The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #4131   Message #4061803
Posted By: GUEST,Micheal O Duinn
27-Jun-20 - 11:42 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Isle of Innisfree (Richard Farrelly)
Subject: RE: Origins: Isle of Innisfree (Richard Farrelly)
The "Isle of Innis Free" Being a Gaelic name is pronounced Inish free in Bearla (English). Gaelic Irish speakers would never pronounce the word "Iniss'

It is interesting to watch the "missed words" and Added words" contra-temps go on in the words recorded for this song here. What is very interesting is the wee bit of history that was particularly relevant to the time and place the song was originally created in.

The author was a Garda Siochana - Gaelic for guardian of the peace - in Dublin and was originally from Mayo, so he was a Southerner and wrote the lyrics from his perspective.   

When the song gained in pop-ularity it began to be sung by Irish people from both parte of the British divided island and those of a different religious origin found that they just could not sing about a family gathering to pray to a woman since only those of a papist bent would do that.

The "rosary" was therefore dropped and replaced by the words "but dreams don't last, though dreams are not forgotten, And soon I'm back to stern reality." Check our Ruby Murrays version for the changes I speak of.

Fortunately the Battle of the Boyne seems to have ended now but we can't really be sure since Brexit is wakening old memories and Irish of both strands of DNA have terrible good memories.