Eileanóir a Rún

Now that our summer class is over, I'm just going to randomly pick songs that I like, and write about them at random intervals!  I learn something myself every time I do these blog posts, so hopefully you do too, and have some fun with it.  I'll keep them mostly in English so people with any amount of Irish can get something out of it.

This is a song I like to sing and recently just found a great duet version of it.  It is often called Eileanóir na Rún, but I think the n is a result of a style of singing (we heard this in other songs we did early on, where for ornamentation extra Ns crop up between vowels).  This is addressing Eileanór (even though the vocative particle 'a' is absorbed by the vowel at the beginning of Eileanór).  So it is Eleanore my dear, my love (my secret), not Eleanore of the secrets!  Here are the lyrics.

Here's a tradtional sean-nós rendering of it by the great Joe Heaney.

And here is that wonderful duet version by Séamus agus Caoimhe Uí Fhlatharta.  This is from 2020.

The song was composed by Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, in the 17th century(!), and there's quite a story behind it (even if it is all made up - the real one seems to be in the previous link - and is almost as amazing!).  This link has Joe Heaney's story and all kinds of details, including an English translation.