Irish Lingo & Million Dollar Baby

[Wilson Gray]

Right you are. And, again, I'm surprised by how old the song is. Does
anybody else remember the radio and comic-book character, Hop Harrigan,
his sidekick, whose name I've forgotten (Tank? But I'm probably
confusing him with Tank McNamara), and the gremlin. whose name I've
also forgotten. But I still remember the nickname that Hop gave to the
native girl: "Singsong." Which reminds me, the song title is
"Harrigan," not "Harrington." No wonder that I couldn't match the meter
with the song: "Spell it H, A, dooble R, I, G, A, N ?spells 'Harrigan'?
That's me!"

-Wilson

On Feb 28, 2005, at 7:44 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Irish Lingo & Million Dollar Baby
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> The song with the clanging symbols is "Macnamara's Band" (1917), by
> Shamus O'Connor & John J. Stamford.  Your computer will play the tune
> right here:
>
> http://www.rienzihills.com/SING/macnamarasband.htm
>
> Bing Crosby recorded it during WWII.
>
> JL
>
> Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Re: Irish Lingo & Million Dollar Baby
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> I remember "Macushla" as one of several Irish-themed popular songs of
> my childhood. I had no idea that it was so old. Some others are:
>
> Casey Lowered The Boom
> Christmas In Killarney
> Mother Macree, i.e. Mathair Mo Chroi "Mother, My Heart"
> Derry Air (= Danny Boy)
> Harrington
>
> and a couple of others that I remember only a few words of, e.g.
> "....The drums go banging / The cymbals clanging / The horns they blaze
> away...."
>
> -Wilson Gray
>
> On Feb 27, 2005, at 5:47 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
>> Subject: Re: Irish Lingo & Million Dollar Baby
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>> --------
>>
>> You can start diggin' the rockin' sheet music to "Macushla," by
>> Jospehine V. Rowe & Dermot MacMurrough (1910) right here :
>>
>> http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/display.pl?
>> record=153.109a.000&pages=5
>>
>> Or if lyrics alone are your bag, check it :
>>
>> Macushla! Macushla! your sweet voice is calling,
>> Calling me softly again and again;
>> Macushla! Macushla! I hear its dear pleading,
>> My blue eyed Macushla, I hear it in vain!
>>
>> Macushla! Macushla! your white arms are reaching,
>> I feel them enfolding, caressing me still!
>> Fling them out from the darkness, my lost love Macushla!
>> Let them find me, and bind me again if they will!
>>
>> Macushla! Macushla! your red lips are saying,
>> That death is a dream and love is for aye;
>> Then awaken Macushla! Awake from your dreaming!
>> My blue eyed Macushla! awaken to
>> stay!
>>
>> (Unlikely to have been on Yeats's hit parade.)
>>
>>
>> JL
>>
>> Educational CyberPlayGround wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Educational CyberPlayGround
>> Subject: Irish Lingo & Million Dollar Baby
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>> --------
>>
>> Hey Y'all
>>
>> Irish lingo has been nominated for an Oscar in Million Dollar Baby
>> along
>> with the phrase mo chuisle (macushla).
>>
>> best,
>> karen ellis
>>
>>
>> February 26, 2005
>> OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
>> Fighting Words
>> By WES DAVIS
>>
>> BEFORE the bell has sounded at the start of her first title fight in
>> Clint
>> Eastwood's Oscar-nominated film "Million Dollar Baby," the scrappy,
>> big-hearted boxer Maggie Fitzgerald, played by Hilary Swank, finds
>> herself
>> cheered into the ring by shouts of "Mo Cuishle," the Irish Gaelic
>> moniker
>> she's been given by her manager, Frankie Dunn, played by Mr. Eastwood.
>>
>> The name is a shortened form of the phrase "A chuisle mo chroí," "O,
>> pulse
>> of my heart," or as Frankie will put it more concisely, "My darling."
>> But
>> Ms. Swank's character doesn't know that yet and neither do we. All we
>> know
>> is that the words emblazoned - and some argue misspelled - on the back
>> of
>> her robe are important to a lot of people.
>>
>> Apparently they still are. After seeing the movie, I overheard
>> whispered
>> conversations about "Mo Cuishle." A few of the movie goers confessed
>> that
>> they hadn't even known there was an Irish language apart from English,
>> but
>> they were captivated by the sound of it. In the last few weeks some
>> queries
>> about the phrase have arisen on the Internet, and students of the
>> language
>> are coming out of the woodwork. Around Valentine's Day, in particular,
>> many
>> Web surfers were frantic to learn how to address their darlings in
>> Irish.
>>
>> That sort of popular reaction makes sense. In the shorthand of the
>> film, the
>> Irish, scattered by hardship in their home country but strangely
>> united by
>> the trials that threw them apart, stand for a culture of underdogs,
>> and the
>> language that was once the common idiom in Ireland becomes the
>> watchword of
>> the movie's romantic idea of the hero.
>>
>> As Maggie's boxing career builds to its climax, Mr. Eastwood hinges
>> the
>> movie's emotional peaks on the longing held in the Irish language. The
>> most
>> moving of these moments occurs when Mr. Eastwood's character finally
>> reveals
>> the meaning of "Mo Cuishle," and when he translates W. B. Yeats's
>> "Lake Isle
>> of Innisfree" from the little Irish-language book he carries like a
>> talisman
>> throughout the movie.
>>
>> An achingly beautiful poem, "Lake Isle" expresses a yearning for
>> escape that
>> fits perfectly with the movie's hope that it may be possible to build
>> a new
>> life. For Yeats, the fantasy retreat is a rustic cabin in a "bee-loud
>> glade." In the movie, it's the "little place in the cedars, somewhere
>> between nowhere and goodbye," imagined by the character played by
>> Morgan
>> Freeman.
>>
>> Yeats's poem also reflects on the more rugged emotional landscape the
>> film
>> exposes. In "Lake Isle," as in "Million Dollar Baby," the dream of
>> escape
>> finally slams against the hard facts of real life. The dream can
>> survive, as
>> Yeats puts it, only "in the deep heart's core." In the movie, the
>> dream is
>> mined by Mr. Eastwood's character when he labors to translate the poem
>> from
>> the Gaelic for Maggie. It feels as if he's extracting a gift of hope
>> for her
>> out of the bedrock of Ireland's nearly forgotten language.
>>
>> There's just one hitch: Yeats didn't write his poems in Irish. He
>> didn't
>> even know the language well enough to read it.
>>
>> On the whole, Yeats was less than rigorous in the way he represented
>> his own
>> linguistic abilities. He was never fluent in French, for example, but
>> he
>> talked breezily about the latest French book once his friends had read
>> it to
>> him. Having once made a stab at memorizing the Hebrew alphabet, he
>> would
>> later lament having forgotten his Hebrew. But about Irish he was
>> completely
>> clear. He tried to learn it, and he failed.
>>
>> The language issue was a vexed one for Yeats. Like many of his
>> countrymen,
>> he was at times drawn to the image of Ireland as a nation speaking its
>> own
>> language. He actively promoted dramatic performances in Irish.
>>
>> But he knew that much of Ireland's literary life, and even more of its
>> practical business, had been carried on in English for over a century.
>> When
>> Yeats was serving in the Senate of the newly independent Irish Free
>> State in
>> 1923, he spoke against a proposal that the prayer at the start of
>> every
>> session be delivered in Irish as well as English. He protested that
>> the
>> Irish prayer was "a childish performance," since, like him, most of
>> the
>> senators didn't know the language and were unlikely to learn it.
>>
>> Later, when the Senate was considering a proposal to add Irish to the
>> country's traffic signs and railway notices, he argued against it on
>> similar
>> grounds, fearing that forcing the language on people at a moment when
>> they
>> just wanted information would hurt the efforts of groups like the
>> Gaelic
>> League to preserve Irish and spread its use. In the same session,
>> though, he
>> called for government support of scholarship on Irish language and
>> literature.
>>
>> Strange as the idea would have seemed to him, Yeats almost certainly
>> would
>> have supported the translation of his own poems into Irish. Such
>> translations do now exist, so it's not impossible to imagine Mr.
>> Eastwood's
>> character wrestling an Irish translation back into the original
>> English.
>>
>> But all of this is ultimately less important to the film than the
>> effect
>> "Million Dollar Baby" achieves with its use of Irish. From a cinematic
>> point
>> of view, Mr. Eastwood couldn't have done better than to adopt the
>> endangered
>> language of a culture whose history has been as dramatic as that of
>> his
>> characters. And the wonderful twist of the film's pretense of
>> translating
>> "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" from the Irish is that it seems to have
>> done
>> just what the Gaelic League and all those Senate proposals, and even
>> the
>> contrary Yeats, ultimately wanted. It has stirred up interest in the
>> language itself.
>>
>> Wes Davis, an assistant professor of English at Yale, is editing "The
>> Yale
>> Anthology of Contemporary Irish Poetry."
>>
>>
>>
>>
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