Some have asked us why would Australians want to sing in Gaelic? The simple answer is that Gaelic had a large and largely unacknowledged place in Australian history. It is the language of our forebears.
Did you know that one of the last songs Ned Kelly heard on the night before the fateful siege at Glenrowan was An Cailín Deas Crúite na mBó, an Irish sean-nós song still sung today? Or that there were a number of towns especially in the southern NSW high country which were entirely Gaelic speaking at one stage? Banjo Paterson, the renowned bush poet, made several references to Gaelic in his poetry, as late as the 1890s.
Most people are aware that great many Australian folk songs are directly based on the songs that our people brought with them when they came to this country but our history started well before 1770. . It should not come as any surprise then that we have chosen to acknowledge and recognise our collected heritage through our songs and in our own small way, pay tribute to those who came before us.
Australia's self-styled "Poet Lorikeet", the late Dennis Kevans, (who, before his untimely death in 2005, was working on having some of his poetry translated into Gaelic) summed it up beautifully when he wrote the following lines:
OUR TONGUES Our tongues are not just tongues
For we are the sons and daughters and sons
Of all the singers of old
Of the Irish seanachies
Summoning the croppies to bleed for Ireland
Of the Belgic troubadours
Strumming theirs chords of love
Of the jongleurs of Lorraine
Melting the thrones of kings
Of the Viking scalds with thrown back heads
Shouting down the blasting storm
Of the Campbell's pipers opening up the heather
Of the saga bearers from the Isle of Skye
Of the stunt-formed bards of the Welsh coalfields
Brushing smudging black from precious manuscripts
Of the chanty men of Bristol
Singing of gouging frost and the pistoned blood
Of our own lean gristled back-blocks bards
Who listened and laughed and wrote it down for us.
We are the sons and daughters and sons
Of all those singers
Our tongues are not just tongues -
They are the whispering ribbons of history...... That's why!