cold
I am on my own

So which is right? And if the Gaelic isn't meaningless, any ideas why the English translation left most of the chorus in Gaelic? Was it just that the translator couldn't think of a poetic translation for that section, whereas for the rest of the song they could?


2) According to several mudcat threads such as this one, "Cruit Mo Chridh'" means "Harp of My Heart". So again, any ideas why the English translation keeps those words in Gaelic rather than translating them? Was it again because they couldn't think of a way to make the translation work poetically, in the context of the rest of the verse?


3) I can't find anywhere that states who the translator was. It was collected by Marjory Kennedy-Fraser but was she also the translator? Or did Kenneth MacLeod translate it? Or someone else?


4) In another mudcat thread here, George Seto writes:

"Note, the older tune is what I sing it to, not the one commonly known as the Eriskay Love Lilt in English. I unfortunately have no easy way of imparting the tune to you, BUT, I would recommend two artists who sing it in the older fashion".

This seems to me to imply that Marjory Kennedy Fraser didn't really collect the tune at all, that she only collected the Gaelic words, which she translated or had translated - and that she ignored the traditional tune entirely and made up a new tune for it, which she then published and which has stuck. Is that really what happened?

Dave