Puirt à beul (, literally "tunes from a mouth") is a traditional form of song native to

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

(known as ''portaireacht'' in

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

) that sets Gaelic lyrics to instrumental tune melodies. Historically, they were used to accompany dancing in the absence of instruments and to transmit instrumental tunes orally.

Term

The

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...

term ''port à beul'' refers to "a tune from a mouth—specifically a ''cheerful'' tune—which in the

plural In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...

becomes ''puirt à beul''". In

, they are usually referred to as ''puirt à beul'' but a variety of other spellings and misspellings also exists, for example ''port-a-beul'', ''puirt a bheul'', ''puirt a' bhéil'', etc. These are mostly because a number of grammatical particles in Gaelic are very similar in nature, such as the

definite article In grammar, an article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" ...

''a'', the

preposition Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...

s "of" and "to" which can both be ''a'' and the preposition ''á'' "from" which can appear without the

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...

. Modern Irish dictionaries give ''port (aireacht) béil'', translated as "mouth music" also referred to as lilting. Older dictionaries, such as Dinneen, only give ''portaiḋeaċt'', ''portaireaċt'', or ''portonaċt''. Puirt à beul are related to Irish lilting, Scottish diddling, New Brunswick chin music, and other "Celtic" forms of mouth music. However, whereas these latter forms of mouth music consist of improvised vocables, puirt à beul lyrics are fixed and almost always consist of "real" (i.e., lexical) words, although sometimes vocables are also present.

Origin

Puirt à beul have sometimes been used for dancing when no instruments were available. They have also been used to help soothe an upset child, or act as a tool for learning the tune on an instrument. Although some people believe that ''puirt à beul'' derive from a time when musical instruments, particularly bagpipes, were unavailable because they were banned, there is no evidence that musical instruments were banned by the Disarming Act 1715 or the

Act of Proscription 1746 The Act of Proscription (19 Geo. 2. c. 39), also called the Act of Proscription 1746 or the Disarming the Highlands, etc. Act 1745, was an Act of Parliament (UK), Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, which came into effect in Scotland on 1 Aug ...

. In his book ''Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping 1745-1945'', John Gibson reprints the entire Disarming Act 1746, which is usually blamed for the proscription of bagpipes, and shows that bagpipes were not banned.

Characteristics

Usually, the genre involves a single performer singing lighthearted, sometimes bawdy lyrics, occasionally supplemented with meaningless vocables. In puirt à beul, the rhythm and sound of the song often have more importance than the rhythm of the lyrics. Normally, puirt are sung in a (reel or strathspey) or ( jig) metre. Although puirt à beul are traditionally performed by a solo singer, there are many choral arrangements or puirt à beul today, and group performances are sometimes presented at mods. Some elements of puirt à beul may have originated as memory aids or as alternatives to instrumental forms such as bagpipe music. A well-known example of puirt à beul is " Brochan Lom", which is sung in the film ''Whisky Galore!'', and occurs as background music in the film ''The Bridal Path''. A third example, sung by Kitty MacLeod and her sister, occurs in

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney ( ; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the Golden age of American animation, American animation industry, he introduced several develop ...

’s '' Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue'', during the wedding celebration. Quadriga Consort has been the first ensemble to bring puirt à beul into

early music revival An early music revival is a renewed interest in music from ancient history or prehistory. The general discussion of how to perform music from ancient or earlier times did not become an important subject of interest until the 19th century, when Eu ...

Mouth music in the Americas

Mouth music was probably once common in areas of North America where Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlanders predominated, in particular the Cape Fear area of North Carolina and Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Nowadays it is largely restricted to the latter, as it was a more homogeneous society with less access to other cultural areas.

References

External links

Information
on

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