Annraoi,

my post of April 30 must be revised. Macaronic as "code shifting" does not meet the true sense. It is only connected with poetry. This kind was founded in 15th century in Italy and is based on Latin with vernacular words with correct but abstruse termination; later on it was adopted in several modern European languages (see my example of April 29).
Especially the Enciclopedia Italiana states that macaronic poetry must not be confounded with hybrid languages (like Yiddish or Ladino). Britannica and several dictionaries of history of literature I looked up yesterday in our National Library agree that macaronic poetry rages from funny to burlesque, and macaronic is always used in combination with poetry, nothing else.
Unfortunately you give no examples of Roman or early Irish macaronic poetry but since you are praising the mastership of the languages involved I am sure that you are referring to bilingual poems, i. e. texts in two languages which are both used correctly. This is no macaronic poetry, but an interchange of languages from line to line mostly as we also find it in our Lutheran hymn book where we find the Xmas song "In dulci jubilo, nun singet und seid froh" or in an old clerical song book "Pertransibat clericus durch einen grünen wald" with a crude tenor about the laying (depositio) of a virgin, both with interchanging Latin and German lines and correct use of both languages.

An Pluiméir Ceolmhar, thanks or vielen Dank for your post, especially the joke about the sophisticated Irish worker. I regret that such a fine pun can't be translated into German.
You are right, Strassburg/Strasbourg is a truely European town. It is the only chance to survive in the struggles between France and Germany where this wonderful town had to endure much sadness. A former German Imperial town it was sacked by the French, but when it could pluck the fruits of the French revolution with its civil liberties it came back to the Reich and lost self government like entire Alsatia and was goverend from Berlin, went back to Germany under the Nazis and back again to France. The cultural gap sometimes runs through families as I could notice. In a family I visited the parents and the elder son were bilingual and spoke a lot of Alsatian (German) dialect at home, but the younger son spoke French only. I regard this town as a model for the chances of a United Europe.

Wilfried