Talk:Puirt à beul

Merge

The article on lilting should be suppressed and merged with this one, I think. They are all the same: "mouth music", diddling, jigging, chin music or cheek music), puirt a beul in Scottish Gaelic, Canterach, or portaireacht bhéil (port a'bhéil) cckkab (talk) 13:05, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

No, I think not. Admittedly it's not a huge article atm but it clearly separates the Scottish port a beul from the irish lilting. I think it's cleaner to keep the two apart. One is hardly ever called the other in the other country. Akerbeltz (talk) 13:57, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Spelling of the name

This article has seen a variety of spellings of its name, including "Puirt á beul" and "Puirt à beul". The actual Scottish Gaelic spelling of the phrase meaning "tunes of the mouth" is [puirt a' bhèil] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (or [puirt a' bhéil] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) before the acute accent was done away with a few years ago). But doing some googling reveals that the most common spelling in English is "puirt a beul", so that's what I've moved the article to, while providing the correct Gaelic spelling in parentheses. —Angr 09:39, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest that an even better title for the article would be the original "Mouth music" which is the English name for it. This would avoid the problem that you are talking about entirely. The Gaelic name should be used in the Gaelic Wikipedia as the article title and the English name should be used in the English Wikipedia as the article title. -- Derek Ross | Talk 01:53, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

But I think the style is more usually called "puirt a' bheul" than "mouth music", even in English. —Angr 08:42, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that that depends on where you live. In English speaking areas of Scotland (the vast majority nowadays) it would be called "mouth music" or "diddling". In Gaelic speaking areas it would be called "puirt a bheul". Outside Scotland so few people know about it that it's more a matter of record company marketing than anything else. And because the record companies want to emphasise the "Celtic" angle they use the Gaelic term rather than the English one. There is another problem with the Gaelic term and that is the spelling/pronunciation angle. You and I may not be misled but the average person who only knows how to read English spelling makes a total hash of the pronunciation of Gaelic words such as "bheil". Hence the "beul" spelling of the article title which is neither good Gaelic nor English. -- Derek Ross | Talk 00:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Never heard of "mouth music", but came across puirt a' bhèil loads of times. Went to a lecture about it once, and it was only called puirt a' bhèil. At any rate, it is not clear that "mouth music" is a proper noun , whereas in English puirt a' bhèil clearly is a proper noun. To me it would seem like moving cèilidh to visiting or gathering. Regards, Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 00:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, I counted Google hits for:

puirt a bheul -- 142

puirt a bheil -- 430

puirt a beul -- 25,000

Mouth music is at 147,000 or so, though skewed by the name of the group (and concomitant cross-references). (Disclaimer: I'm not equating number of hits with value; I just wondered.)

I suggest that 'mouth music' can be a more generic term, in that many cultures have some form of singing with extensive use of nonsense words, often imitating instruments. Puirt is specific to Gaelic, and that seems the point of this article. I'm no Gaelic scholar, but someone who is could identify the orthographically correct version, and we could redirect the others (and possibly puirt, which seems to crop up as shorthand) to that. There's already a disambiguation page for mouth music; it includes the group and this puirt page. — OtherDave 13:42, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

The original "Mouth music" article (which was more generic) was moved to the strange title Voice instrumental music which has since beome a redirect. The article still exists but you have to go into the history to see it. -- Derek Ross | Talk 16:43, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually (to add the voice of a Gaelic speaker) they're port á beul (singular) and puirt á beul (plural) in Gaelic "tunes out of a mouth". Or à with a grave in the new spelling. In English they're most commonly called puirt a beul or with hyphens puirt-a-beul. This has nothing to do with the genitive, the genitive (even before the spelling reform) would have been port a' bheòil - port an bhéil is how it would look in Irish but not Gaelic. I'll put a note in the article about the name "mess" Akerbeltz (talk) 14:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Confusing

This article is somewhat confusing - I still don't know what this technique actually is, other than the fact that it's Scottish/Irish in origin and is similar to scat. Can someone who is knowledgeable about the subject beef this up and contextualize it more?--Dmz5 07:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

the main distinctions I would make between puirt a beul and scat, are that scatting doesn't often sound like real words, whereas puirt a beul usually mimics gaelic speech closely, and that from my understanding it originated as a means of providing rythm for dancing Theswordoflight (talk) 12:40, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

"Native"

Is it really valid to say that this is "native" to Cape Breton Island? I very much doubt that the Native Americans there sang it. Perhaps this could be changed to indicate that it is common in Cape Breton Island now, but that it was an import from Scotland and Ireland. RB3 (talk) 20:28, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this is definitely not native but something from Ireland and Scotland ... I'm not sure where it came from first but I've heard more scottish bands perform it ... Theswordoflight (talk) 12:35, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. This is native to Scotland/Ireland but brought to Cape Breton within the last three hundred years. -- Derek Ross | Talk 14:47, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Bagpipes banned

I have just added an {{Unreferenced|Section}} tag to this assertion, as it is specifically refuted in Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping, 1745-1945, ISBN 0773515410. I feel a revert coming on. --Old Moonraker (talk) 10:58, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

banned instruments

Can anyone provide proof that this ever happened?

Even if traditional instruments were banned (which I find unlikely) then is it totally impossible that "unbanned" instuments were adopted? Which instruments in Gaelic culture did not exist in other cultures as well? Bagpipes were pan-European (Chaucer has his English characters playing them), as were harps, flutes, etc. This just sounds like another "poor celts" fairytale. (79.190.69.141 (talk) 16:44, 26 September 2012 (UTC))

local & civil bans

The Proscription Act of 1745 specified the wearing of "highland clothing" as the offence - penalty for first offence six months in jail, second offence - transportation. Since highlanders were very actively recruited to the British army, which already saw the martial advantage to the instrument, it would create anomalies to ban it specifically.

Ironically enough, bagpipes and also vuvuzelas and other loud noisemakers were banned from the 2015 rugby world Cup - this was announced on September 16 2015. The same source reiterates that earlier, in April 2015, bagpipes were amongst the instruments that buskers in London effectively banned from playing.

Wiki Education assignment: Music and Dance of the Gael

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 30 October 2023 and 8 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Palladiumpaladin (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Petromac.

— Assignment last updated by CBFraoch (talk) 18:01, 8 December 2023 (UTC)