Happy New Year

 

Update: meant to add this link: Auld Lang Syne in Yiddish

As much because it includes the lyrics in Scots, with a Sassenach, er, English translation. 

Memorial Day Earworms

While Pibroch* (or Piobaireachd) simply means "piping" in Scots Gaelic, nowadays it is commonly used in the context of  lament or memorial...









*Wikipedia link

Happy Saint Patricks Day

Or, as we call it around here, Ugly Ethnic Stereotype Day.

Earworm, 01/15/2018

RIP, Dolores O'Riordan

We are devastated on the passing of our friend Dolores. She was an extraordinary talent and we feel very privileged to have been part of her life from 1989 when we started the Cranberries. The world has lost a true artist today.
Noel, Mike and Fergal

— The Cranberries (@The_Cranberries) January 15, 2018

2017, man...

Sure hope 2018 isn't saying "Oh, yeah? Hold my beer and watch this!"

The full version of the traditional New Year's song is rarely heard...

Wikipedia article about Auld Lang Syne, with lyrics.

I did not know that Will ye no come back again? (also and more properly Bonnie Charlie) is traditionally an accompanying song, but it is, so...

All Hallows Earworm, I

Sigh -- UPDATE 10/13/2017

Hurricane Ophelia

The good news is that this one is not heading to the USA. Of course, we've seen storms mill about for days and change direction.



The bad news is that Ireland and Scotland need to start battening down the hatches.

UPDATE:Ophelia May Become Ireland's Strongest Storm Since 1961 - Bloomberg

Earworm, 05/05/2017

Sometimes there's no discernible reason...

...but that's really the definition of an earworm, isn't it?

Earworm, 03/17/2017

Making America America

So, if you don't have the time to read James Webb's excellent little book Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America*, Joe Bob Briggs offers the TL;DR version here: A Brief History of the Redneck - Taki's Magazine Being Joe Bob of course, his version is, well, funnier.

I like to speculate about what things would look like today if James Webb had won the Democratic nomination for President.  Frankly, when he wasn't looking,American politics shifted and he would now fully qualify as "sometimes a RINO" if he changed parties.





*Because "executive summary" somehow just doesn't apply to Joe Bob Briggs writing about rednecks...

Good riddance, 2016

Once again, my preferred rendition of Rabbie Burns' classic:

About the only good things I can think of to say about 2016 is that Fidel Castro, and Hillary Clinton's political career, died.

If this is weird, I don't want to be normal

Why is English so weirdly different from other languges...

English is not normal
No, English isn’t uniquely vibrant or mighty or adaptable. But it really is weirder than pretty much every other language

by John McWhorter

English speakers know that their language is odd. So do people saddled with learning it non-natively. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. In countries where English isn’t spoken, there is no such thing as a ‘spelling bee’ competition. For a normal language, spelling at least pretends a basic correspondence to the way people pronounce the words. But English is not normal.

Spelling is a matter of writing, of course, whereas language is fundamentally about speaking. Speaking came long before writing, we speak much more, and all but a couple of hundred of the world’s thousands of languages are rarely or never written. Yet even in its spoken form, English is weird. It’s weird in ways that are easy to miss, especially since Anglophones in the United States and Britain are not exactly rabid to learn other languages. But our monolingual tendency leaves us like the proverbial fish not knowing that it is wet. Our language feels ‘normal’ only until you get a sense of what normal really is.

There is no other language, for example, that is close enough to English that we can get about half of what people are saying without training and the rest with only modest effort. German and Dutch are like that, as are Spanish and Portuguese, or Thai and Lao. The closest an Anglophone can get is with the obscure Northern European language called Frisian: if you know that tsiis is cheese and Frysk is Frisian, then it isn’t hard to figure out what this means: Brea, bûter, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk. But that sentence is a cooked one, and overall, we tend to find that Frisian seems more like German, which it is.

Pretty interesting. He manages to avoid the whole "English lies in wait for unsuspecting languages, hits them over the head, and goes through their pockets for spare grammar and syntax" thing, which I find oddly disappointing...

h/t Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit » Blog Archive » WE DON’T WANNA BE NORMAL: English is not normal.  I don’t know.  Of all the languages I learned, English was the easiest. I don’t want to know what that says about me.

What's the Gaelic for "Bah, humbug!"...?

{Once again, saved a draft of a post and forgot it. s*i*g*h. Tweeted this on Tuesday, 3/17...}

If someone wishes you Happy St. Patrick's Day, wish 'em Happy Ugly Cultural Stereotype Day right back!
— Drang (@DWDrang) March 17, 2015

Ring Out The Old...

Not your usual New Year's Eve rendition:

AULD LANG SYNE

Robert Burns, 1788

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne.

Chorus

For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne,

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Chorus

We twa hae run about the braes
And pu'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary foot
Sin auld lang syne.

Chorus

We twa hae paidl'd i' the burn,
Frae mornin' sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin auld lang syne.

Chorus

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right guid willy waught,
For auld lang syne.

Modern English Translation:
Chorus:
Long, Long Ago
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And long, long ago.

Chorus

And for long, long ago, my dear
For long, long ago,
We'll take a cup of kindness yet,
For long, long ago

And surely you'll buy your pint-jug!
And surely I'll buy mine!
And we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
For long, long ago.

Chorus

We two have run about the hills
And pulled the daisies fine;
But we've wandered manys the weary foot
Since long, long ago.

Chorus

We two have paddled in the stream,
From morning sun till dine;
But seas between us broad have roared
Since long, long ago.

Chorus

And there's a hand, my trusty friend!
And give us a hand of yours!
And we'll take a deep draught of good-will
For long, long ago.

Chorus

Earworm B, 04/24/2014

Because.

Earworm, 04/24/2014

"I felt a great disturbance in The Force...

...as though millions of Irishmen were crying out in anguish..."

Last Call: Crisis Closes Pubs, Mainstay of Irish Society - ABC News

Earworm, 03/30/13

Prompted by a discussion today with a manager, in re: whether Salt Mine Management appreciated we overseers.

Erin Go Bragh!

No Irish in my family tree that I know of, although Mrs. Drang's grandfathers were both from Ireland, but as I joked to some guy with an Aremenian name the other day, every American's Irish on March 17th.

I wasn't going to do this, but, well, some people need to know more about Irish music...

Ear Wormage

These gals are local:


From that page I followed a couple of links and found this:

Not quite the same version of Dougie MacLean's "The Gael" as heard on the soundtrack of the Daniel day Lewis version of the Last of The Mohicans, but I'll listen to the pipes any time, and a bagpipe version of the song makes sense, in so many ways...