Puirt-a-beul or Mouth tunes.

[pesky mystic]

I am reading a book 'In Scotland Again' published in 1934, written by H.V. Morton, when I come upon a reference to Mouth tunes. To quote the author, "What is a Mod, and how did it begin? The word means gathering. It is the annual assembly of An Comunn Gaidhealach, a society founded in 1891 to preserve and develop the speech, music, folk-art and industry of the Scottish Gael. In other words, the Mod is to the highlands exactly what the Eisteddfod is to Wales."
The author attended this Mod and their learned about Puirt-a-beul, and this is what he said. "A mixed choir stood on the platform and sang gaelic verses which reproduced with amazing fidelity the rhythm and sound of the pipes playing a reel. The effect was gained by repeating tongue-twisting lines with incredible speed and changing from Strathspey time into quick reel time. The singing of these mouth tunes struck me as a most interesting feature in the Mod programme." He had me there. Here are some of the lines in the Gaelic.
Brochan lom tana lom, brochan lom sughain. 4x
Brochan tana tana tana, brochan tana sughain.4x
Brochan lom tana lom, brochan lom sughain. 4x
Thugaibh aran dha na Gillean leis a bhrochan sughain. 4x
etc etc.
Here was the most interesting part, and I would love to hear from someone who knows a source for recordings of Mouth tunes, or additional history about it.
It is said, and I am quoting the author again, "that certain apparently meaningless refrains in English song, such as "hey-down-derry," go back to incredibly remote times. The Druids are said to have had a song, ' Hei down, derry danno ', which summoned worshippers to the oak groves. And likewise some of the words to the Gaelic mouth music may have their origin in a time long before history.

[Corwen]

I'm afraid those nonsense 'burdens' (as they are know in Folk music) are pretty random chosen for their ease of singing and pleasant sound. There is no evidence the nonny or derry burdens go back beyond medieval times. Nothing mystical about them really, although some are I'm sure pretty old and perhaps there is a chance the odd burden is a repeated phrase heard from someone singing in another language not understood by the listener. The same sort of burdens and even the same phrases sometimes are found in the songs of other European countries which goes to show they get transmitted easily even across language divides precisely because they are memorable and easy to sing. They fulfil the same role as all those 'heya' vocables in Native American song, fill out the tune structure and let the audience sing along even if they don't know the song. If they are survivals of distant religious chants I don't know of any evidence to support that idea.

Scottish Puirt-a-beul is a reality though, a way of teaching/learning/practising pipe tunes and also commonly used so the musicians could have a break from playing and dance themselves at a ceilidh, or provide a different texture in the middle of a tune played on an instrument. It shades into proper song in that there are songs with Puirt-a-beul parts and tunes with nonsense words that can be sung to them in Celtic music. The singing of tunes with nonsense syllables or sounds is very common in Britain and is generally called 'diddling' in England at least and 'mouth music' in Ireland and Scotland.

[pesky mystic]

Thank you for that clarification.
I found one cd on e-bay, but it was described as a blend of celtic and african influences, so I suspect it would not be exactly what I was looking for.
Since I gravitate toward older publications, usually from some old dusty church basement, I have enjoyed this particular book which described one man's vacation through Scotland. I googled the author and it was said that he was one of the best travel writers of his time. I would like to know if the "mod" gathering in Scotland has continued to the present time.

[katie bridgewater]

Mods still happen. There's a basic Wikipedia entry about them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mod_(Scotland)

And you can find out a bit more about the formal contemporary tradition here:
http://www.acgmod.org/

[wyeuro]

I'm afraid those nonsense 'burdens' (as they are known in Folk music) are pretty random chosen for their ease of singing and pleasant sound.

well, it's going beyond the evidence really to say what was or wasn't happening in the minds and mouths of medieval singers. knowledge is scanty - there's a vast amount of research still to be done - and we're necessarily thrown back on conjecture to fill the gaps.

as an historical linguist, i find it likely that the hey down ho down, tra la tra li, fol the diddle ay dol type refrains have their origin in some far-distant pageantry, something like a precursor of heraldry, as a kind of identity feature of the people whose song it originally was, for use when converging on an annual fair, for example, or other rare event that might bring the various groups together.

i correlate the 'hey down ho down' refrains to an origin among hay and goose down or eider down traders. derry down is dairy produce and goose down. rye fol denotes the rye producers. toora loora is from old irish words for towers and books. even in the early u.s., *cow*boys' refrains included '*cow cow* yicky yacky yay' not fol the rol. (can't imagine what yicky yacky yay might have meant. american folksong shows a greater tendency to garble up half-remembered fragments and reconstitute them than i see in english or irish songs, although neither of them is entirely innocent, so perhaps it's just a mock-up.

as i said, it's all a matter of educated guess work that far back in our sparsely documented past and it's all so wildly fascinating, i suppose it will always inspire us.
wy

[katie bridgewater]

as an historical linguist, i find it likely that the hey down ho down, tra la tra li, fol the diddle ay dol type refrains have their origin in some far-distant pageantry, something like a precursor of heraldry, as a kind of identity feature of the people whose song it originally was, for use when converging on an annual fair, for example, or other rare event that might bring the various groups together.

i correlate the 'hey down ho down' refrains to an origin among hay and goose down or eider down traders. derry down is dairy produce and goose down. rye fol denotes the rye producers. toora loora is from old irish words for towers and books. even in the early u.s., *cow*boys' refrains included '*cow cow* yicky yacky yay' not fol the rol. (can't imagine what yicky yacky yay might have meant. american folksong shows a greater tendency to garble up half-remembered fragments and reconstitute them than i see in english or irish songs, although neither of them is entirely innocent, so perhaps it's just a mock-up.

As far as I know, there is no evidence whatsoever for any of these conjectures, I'm afraid. The oral tradition does indeed half remember fragments, and human migration generally corrupts traditional material quickly, but the idea that these burdens signify trade or tribal markers is certainly too far-fetched to accept without more evidence. Songs swap burdens and melodies all the time (even across national boundaries) and so nonsense refrains are usually independent of the rest of the lyrics which would make tracing their regional origins impossible (presumably each refrain originates with the work of a single singer somewhere, though of course altered by its passage over time).The most exhaustive research into herding and animal call words was carried out by David Thomas in the early C20th and in among all the thousands of sounds and vocables he collected from Britain and mainland Europe, there is nothing to suggest that song burdens are remotely related through the trading of animals or their produce.

There are also ballads from all over Europe with repetitive nonsense phrases and those that do seem to have some meaning don't appear to refer to geese or dairy! Usually, if there is any meaning at all, it is distantly related to the symbology of the individual song or related myths (for example the very ancient ballad, the Rime of Nornagest from the Faroes has a burden whose words make sense if you know the whole of Sigurd's Saga, but seems nonsense otherwise).

False etymolgy is the bugbear of this kind of research. If you have any independent evidence for any of this, perhaps you could refer us to it, as I have been researching both herding language and ancient song for many years now and would be interested to know how I have missed something so important! It is unlikely for instance that the vocable 'Derry' has any connection to 'dairy', the English word 'dairy' is derived from a collision of Old English 'dæge' (meaning kneader of bread and female servant) with the French suffix -erie (denoting 'place of') Just because this gives rise to a word that looks or sounds like 'Derry' doesn't mean it is the same word. You might just as well say that the songs are referring to a region of Ireland, also called Derry, which would, of course, be ridiculous, given the widespread use of 'Derry' in songs of non-celtic origins.

[wyeuro]

as i've said, it's all conjecture.
wy.

[pesky mystic]

Perhaps we don't know for certain, or we cannot prove without a doubt, that something written in the past is true. It can be relevent however and worth note, to consider that at the time, it is true that the author and as a result, other people, believed certain things about druids or druidry.
If someone tells a lie or says something in error, and it is believed, in a sense it becomes truth.
I have learned about mouth music as a result of a small paragraph in a very old book and it interested me to find out more.
I heard a song by Christie Moore, about water, that ends with a wonderful blend of voices that I think might be an example of this form of music.
And I did find out that Mod Canada 2011, our very own Mod, will (tentatively) be held from November 18th - November 21st, at CBC 1600 main st, Stittsville, Ontario.
Coincidentally, the Gwers I studied last night explained the whole African/Celtic influence, so it seems that the cd offered on e-bay may just be what I am looking for after all. So...
Thanks for the extra information...I think it is all relevent and I am taking notes.