Interesting night...

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

Well, I just had a bit of an interesting evening...as I'm a bit hyped up on various substances, I thought I'd write about it

Part 1 might be of interest to people like Antaine: I was off at this session lazily drifting through another set of hornpipes when this guy walks in with a whistle and a two year old boy. The kid was certainly very cute, total cherub and all that. Anyway, after a while, I hear this little voice behind me say "Tha e a' cluich a' phiob" (Scottish Gaelic for "He's playing the pipes."). His dad sez "Tha. Agus tha i a' cluich an fhidheall agus tha i a' cluich an ghiotar," pointing to the various musicians. I was flabbergasted. Turns out the proud father is a fellow named Geoff Frasier, a Portland local who survived a year-long course in Gaelic and traditional music offered by Lews Castle College on the island of Benbecula (interesting course by the way...there's a webpage for it somewhere). He's a fluent Gaelic speaker and is the proud father of Uilleam, who's first (and at this point only) language is Gaelic. Geoff runs a "croileagan" (playgroup) for his son and two other Scottish Gaelic-savy toddlers in the area. Who'd have thunk it?

Of more interest to everyone else...Part 2: After the session, I was invited to another session at (not-so-famous) Seamus Egan's new bar. I have to admit, I'm not so crazy about playing with Seamus, who seems to think that verbal abuse and the occasional whack upside the head is some kind of term of endearment, but I was curious to see who else would be there, so I went anyway. Who should happen to also be playing there but Tom Creegan (and also Johnny Connolly and the usual Portland suspects). After the customary greetings of "Who the f**k do you think you are wallkin' in here with that f**kin' case?!", Tom and I settled in for some very, very schweet tunes. I haven't played in a session with another piper in about four years...since I started, really. "Humours of Ballyloughlin" has never sounded so good. The crowd really dug it. I'm still goin' bonkers remembering all the stuff he was throwing in on "Miss Ramsey."

I think Lorenzo posted something a while back about Tom. He really is a first class piper. And that Rowsome set of his was sounding in real top form. He's certainly worthy of far wider attention. I'm jealous of all you guys who'll be playing with him soon down at the SF tionol...

Definitely a great night and probably worth the horrific hangover I'll have in the morning...

G'night...

[misterpatrick]

Funny. I knew a guy in Austria when I was living there who's son spoke only Irish and German. I think the boy was around five. He figured he'd pick up English eventually as that was what he and the wife spoke. It was fun sitting around the table switching between languages with him as he took no notice of it.

I speak German fluently and at one point could speak fairly passable Irish, but it has grown sad and rusty after being pushed aside by having to learn several other languages.

[feadogin]

Sounds like an awesome night, SP. Any night with Seamus Egan & Tom Creegan is a great one.

Are you saying you're not coming down for the craic next weekend, though? What's up with that?

Justine

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

Yeah, Seamus even bought me a beer...loveable basmati...And playing with Johnny Connolly is always lots of fun. Really nice guy.

I REALLY wish I could make it down for next weekend but I just can't figure out how I could work it in at this point...lots of irons in the fire and all that...Definitely next year in Seattle, though. And I'll try to make it down to Ellay next fall for the SC Pipers Club's big event...

Tom impressed upon me the dire need for me to get regulators for my pipes and recommended I go bang down Brad Angus' door... <Sigh> It'll probably kill me (on a number of levels) but it looks like I'm really going to have to take the plunge...

[boyd]

Lews Castle College on the island of Benbecula

For the geographically-minded, Lews Castle is actually on the Isle of Lewis, on the outskirts of Stornoway, the main town on the island.
Lewis and Harris constitute the big island at the top of a chain of islands running 130 miles from the Butt of Lewis [good name, eh??!] to Barra.

Benbecula is a more southerly island in this chain, often known as the Outer Hebrides. These islands lie of the west coast of Scotland, almost directly north of the North of Ireland. In fact, some of the inner Hebridean Isles are visible from places like Portrush and Portstewart [in Co Derry] on a clear day.

anyway, back to the piping!!!!

B

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

Yeah, I thought about being a bit more specific on that. LCC is in Stornoway, but they administer the program on Benbecula through Colaisde Bheinn na Faoghla. Here's the web address for the music program:

http://www.lews.uhi.ac.uk/centres/benbe ... _Music.htm

[L42B]

Ok now to upset the dogs among the bushes...I recall hearing at some time that Gaelic is of Germanic origin. That I find difficult to believe because Gaelic (to me) sounds more Eastern European than German. It reminds me of a few of the Slovick languages in the Baltic Sea (Lithuanina, Flemish, Nordic etc). Although few of the words in Gaelic do sound like they could be of German origan (way back), but not the majority. Just some food for thought. Any comments?

Cheers L42B

[No E]

I believe that linguists put the Celtic languages nearer to the Romance (Latin) branch of the great tree of Indo-European languages than either the Germanic or Slavic branches.

Also, I fully agree that Tom Creegan is a brillant piper. Great to hear he'll be at the SF Tionól.

No E

[djm]

Time to crack the history (maybe pre-history) books. There was no one people called Gaels. It was, rather, a language group consisting of several waves of people who would later settle much of Europe, long before the Germans or Slavs ever appeared. The ancient Greeks called them Keltoi (thus Celts). Check out books by Peter Beresford Ellis for more details.

djm

[tommykleen]

...funny, the more I hear Irish spoken (and especially sung) the more it reminds me of Middle Eastern tongues (Hebrew for example). Some of the sounds are produced in a similar fashion using similar parts of the mouth/tongue/throat too. Try the following:

Barach (Hebrew)
Bruach (Irish)

ata (Hebrew)
ata (Irish)

and maybe less so
Adonai (Hebrew)
i gconai (Irish)

Some sean nos singing sounds ALOT like middle eastern singing to my ear.

Sorry, I'm too lazy to fada any of the above.

t

[L42B]

My point exactly djm. I pointed this out to my history teacher, who very quickly changed the subject after I pointed that out. I don't understand how we can call Gaelic (of germanic origin) when the German culture didn't even exist at that time: or in a way that the modern world considers as German. It doesn't really make a lot of sense. If memory surves me correctly didn't the Celts come from Eastern Europe (Russian boarder and central Russia) anyway.

Good point about the Celts. It was a language that defined them rather than a culture. Although each tribe had a simmilar religion, believes etc they where not identical. That's why people have so much trouble with defining what the Celts where.

Cheers L42B

[misterpatrick]

Yeah language is a funny thing. You can find funny similarities all over but they usually don't mean much. I've made a list somewhere of all the words that are the same in Irish and Navajo and posit that there must be an Atlantis equation in there as well.

Irish is realated to German(ic) kinda sorta in the way that German is related to Sanscrit. They are related, but it is apretty tenuous connection.

If anyone is really interested I can try and sketch a little European language tree though I suspect that many here already know the drill and also have cúpla focail agaibh.

As for the sounding like, I agree that Irish can sound strangely middle eastern, but that's just wackly language stuff. Most will agree that Hungarian sounds pretty eastern or slavic but it is actually a completely unrelated (to slavic anyway) language more closely related to Finnish than anything in eastern Europe.

OK, language geeking done.

-Patrick

[L42B]

No need to feel like your a geek because your into that sort of history. It's darn interesting stuff that's for sure. I'd be very interested to see the language chart, please post it. I've got an entire book on language somewhere and it does say something about the Celts. It might take me a while to find it though.

Thanks L42B

[djm]

Your history teacher might be right but for the wrong reasons. The Celtic tribes came from the east. They conquered much of northern Europe and down into Greece. Alexander the Great would later employ a bunch of them for his great army (they went as far as Turkey and settled down - see St. Paul's Letters to Galatians). The Celts also migrated into France (Gaul), Spain (Galatia), western France and England (Britanny and Britian) and Ireland. The Germanic tribes also came from the east, but at a much later date, and moved into the same territories as the Celts. It is quite probable that there was language transfer between the Celts of that area with the Germans, just as there was language transfer between the Franks and Gauls, English and Britons, etc. etc.

djm

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

Oh boy...This topic sure has slid in an interesting direction.

Well, the Gaels of Ireland, Scotland, and Man certainly referred to themselves as Gaels.

Celts though...Do we really want to get started?

It's a bit much to say that they conquered places. They just settled down all over Europe and did their thing. The Greek word "Keltoi" was used to describe these people although it was a decidedly vague term that referred to their intentional habit of illiteracy and favoring of oral transmission over written communication. The term pretty much died out with the Ancient Greeks themselves until...

...Some bloke named James MacPherson decided to make a killing publishing "epic poetry" in the late 18th Century. For a few decades, his tales of Ossian and the Fenians, which he claimed he had collected from Gaelic-speaking storytellers, were all the rage in the salons of Western Europe. Suddenly, every minor English lord went around boasting of having a Highland Scots granny and people across Europe attempted to tie some tenuous connection to these primeval "Celtic" dudes. The French were the ones primarily responsible for reviving the term "Celt" as a description of a race of people. Specifically because they wanted to pass themselves off as "Celtic" and thus, the true inheritors of all this Ossianic drawing room sh*t. Napoleon, who was as big a fan of MacPherson's Ossian as I am of Joy Division, even went so far as to establish a military school called the "Celtic Academy" in Paris. Of course, they paid no mind to the Bretons, who speak what we now term a Celtic language...They didn't count for some reason or another.

I'm getting kinda sick of the word "Celtic" actually. Anyone else think it's time for something new?