Puirt à beul

Puirt à beul (pronounced [pʰurˠʃtʲ a pialˠ̪], literally "tunes from a mouth") is a traditional form of song native to Scotland, Ireland, and Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

Name

The Scottish Gaelic for such a tune is port à beul: "a tune from a mouth—specifically a cheerful tune—which in the plural becomes puirt à beul". In mainland Britain they are usually referred to as puirt à beul but a variety of other spellings and misspellings also exist, 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 a', the prepositions "of" and to" which can both be a and the preposition á "from" which can appear without the acute accent.

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.

Origin

Puirt à beul has sometimes been used for dancing when no instruments were available. Although some people believe that puirt à beul derives from a time when musical instruments—in particular bagpipes—were unavailable because they were banned, there is no evidence that musical instruments were banned by the Disarming Acts or the Act of Proscription 1746. In his book Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping 1745-1945, John Gibson reprints the entire Disarming Act of 1746 (which is the act usually blamed for the proscription of bagpipes), and shows that bagpipes were not banned. This in and of itself does not clarify whether or not musical instruments were taken away from the people.