'Ellan Vannin' means 'The Island of Mannin,' and is a long-standing traditional name for Mannin, or the Isle of Man.

The original song called "Ellan Vannin" was a poem written by Eliza Craven Green, set to music by J Townsend. The tune was in 3/4 time.

The way the Bee Gees have done it takes it into 4/4 time, and they have their own way of dealing with the sort of bridge in the middle, so it's not actually the way as originally conceived back in 1853/4 when the poem was set to music.

They have also taken out some of the perhaps twee 1850s ideas of wavelets kissing fairy shores and so on.

However, there's nothing wrong with re-interpretation for modern times, otherwise everything would become a museum piece. The fact that the Bee Gees are taking the reality of Ellan Vannin, the Isle of Man, as a distinct entity, and the place where they were born and partly brought up, certainly is useful internationally as providing recognition of a small but independent country which happened to have been bought by the British Crown to try to curb its independent streak.

Lhieuish,

Bobby Bob.