October 25, 2004

Black Water in Gaelic?

O.k. So apparently "The Black Water" is An Linne Dubhe in Gaelic. Does anyone know what "Pipe Band" is?

Posted by james at October 25, 2004 9:16 PM
Comments

In gaelic piob is a pipe, and a piper is piobaire (hence "the music a piper plays" is piobaireachd, right?) Dave gets the grandly title of ceann piobaire for his role as pipe major.

A body of musicians is cuanal, and really doesn't identify them as anything other than that - except if we look back to piobaire as the name for a piper, and taking our lead for how Dave's position in the band would be described - so a pipe band could probably be described as cuanal piobaire.

Cheers;

Scott

Posted by: Scott at October 28, 2004 12:18 AM

Dublin comes from the Gaelic An Dubh Linn - The Black pool.

Posted by: Mick at March 9, 2005 4:01 PM

I'm with Mick, you've got Black Pool right enough but that's not quite the same as Black Water. Depending on it's case in a phrase you would be looking for something more like 'uisce dubh' or with a definite article 'an-t-uisce dubh' The common word for a Band in the musical sense these days is 'banna' Yes I know it looks like a borrowed word from the devil's tongue.

Posted by: Jim at March 10, 2005 9:00 AM

The expression 'banna piobairi' shows up fairly regularly on gaelic websites. Looks like you have pipe band.

Posted by: Jim at March 10, 2005 9:28 AM