Origins: Musha ringum duram da...

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: GUEST,Dáithí Ó Geanainn
Date: 05 Jan 06 - 04:27 AM

Interesting that the Bodleian Libray 1850 source quotes "Musha ring a ding a ra". this is mush closer to some recognisable Irish.
As has been said, "musha" is probably "maise" (indeed/sure/certainly etc))
"ring a" could be "rince" (dance/dancing, pronounced "rinka") and "a ra" is "a rá" to say or be said as in the sentence "tá rúd eigin aige a rá" meaning "he has something to say", (literally "is thing some at him at a saying") .
Doesn't exactly translate the chorus I iknow, but at least we can see that it probably did start life having something to do with music, dance etc!
Slán! Dáithí

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jan 06 - 10:32 PM

im irish and speak gaelic, the chouros of that song is gaelic and means...

It's good you have the Gaelic because you don't have the English.

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jan 06 - 10:29 PM

im irish and speak gaelic, the chouros of that song is gaelic and means...

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: GUEST,Guest, Big Tim
Date: 25 Sep 05 - 03:27 AM

I'm currently reading Frank O'Connor's "An Only Child" (1961). In it, he has his father saying to his mother "wisha, is it the way you want to make the child look like a convict"?

"Wisha" is a variant spelling of "musha". It was a real word, not a nonsense one. In present day Irish English there are thousands of words of Gaelic roots, the origins of which are now mostly unknown and forgotten.

I repeat, the fact that you don't understand a word doesn't make it nonsense.

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: GUEST,Len Wallace
Date: 24 Sep 05 - 11:29 PM

Heard the above explanations before. Both are acceptable depending on how many pints I've had and who I wish to impress. Remind me of a story . . . Last year I was performing with The Diggers in Ann Arbor, Michigan at a pub called Conor O'Neill's.

During our break we were approached by a trio who brought in their instruments and who complimented us on our performance. I asked them what kind of music they performed and they replied "Celtic". When pressed further they said, "Celtic traditional acoustic." I exclaimed, "Ah, so you play deedle-dee-dee music!"

They gave me puzzled looks. "Deedle-dee-dee?", one asked. "What s that?" And I told them that amongst those who sang in pubs, the more traditional performers were refered to as playing "deedledee-dee" because that's the way the music sounds to us, as in "deedle-dee-dee-dee, deedle-dee-dee-dee...". They understood.

Perhaps 50 years from now someone may claim that deedle-dee-dee" refers to Irish Gaelic terms for an instrumentalist. Who knows? But such an explanation would contain a tiny grain of truth.

Len Wallace

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: GUEST,Mike
Date: 24 Sep 05 - 10:46 PM

IT is Port a' beul. These are nonsense sounds used to fill the melody of songs when musical instruments aren't available due to poverty or laws forbidding them. It's very common in Irish and Scottish drinking songs...

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: Big Tim
Date: 19 Mar 05 - 02:18 PM

Typo above, should be "más ea", closer to "musha".

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: Big Tim
Date: 19 Mar 05 - 09:53 AM

"Musha", or, "wisha", is not nonsense. It's from the Irish, má ea, "If it be so". It's an introductory exclamation or linking word in Hiberno-English. Because you don't understand something, doesn't mean that it has to be nonsense!

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: Jeremiah McCaw
Date: 19 Mar 05 - 06:17 AM

I'm a-thinkin' "eric the red" has it sussed. I think the technical term for such things is "vocables" which are just sounds; syllables or words that have no particular meaning but are characteristic of a language or dialect and used to fill out a rhyme or meter.

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 19 Mar 05 - 05:47 AM

It's NONSENCE, like ' hey nonny nonny ' or ' whack fal the diddle '

Why do some people try to find deep meanings in nonsense rhymes ?

eric

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: Big Tim
Date: 19 Mar 05 - 05:47 AM

"Musha" is a word of Irish (Gaelic) origin, "mhuise", "maise", "wisha", or,"amossa". It means something like: "indeed", "well, well", "is that so". Joyce used in "Dubliners" and "Finegans Wake" - "Musha, God be with them times", from the former.
(Source, A Dictionary of Hiberno-English, by Terence Patrick Dolan, Gill and Macmillan, 1998.

The word also appears in a number of the early songs of The Dubliners (music group).

Re "ringum, etc, I haven't a clue.

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 19 Mar 05 - 05:15 AM

roughly translated;-

We hate the English.
their women are ugly
and their men sexually abnormal

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Mar 05 - 04:56 AM

I'm interested too

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: CRANKY YANKEE
Date: 28 Jun 03 - 12:18 AM

The answere to, "Mush-a ringum doorum da", is "I GUES-SH NOT"

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 10:21 PM

Malcolm!!

A pleasure to hear from you!


A

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 08:42 PM

See the many other past discussions here on this and other similar topics, which contain a whole range of ideas from the sensible through the interesting to the completely ludicrous. Although in a few cases nonsense refrains can be traced back to something coherent (occasionally, but not necessarily, Gaelic; most musical traditions use such things) it's probably true that, in the main, what you see on the surface is all that there is.

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 08:40 PM

Four copies in Bodleian Library, about 1850. All have the chorus as a single line,
Musha ring a ding a ra.

Four copies in American memory, about 1860. All have a four-line chorus,
Rack fal de ra
Rack fal de raddy, O
Rack fal de raddy, O
There's whiskey in the jar.

Warner Coll. (from thread 3116, Gilgarrah Mountain, posted by Liam's Brother)
Musha ringum durum da
Wack fol the daddy O (2X)
There's whiskey in the jar

I would guess (only that) that the chorus was a nonsense rhyme from the beginning.

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: Naemanson
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 07:50 PM

I've always wondered about this question myself and have thought as your friend does, Clinton. I will track this thread to see what happens.

Subject: RE: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 07:43 PM

One mate of mine postulates that maybe at one point there might have been a gaelic 'chorus' of sorts that over the years got missheard and missheard, untill only the above goobledy-gook remains....

as interesting a theory as I've heard to try and explain it...

Subject: Origins: Musha ringum duram da...
From: highwater
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 07:35 PM

Can anyone help translate this phrase from "Whiskey In The Jar"

"Musha ringum duram da
Whack fol de daddy-o..."

Any insight would be greatly appreciated, Thanks.