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Glór na mBan sa Tradisiún Gaelach; Women’s Voices in the Gaelic Tradition

March 10th, 2011 armare12

My interest in and love for the Irish language has only continued to grow over the past few weeks. I think that it’s one of the most beautiful languages I’ve heard, and each word is like a new little trinket. I love turning them around in my brain, and it’s become a routine for me to climb into bed with my Irish notebook, studying the words closely. When Elizabeth Gilbert writes about her love for the Italian language in Eat, Pray, Love, she reflects: “Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. The words made me laugh in delight.” This is EXACTLY how I feel about Irish.

Thus, I was absolutely thrilled at being able to attend Trinity’s Glór na mBan sa Tradisiún Gaelach, a celebration of women’s voices in the Gaelic tradition—both literary and musical. The event combined virtually all of my passions: Irishness, women’s studies, and literature—could it get any better? 🙂

The two hour long event featured a poet, and two singers from Connemara (their father is actually Egyptian, though, so they also sang for us in Arabic!). I have to admit that I became a little worried when I arrived at the event and was all of a sudden surrounded by people conversing fluently in Irish, but upon taking my seat, I found that people at all different levels were present. And, kindly enough, the poet presented her work first in English, then in Irish. I found myself able to pick out quite a few words, often enough to get the general gist of the poem anyway—but having heard it in English first allowed me to place some new words into my vocabulary! The two girls had equally beautiful voices, singing slow and quick songs alike, providing brief explanations about the songs’ content prior to breaking into song.

As if this week could get any better (or I could get any nerdier…), Trinity is also having their annual huge secondhand book sale (can I repeat, SECONDHAND!!), which I am planning on stopping by tomorrow! Unfortunately, I do have to keep in mind that I absolutely cannot purchase EVERY book that I will want—otherwise, I will very quickly end up with a suitcase of books to ship back to the States. So maybe, just one or two….or fifteen!

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