muckefuck: (zhongkui)
muckefuck ([personal profile] muckefuck) wrote2013-03-18 04:41 pm
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Why not just name it "Shithole"?

I had Ewan McColl's love letter to Salford going through my head so I decide to see if I could Irish it. The chorus came easily (at least in Munster Irish, where salach is pronounced in one syllable), but I found I had to rework the other lines when the literal translations of "gasworks croft" and "factory wall" proved too much of a mouthful:
Casadh mo ghrá orm / le hais thigh na mbocht
Taibhríodh dom / cois an chanáilín
Phógainn mo chroí / i bhfothrach
Seana-bhaile slach / Seana-bhaile slach
I wondered if I hadn't been the first to try this, so I Googled "Seanbhaile Salach" (the standard spelling) to see what turned up. And, indeed, it did find this very literal version. But it also found this. Yes, there is a townland in County Clare (just west of the M18 where it crosses into Co. Galway) called "Dirty Old Town". That has to be the most demoralised chamber of commerce in all of the Rebel Province.

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