"Mari's Wedding" ~ instrumental played in pub
"Devil's Dream" (?) ~ instrumental played in pub / I could barely hear this one, so I plan to give it another try, as this is on EPIX On Demand.
"Scotland the Brave" ~ heard being played on bagpipes when they're talking outside the pub
"Skye Boat Song" ~ instrumental played in the Loch Ness pub
"Wild Mountain Thyme" ~ instrumental heard during bus ride
~~MystMoonstruck~~
Yup, all good (although I've always seen it as "Mhairi's Wedding," pronounced more like "vahree" with a kind of soft v than anything like "Mary." Anyhow...maybe a little stereotyped for the highlands and all, but still nice. My way-backs were from not far away from the Loch.
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I've also heard it performed by a couple of groups as "Trumble's Wedding", so it's one of those titles that is up in the air, with a number of versions. That's fairly common in folk music. "Mari" is pronounced like the word "mar" then a long "e" in all of the recordings I have in which it is listed as "Mari's Wedding".
~~MystMoonstruck~~
The trouble with reality is there's no background music.
I used to perform in two Irish-Scottish trad bands myself, and still do sessions whenever they come up, and I'll absolutely verify that I've very often seen it spelled as "Mairi" or "Mari" and sung as the English "Mary," which is wrong itself (see below). I'm just saying that if the word is printed in the lyrics as "Mhairi," which it is quite often, then it's definitely pronounced "vahree," with the soft "v." (If you've ever heard the expression "mo mhuirnin ban," which means "my fair darling," the middle word is something like "vorneen," again with the soft "v.")
It's also true that the original song wasn't published as "Mhairi's Wedding." The song itself is only about 70-80 years old; it's not some kind of ancient song for purists, really more of a popular tune that has stayed popular. And in fact, the proper form of the Scottish Gaelic, as I understand it (and it's a pretty limited understanding), would be "Mairi," since "Mhairi" is vocative (the case you'd use to call somebody's name out rather than use it as a third-person reference in a sentence).
However, if it's going to be "Mairi," the actual pronunciation should be like "mwirrah," with a touch of "o" after the initial "m" in some dialects, not as the English "Mary" or even "Mahree." You don't hear people doing that too much. Hardly ever, in fact.
At this point the song is so universal, and its various title spellings have been propagated so much by so many people, that what people consider "right" really depends on how they've heard it growing up, if they're not speakers of Scottish Gaelic, or maybe even if they are. I have a Chieftains album (with Van Morrison) that has it as "Marie's Wedding," like we're talking about Ray Barone's mom. Clancy Brothers say the same. Moira Anderson says "Mairi." You've got a ton of pipe bands and singers from Scotland who swear it's "Mhairi," even if that goes against the grammar of the language. So there ya go.
Nobody seems to know exactly why it became "Mhairi" in so many iterations, as far as I know. Or at least I've never heard a credible story.
Just as an aside, the "mh" drives non-speakers of Gaelic nuts (I'm only about a half-speaker, maybe even a quarter-speaker). If it's an initial sound as in "Mhairi," it's a soft "v"; some people describe it as between "v," "m," and "b," somewhat analogous to the super-proper Spanish "b-v." But if the "mh" comes in the middle of a word after certain vowels--or maybe at all, I can't think of enough examples at the moment--it only bends the preceding vowel in a weird way, as it does with "Samhain," a holiday we semitraditional Celts had just a few weeks ago and which is pronounced "SOW-in," with the "sow" like a female pig. (I'll bet you know that already; I'm just including it for other readers.) I can't even count the times I've heard people pronounce it "SAM-hayne," which is basically the same kind of thing people are doing when they make an English "Mary" out of "Mhairi" or even "Mairi." I had a guy at work once, a really snooty pseudointellectual type who likes to dabble in cultural things without actually knowing much about them beyond the superficial, who absolutely insisted it was "Sam-hayne." Boy, did he absolutely KNOW that was what it was, because he'd seen it spelled out. Practically punched my lights out over it, he was so committed. I guess he eventually looked it up. At any rate, he never mentioned it again.
I think these two mistakes (pronouncing the Scottish "Mairi" as the English "Mary," and changing "Mairi" to "Mhairi," with various pronunciations) have been made so much that people hardly even notice it; they just want to hear the tune and dance to it. I've heard every different version from other performers at Highland Games and such. It's a little like the infamous "Erin go bragh," which is an expression that is not only an Anglicization of the real Irish phrase "Eirinn [or Eireann?--hell if I know] go brach" (with appropriate accent marks, etc.), but also is used almost exclusively _outside_ of Ireland and may not have arisen there in the first place. None of that matters, of course, once you see the right girl going along with the spirit of the phrase "Erin go Bragh-less" printed on her t-shirt. That's when the purist tendencies tend to drop away, and you call her "Varee" or "Mahree" or "Mary" or "Mwirrah" or anything she wants. ;-)
I loved reading your post! I've been listening to and performing songs since childhood, as it's a family tradition. Both sides of the family are from Ireland, not too many generations back, some coming here as children who were "bound slaves" aka bond servants. Unfortunately, the language wasn't passed down, but that's understandable given the circumstances. I gave it a try, but I am not language-adept though I tried several of them. I'm quite aware that pronunciation vs. spelling can vary widely.
Every recording I have of "Mari's Wedding" with that spelling is by an Irish performer, either a soloist or a group. The Irish Rovers performed one version titled "Trumble's Wedding". So, it's interesting to know more about it. I would have guessed that it isn't one of those truly old pieces of music, but it's fun to play at faires and other reenactment events.
Yes, I do know what you mean by "Samhain". I think it might be pronounced correctly in "Halloween III: Season of the Witch". More often, it's pronounced the way it looks.
Highland Games: I'd love to visit such an event someday, but it's doubtful. I think they hold them annually up north in our state, but it's too far away for me. *sigh* I have to settle for brief news coverage. It would be another place to haul out my bowed psaltery and do some playing. I need that.
Once again: What an enjoyable post!
~~MystMoonstruck~~
The trouble with reality is there's no background music.
Jaysus, what state are you in? I guarantee I can find something. They have these things everywhere, and some of the bigger Celtfests are usually within traveling distance too.
As for the language, sheesh...I mean, we're about as Irish as Irish-Americans come. My wife and I owned the first (and to date, only) stepdance school and performance company in the city of a quarter-million where I live; as far as we can tell, she herself gave the first actual stepdance performance in the history of the city (it's weird--about every third person is of Irish ancestry somewhere along the line, but there was absolutely no specific Irish cultural stuff going on here before we and a couple of other people started doing all this, and never had been...just about nobody identified as Irish even if that's where their ancestry was, although there _was_ a local Scottish cultural group and a Scottish dance group that both my wife and I were in), I played in those bands I mentioned earlier, a music professor who had moved here from Massachusetts (where they DO have actual Irish culture) started a local session (he's a crack player, and I've been lucky to play with him and others), etc.
And yet, our repeated attempts to bring the family into serious use of the language (the Irish variant of Gaelic, in our case) have been difficult, probably because the language is so frickin' HARD if you're not forced to use it for normal daily interactions. I think that's the problem in Ireland itself, actually, and also in Scotland: Everybody in every corner speaks English now, and it's the language of normal interaction and commerce, so the native language becomes no more than an artifact. And when that happens...well, you know about Latin.
I actually think it's quite sad, but there's also a kind of inevitable quality to it, I guess. Most of the language varieties that have ever existed in human history have died off or been subsumed into a more dominant language that was necessary economically and socially, as has happened with Irish expressions in the English language. I do think it's too bad, although I don't know what you can do about it. Keeping a few expressions alive really doesn't seem adequate, because languages don't just have different words for things; their structures actually both reflect and promote a different way of thinking, and when the language goes that way of thinking becomes almost extinct as well.
Crap. I gotta stop talking like this, because it does really bring me down. But it's true. Somebody whose primary language was Irish, who was raised in the West isles or somewhere like that half a century ago, or a Scottish Gaelic speaker raised in the Highlands who considered English his second language...those people had different kinds of thought structures and viewed the world differently than people today who are ethnically Scottish or Irish (or both, in my case). It's very difficult, I think, to try to maintain a connection to those old and sometimes very valuable ways of thought through a different language. I do know there are very serious efforts afoot to keep alive both the language and the cultural elements that are part of the whole picture, so I hope those do some good. They know more than I do about it, so I guess one can only hope, and try to maintain as much contact with the culture and language as possible.
At any rate, "Mairi's Wedding" still gets people up like crazy at the fests and such. You've seen it. I wonder if music and dance aren't going to be the most durable elements of the culture in 500 years or so.
Consider how far we've come with the revival of music, dance, etc. They even refer to it as the Irish Renaissance. In the Sixties, The Chieftains and others noted how rare it was becoming to hear traditional music played in a traditional manner instead of in arrangements that were totally at odds with the true sound. So, the folk music "boom" of the Sixties was a blessing. Meanwhile, my maternal grandfather had sung to us since we were tots, so we knew many old songs. His brother was an old-style fiddler, and we even had a spoonplayer or two. Everyone sang, more on my mother's side than my father's. My maternal grandmother would teasingly call some of them "lace curtain Irish"~only laughingly so, not cruelly, insinuating they were "putting on airs".
I understand the sadness about the language, but the Irish were being separated from it with dire threats in most regions though some villages have retained it, or so I've heard from friends who visit there when "songcatching". I can fully agree about its difficulty; I had tapes and books to work with but finally gave up. A friend of mine tried it, too, but decided it was one of the most difficult languages she had encountered.
As for getting to events: I have limited mobility and do not have one of those magical chairs, so, even if I could drive there, I couldn't get around well enough. Maybe someday... One site for games is more than three hours away, too much of a drive for me. Maybe I should check out YouTube. I've found some enjoyable performances there, as well as videos of one of my favorite places on Earth: Bristol Renaissance Faire in Wisconsin.
The trouble with reality is there's no background music.