The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #48534   Message #863376
Posted By: MikeOQuinn
10-Jan-03 - 05:00 AM
Thread Name: ADD: Viva la Quinta Brigada (Christy Moore & not)
Subject: RE: Help: Viva la Quinta Brigada
Wow... a re-awakening of this thread after a really long time.

I just stopped by to see if I could find the lyrics to this song (the one posted by Masato), which I have a recording of by Carlos Nuñez on his CD Os Amores Libres (Our Free Loves, Galician dialect, if I'm not mistaken). Speaking Spanish (working slowly on Gaelic - not enough teachers in this area), I found the idea of the Irish/Spanish song to be intriguing, and one that I just *had* to sing.

Couple of notes on translations, though, just in case anyone's still interested...

The Fifth International Brigade would, indeed, be the Quinta Brigada Internacional. So if you are singing the song posted above by Masato, quinta is the word you're looking for. (wow... lots of typefaces used in there...)

As for the question of verde or verda, which has mostly been answered already, while the word verde is used to indicate color, verdo and verda are used to indicate truth (opposites of falso).

I don't know if anyone's posted the translation of the chorus lines, so here they are:

¡Viva la Quinta Brigada!
"¡No pasaran!", the pledge that made them fight
"¡Adelante!" was the cry around the hillside,
Let us all remember them tonight

¡Long live the Fifth Brigade!
"¡They will not pass!", the pledge that made them fight
"¡Charge!" was the cry around the hillside,
Let us all remember them tonight

Some of that is taken more loosely, so as to give a better idea of the context, but that should be pretty acurate.

Best wishes, all.
-J