In the classroom scene, above the chalkboard there is a phrase in Irish. The camera gives several shots, a few times of the whole thing but mostly of the end. I think it said Níl aon dhealg ag an rí, which would mean something like “the king has no thorn.” It might have been chealg, which would be something vaguely like “the king isn’t treacherous.” But I’d appreciate a correction from anyone who saw it better (or has better Irish), since neither phrase makes a lot of sense.
A still at “Rotten Tomatoes” shows the blackboard, and it looks to me like “Níl aon chealg ag an rí”.
From here , it seems that chealg is from cealg: to deceive, to intrigue, or to sting. I haven’t seen the remake, but don’t bees play an important role in it?
Gonna see it this week but putting the two posts together, could it be “The king has no sting”?
Thanks! You’ve solved it. Cealg means a lot of things, but when I looked up the noun “sting” in Irish > English, cealg is the only option listed. (The <h> comes in because of the syntax.) And when you think about bees, which I didn’t, it makes sense.
The Dope is awesome.
The line has a triple meaning in the story, at least in the fuller context of the original 1973 Wicker Man. In that, Det. Howie beat the innkeeper unconscious in order to sneak into the May Day parade in mufti (the innkeeper’s “Punch” costume). Thus he played the medieval part of the “Fool/King for a Day,” a key archetype in those symbolic rituals. The KfaD is like the annointed scapegoat or animal sacrifice of old; he’s supposed to be relatively pure and unblemished (or virginal) and he’s honored (oiled, perfumed, annointed, etc.) prior to being sacrificed. But Det. Howie was also prized as a sacrifice because in addition to being a virgin, he was a detective (and thus an employee, or servant, of the king – the original film being set in Scotland).
Thus the line would’ve referred, in the Schaffer screenplay (had he written such a line, but he didn’t), to both the inability of the English king (or Queen) and affiliated mainland authorities to impose their ways on Summerisle, as well as that of Det. Howie, the self-appointed King for a Day, to save himself. But it doesn’t really justify those readings in the remake, because in the LaBute screenplay, the villagers’ May Day ritual has become largely unmoored from its Celtic origins. There’s no Punch character by that name or costume; no King for a Day reference, and no royal authority to buck, since it’s now set in the USA. So what would have been a brilliant detail in the original has become a pointless non-sequitur in the remake… yet another cause for disappointment in the remake.
“The owls are not what they seem.”
Minor, teeny-tiny nitpick:
“Comes with the authority of a king, but representing the law.”
I don’t know what kind of distinction that makes, but hey… I just watched it last night in preparation to see the new one, and couldn’t help myself.
Hey, that’s cool. I’m starting a new thread right now, devoted to our reviews of the remake, with no spoiler boxes (hence the need for a new thread), and my opening post is going to be a whopper, best appreciated by Wicker Man geeks. Enjoy… 
Just watched it myself; I heard the line as “Comes with the authority of a king by representing the law.”
You realize we’re both going to have to watch it again now, right? 
I just watched the final few scenes again, and it’s:
[The closed captioning supports this, too.]
I don’t know how reliable closed captioning is. I remember watching a baseball game with the closed captioning on where the description that accompanied the young pitcher disclosed that he was “22 years of anal.”
I had to wonder how he had found the time to become such a good pitcher!
With that kind of experience, you’d think they’d play him at catcher…
I just saw this movie yesterday at Yongsan with a friend. He told me today that he’s still haunted by it. Man, that’s one twisted flick.