Also known as Begone From My Window, Go Away From The Window.
There are 2 recordings of this tune.
Bi Falbh O’n Uinneig has been added to 2 tune sets.
Bi Falbh O'n Uinneig has been added to 18 tunebooks.
S:Rhona MacKay
Z:gian marco pietrasanta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7co-v5O_EA
"…a woman sings to her child and through the song warns her lover to go away from her window lest her husband wakens." - sleeve notes.
So, Uinneig is a window, and it sounds like the English word "window". Please how is it pronounced? Nigel, I hope the woman’s husband wasn’t snoring as that would have spoilt her singing? A strange, wistful tune - lovely.
@Susan K, from my Gaelic lessons I have learned that it is pronounced "oon-yek". 🙂
IIRC, I think it has a common origin with Scots ‘winnock’ in Old Norse: vind-auga, or ‘wind-eye’. The Dictionary of the Scots language has this: https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/winnock - O.Sc. wyndok, 1492, winnock, 1596, a variant form of Window, O.N. vindauga, “wind-eye.”
Yeah, /oon-yek/ is close enough.
https://learngaelic.scot/dictionary/index.jsp?abairt=Uinneig&slang=both&wholeword=false
Wiktionary:
From Middle Irish fuindeóc, from Old Norse vindauga (literally “wind’s eye”) (compare Scots winnock, English window, from Old English windaége).
(It’s fuinneog in Modern Irish.)
German for window is "Fenster", quite a nice-sounding word. I did read that in England 100s of years ago, there used to be a WINDOW tax (on glass windows - you were OK without glass!). Is that true?
