Also known as Begone From My Window, Go Away From The Window.
There are 3 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 20 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?
Yes, susan k, it is true. On some old houses you can still see a sign that says ‘Ancient Lights’, meaning that previous owners (in the C18th?) paid the window tax, and so nothing could be built that would obscure their light. (I’m not sure whether there is still some planning regulation that would enforce that stipulation). When I was v. young, a primary school friend of mine lived in such a house in Lancing, Sussex.
Susan K wrote: "German for window is "Fenster", quite a nice-sounding word."
And suicide by jumping out a window is "defenestration" in English. Not as nice-sounding…
And of course the German word "Fenster" is a loanword (albeit quite an old one) from Latin "fenestra". Swedish got "fönster" from German of course. And I would interpret "defenestration" to refer to someone being thrown out of a window rather than jumping themselves – popular pastime in Prague btw 🙂
Italian for window is Finestra (from the latin Fenestra)
