Like many another Irish teenager in the 1960s, I taught myself to play the tune ‘The Spinning Wheel’ on the guitar. It’s a story I often tell young people who are struggling to learn an instrument, how the learning was reflected thereafter in the lyrics of the song as my fingers moved painfully from one chord to another:
‘Mellow the moonlight to shine is be – ginning. Close by the window young Eileen is spin – ing.’
What I did not know when I was learning this song was that ‘The Spinning Wheel’ was more than a song about a young woman waiting for her lover to come to the window while her grandmother watches over her. It is part of a musical tradition in Ireland where certain songs were sung in a loop-style, lúibin, a call and response, by both males and females, during the act of spinning (see tunearch.org).
All of this brings me to another lúibín, An Lúibín, an online Irish language newsletter produced by Melbourne-based Colin Ryan for over 21 years. What is unique about this publication, I believe, is how Colin brings little-known facts to us about all kinds of topics, but mostly about minorities, peoples and languages. Recently his focus was on minority groups such as The Garifuna and their language, and also on minority groups affected by the war on Ukraine.
An Lúibin provides a summary in English at the head of each item. You can ask Word to translate the Irish to English, as I have provided here (in italics) for these extracts:
The Garifuna and their island
The Garifuna are a Central American people of mixed descent who retained their identity and language despite a troubled history. The island of Baliceaux, where many of their people died under British rule, has now been returned to them.
The Garifuna are descended from the West Indies and were of African and indigenous descent (Kalinago and Arawak). They are a distinct community with approximately 600,000 of them in various locations.
In the 18th century they opposed the British on the island of St. Vincent. In 1795 they revolted under the leadership of the chieftain Satuye (Joseph Chatoyer). He was killed, and in 1796 British forces expelled about 5,000 women, children and men, leaving them on Baliceaux, a small uninhabited island. They had little food or drink, were homeless, and nearly half were dead of famine and disease by the time the ships returned the following year to take them 1,700 miles to the island of Roatán off the coast of Honduras. Descendants are now found in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua and the United States.
(For Irish language enthusiastics: their language constructs possessive pronouns in a way that is similar to Irish: take the word ‘ibágari’ (‘beatha’) and (mo, do, etc.): n-ibágari (mo bheatha), b-ibágari (do bheatha), t-ibágari (a beatha), l-ibágari (a bheatha), wa-bágari (ár mbeatha), h-ibágari (bhur mbeatha), ha-bágari (a mbeatha).
Another little-known story Colin Ryan has researched are the dangers facing small ethnic groups caught up in the Ukraine war: the Buryats, the Bashkirs and the Tatarstan, for example. What will happen to their culture and languages? He summarises:
Sooner or later the war in Ukraine will end, a war that has left the masses dead or injured on both sides. Ukraine is unlikely to regain all the territories it lost; the Russian economy has been severely damaged and poor leadership and fraud have left their mark on the armed forces. And the bodies continue to accumulate, no matter what country they were loyal to.
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Subscription to An Lúibin is free. Simply email Colin Ryan: rianach@optus.net.com.au
Tinteán 