Friday, January 30, 2009

Seaweed anyone?

Brent got a Boes sound system for Christmas and one of his favorite things to play on it is the concert video of Celtic Woman, the group of Irish women that sound like Enya. They even sing one of the songs she made popular, "Orinoco Flow". There is one particular song on this video that whenever I hear it, it sticks in my head for the next couple of days. It's called "Dulaman". It's and old Irish folk song and sung in Celtic (is that the proper for the old Irish language or is it called Gaelic??)so I had no idea what they were singing but thanks to my trusty computer, below the video is what I found in Wikipidia. Listen to the song first, it is quite catchy, then read what it's about.



The text of the song relates to the Irish practice of gathering seaweed for various purposes, dating from lean times when seaweed was valuable as a defense against famine.[2] It details the discussion between "dúlamán Gaelach" (a collector of seaweed for dyeing clothes) and "dúlamán maorach" (a collector of seaweed to be cooked and eaten). The latter wishes to marry the daughter of the former, and makes various arguments and entreaties for this purpose, finally declaring that he will simply take her away. The traditional refrain of the song is:

Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach
Dúlamán na farraige, b'fhearr a bhí in Éirinn
This translates as:

Seaweed from the yellow cliff, Irish seaweed
Seaweed from the ocean, it's the best in all of Ireland

I knew it had to be some sort of song about a young man tryig to get the attention of the fair maiden but had no idea that seaweed played any part in it!

3 comments:

The Brownings said...

I recommend this video or at least the CD of Celtic Woman to everyone :> It is super good and very relaxing! Their voices are very angelic and the majority of the songs are popular and easily recognizable.
Check out their website! http://celticwoman.com/
Enjoy :>

Valerie said...

I LOVE Celtic Women! I have the cd from the Manhattan performance. It doesn't have this song on it but I've seen it on tv. Did you know that they are coming here in May? I'm gonna try and convince Scott to get me tickets for Mother's Day. =D

Unknown said...

oh my gosh, I am a new fan! I am hooked, I love this kind of music! Isn't is wonderful that our mother introduced us as young children to music of all kinds! I am so happy to have that love of all music.....well except hard rap and crazy hard rock......ummm loves them, thanks for sharing!