Sources are unanimous in saying that the origins of this Irish folk song are “somewhat unclear.” Since its theme is so universal (a woman left behind as her sweetheart goes to war), you could say that the exact historical reference doesn’t really matter all that much, but it’s always interesting to dig into such things (if you’re a history nerd like me). The most common theory about the song’s background says that it refers to the time of the British Glorious Revolution in 1688, when James II of England, a Roman Catholic, was deposed and replaced by William of Orange,1 a Protestant, and his wife Mary, the daughter of James by a previous marriage and also a Protestant. (If you want a fuller overview of this turbulent time, see my post about the song “Loch Lomond.”)
The Irish were solidly on the side of Catholicism, joining in with James II’s heirs in various attempts to wrest the throne from the wicked William’s hands. (That’s how they saw him, anyway.) But it was all in vain. By 1691, three years after William’s ascension to the English throne, the so-called Williamite War in Ireland was ended with the Treaty of Limerick (a town in Ireland).2 Although there were assurances of safety for Irish soldiers who remained at home, many of these men chose to go to France for military service there. (They were pretty savvy to leave, as the promises to those who stayed weren’t kept.) After all, if your profession is that of a soldier, and you’re forbidden to fight in your homeland, why not go somewhere you can? Louis XIV of France really wanted Irish soldiers to help him in his war against the Dutch, and William III was Dutch. So these exiled Irish soldiers could console themselves with the thought that they were continuing to fight the good fight. This exodus of Irish soldiers to France is called “the flight of the wild geese.” About 20,000 Irish in total fled Ireland, including about 6,000 women.
Now we can dive into the lyrics of the song, tying its words to this specific set of events. Bear in mind, though, that some version of the song could have existed much earlier and simply been adapted to this chunk of history. I’m going to look at the verses first:
I wish I were on yonder hill,
‘Tis there I’d sit and cry my fill,
And every tear would turn a mill.
Is go dté tu, mo mhuirnín slán
(This fourth line is repeated at the end of each verse and is the same as the last line of the chorus, so I’ll translate and explain it when we get there.)
The speaker is assumed to be a woman left behind by her soldier lover. I don’t know that there’s a rational or logical meaning for this verse; otherwise you’d have to ask, “Well, why doesn’t she just go climb the hill?” But maybe she can’t; she’s stuck at home, perhaps spinning (we’ll get to that in a minute). She’d like to get away somewhere and cry in peace, but that’s not possible at the moment. If only she could be alone, her tears would be voluminous enough to turn a mill wheel. (Please note that this translation correctly uses the subjunctive tense “were,” describing a condition contrary to fact. Some versions have—shudder—“I wish I was on yonder hill.” Monstrous!)
I’ll sell my rock [or rod], I’ll sell my reel,
I’ll sell my only spinning wheel
To buy my love a sword [or coat] of steel.
Is go dté tu . . .
The confusion of the first line is quickly resolved in the second: the woman is a spinner, not a fisherwoman, and she’s willing to sell the means of her livelihood in order to arm her lover well. Actually, almost all women except for aristocratic ones filled in any spare time with spinning; i.e., producing thread or yarn to be woven or knitted into garments. We moderns have absolutely no concept of how labor-intensive it used to be just to produce a yard of cloth. I could go on about this fascinating subject, but you get the gist.
I’ll dye my petticoats, I’ll dye them red,
And ’round the world I’ll beg my bread,
Until my parents shall wish me dead.
Is go dté tú . . .
There’s a real panoply of theories about the meaning of these red petticoats; one source suggested that dyed fabric wouldn’t show dirt and wear as easily as that which was left white. I don’t think so! Any kind of dye, but especially red, was expensive at the time of this song. It makes no sense that the woman who’s willing to sell her spinning wheel to outfit her lover would then turn around and outfit herself with dyed petticoats. Another theory says that wearing red denoted that you were a betrothed woman. This practice did indeed exist at times in Ireland, but then why would the woman’s parents wish that she were dead? There’s a very simple explanation here: In order for a woman to be part of an army encampment at this time she had to be a prostitute, and you showed that classification by wearing red. As to why there would be this prohibition against lawfully-wedded or betrothed women from joining the camp, the reason is pretty clear—and pretty cynical. For a soldier, having someone he really cared about in the camp might distract him from fighting and lessen his willingness to take risks. But if the camp followers were merely sexual conveniences, then they wouldn’t act as an emotional drag. Our speaker, therefore, is willing to disguise herself as such a woman in order to follow her man, even to the ends of the earth.
I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,
I wish I had my heart again,
And vainly think I’d not complain.
Is go dté tú . . .
At first glance the meaning of this verse is quite simple: the woman wants her lover back, even though she knows her wishing is in vain. But I dug a little deeper into the line “and vainly think I’d not complain.” That one can really hit home: “If only I could have him back, I’d never complain again about his leaving his dirty socks on the floor” or, perhaps more likely, “I’d never complain again about his habit of marching off to war no matter how much I beg him not to.” But the speaker is self-aware enough to know that it’s vain to think she’d let those issues go once her soldier came back.
But now my love has gone to France
To try his fortune to advance.
If he e’er come back, ’tis but a chance.
Is go dté tú . . .
This last verse nails down the idea that this version of the song refers to the Williamite War because of the reference to France. It was bad enough when the soldier was fighting in Ireland, but now he’s left the country to make money as a mercenary. The risk of his death is probably no higher than it was in Ireland, but he’s now physically more removed than he was before. “There’s very little chance of his ever coming back,” she says. Why doesn’t our speaker don her red petticoats and go with him? Perhaps that was an easy-to-say, hard-to-do action. And the song ends there. We have no idea what happened.
On to the chorus, which is always sung in Gaelic as far as I can tell. Why the dual language? Our friend Wikipedia says, “It is not uncommon that Irish songs were translated into English, with their chorus surviving in Irish.” This would also, I think, be true for many folk songs written in a now rarely-spoken dialect or language. The chorus would be the easiest to keep in the original, since you have to learn only that section and then repeat as needed. You keep the flavor of the original without all the work of learning every verse.
CHORUS
Siúil, siúil, siúil a rúin
Siúil go socar agus siúil go ciúin
Siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom
Is go dté tu, mo mhuirnín slán
There are many transliterations of the Gaelic available, all with slight differences. The title of this post uses the initial two words from one such. Since there’s such a range of possibilities, I’d suggest that you simply follow whatever version your group is performing. As for actual translations into English, I was able to access two from an excellent website. First, a more literal one:
Move, move, move, O treasure !
Move quietly, and move gently,
Move to the door, and elope with me,
And mayst thou go, O darling, safe.
And also a “versified” one:
Come, come, come, O love !
Quietly come to me, softly move,
Come to the door, and away we’ll flee,
And safe for aye may my darling be!3
Such a touching contrast between the verses and the chorus! The woman knows perfectly well that her soldier lover isn’t going to come to her door and run away with her. Where would they go? I was inevitably reminded of “Somewhere” from West Side Story. There is no “place for us” in the world that these characters inhabit. They will never be “safe for aye.”
Here’s a lovely, lovely performance of the song that includes on-screen lyrics:
And here’s a women’s chorus singing an arrangement by the popular and prolific arranger/composer Ruth Elaine Schram. My own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is also performing her arrangement in our March 2025 Celtic concert, although using the SATB version. (Make your plans to attend if you live in the Denver area!) I wanted a SATB version to post, and my preference is for live performance video, but I couldn’t resist the gorgeous Irish scenery in this version:
- I hope that everyone reading this post is dying to know why William was associated with a fruit or a color. The fact of the matter is that neither association is the correct one: instead, his title came from the fact that the Dutch royal family had inherited, through arcane family relationships, the Principality of Orange in what is now Provence, France. But “orange” didn’t mean what you would think it means; the word is a corruption of the word “Arausio,” a Celtic-Roman water god for whom the central town was named. I know—“arausio” doesn’t really sound like “orange.” But as the word passed down through the generations it acquired its current pronunciation, thus leading inevitably to its association with the color. You’re just going to have to take my word for all this unless you want to do some deep etymology on your own. Be my guest!
While we’re at it, William was actually associated with the House of Orange-Nassau, not just Orange. Hmmm. Isn’t Nassau a place in the Bahamas where you drink cocktails with little umbrellas protruding from the glass? Why, yes. The city of Nassau is the capital of the Bahamas, also the name of a county in upstate New York, and various other places. All of these place names refer to some connection with our buddy William of Orange, either for his identity as ruler of the Principality of Orange in the Netherlands or that of king of England as William III. The word “nassau” itself comes from the German word nass, which means “wet,” and Au(e), which means “floodplain.” There’s a Nassau Castle in Germany that had associations with the House of Orange. And that’s as far as I’m going to go. Raise a glass, with or without an umbrella, to this whole weird web of words.
↩︎ - I simply could not resist coming up with a limerick about the Treaty of Limerick:
There once was an Irish rebellion
‘Gainst William, who was a real hellion.
But the orange man prevailed,
And the rebellion failed,
So the wild geese escaped Lord Trevelyan.
(Lord T. was an English nobleman who refused aid to Ireland during the potato famine, so in a sense the Irish who left their country also escaped from his cruelty, although the famine didn’t happen until the 1800’s. He therefore doesn’t really have anything to do with the Treaty of Limerick, but hey! You try coming up with a word rhyming with “rebellion” and “hellion”!)
↩︎ - Shule Aroon–Irish Children’s Songs, in Mama Lisa’s World: ↩︎
© Debi Simons
