In my first post on this thread I wrongly accused greg stephens of showing anti-irish sentiments in a lot of his posts. There are some people around here who do that, but having looked through some of his earlier posts, I definitely have to say that greg is not guilty on that score, hence my earlier apology.

As far as I can see, the whole row here started because of a misunderstanding. In Ireland, when speaking English, we refer to our native language as Irish and not Gaelic. In common parlance Gaelic is a type of football.

So when Malcolm Douglas asks why Jimmy C didn't ask for a Gaelic version of the lyrics, the answer is that that is precisely what he did ask for.

This song is obviously American in its origin. There is some speculation that the author may have been an Irishman in America. Nobody is claiming this to be an Irish song. And if anybody thinks that because there are words in Gaelic that this constitutes an original version of the song, they will be wrong to think that. This does not mean that people shouldn't translate the song into gaelic (Irish).

Lots of people are wrong about lots of things a lot of the time, and there's never any shortage of people around here to correct them if they make a mistake.