Agus fágaimíd siúd mar atá sé (which means something to the effect of “Let’s leave it at that.” Right?)
From The Limerick Rake. AFAICT, Shane pronounces it
Ah-guss fah-gah-meed shood mar ah-tah shah.
But, Shane MacGowan doesn’t strike me as an authority. Considering I can barely understand his slur when he’s speaking English, just wanted to double-check.
And another question- in a later verse, he leaves out the “siúd.” Does that change the meaning, or did he just screw up?
the pronounciation matches up pretty well with I remember from school. Cant help with the second part, its been 20 years since i read any irish
The pronunciation is fine. I’d expect “shey” rather than “shah” for the last syllable, though. “Siúd” is just a demonstrative pronoun, and although I’m not familiar with the idiom (or, indeed, fluent in Irish), it sounds like you could leave it out. Word by word:
Agus fágaimíd siúd mar atá sé
And let-us-leave that as is it
“And let’s leave that as it is.” The siúd is emphatic but I’m pretty sure you can use fág without an object and still translate it to English as “leave [it].”
Someone once taught me that a simple way to learn correct Irish pronunciation is to repeat the four words below over and over. For reasons of which I’m not at all clear, I was also told that, while saying them, it helps to have a surprised, befuddled look on your face:
Whale
Oil
Beef
Hooked
