THis is one of Ireland’s oldest love songs and variants of it are to be found in the Kerry, Connemara, and Donegal Gaeltacht regions. This is a love song from a woman’s perspective full of beauty and emotion. It is among the most poetic effusions of the Gaelic tradition. In this song the girl is broken hearted because the boy with whom she is love has left her for another, and gone to the castle of the O’Neills. She is grief stricken as he has not only broken his promises to her but has also betrayed her child.

In the first video is a nice rendition by Máirín Uí Chéide. Mairin was born in July, 1958 in Leitirmoir, the heart of the rural Conamara Gaeltacht, like other rural places in Ireland except that Irish was spoken by almost everyone except those in authority or the professions. Most of the food came from the surrounding land, with farm neighbors fishing for supplemental income and food. Surrounded there by a strong oral tradition, it seems to Mairin that she has been singing all of her life. When she was growing up, Radio Éireann and the “Céilí House” program in particular were very popular, all in Irish, as was a drama program. Her earliest radio recollection is of an announcement of the death of the American President Kennedy.