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Examples

  • I guess it does, but I must tell you that sitting there watching pictures charged with strange poignancy, while listening to the keenings of Richard Wagner, I could hardly have been happier.

    At Film Fest, Drugs, Dunst and Dazzle Joe Morgenstern 2011

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  • (n): lamentation brought on by loss or unfulfilled desire; mournful or despairing weeping.

    January 6, 2009

  • from the Gaelic word caoineadh: (v) to weep, to wail, to lament; (n) a lament.

    It used to be common in rural areas to hire professional mourners, sometimes known as keeners, or keening women, at wakes and funerals. Nowadays, not so much.

    One of the most famous love poems in the Irish language is the dirge, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, or the Lament for Art Ó Laoghaire, written by his wife Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill in the late 18th century.

    January 6, 2009

  • For a moving tune that is sure to stir your soul and heartstrings, please seek out recordings or, (if you're a violist/fiddler or cellist) the sheet music of a beloved melody by the 19th Century Scots fiddler and music collector Neil Gow, named Neil Gow's Lament on the Loss of His Second Wife. I well up just thinking about it.

    January 6, 2009

  • I wish the poem/lament was notated in my copy of "Songs of the Gael, Second Series". I'll have to look for an English translation of it. "I have people".

    January 6, 2009

  • Buddy MacMaster in Cape Breton

    Neil Gow's lament is the first tune of the set.

    January 6, 2009

  • Ah, Buddy MacMaster, and what a fine fiddler he is. And, of course Natalie MacMaster. Few pleasures can surpass listening or dancing to an exhilarant Cape Breton strathspey/reel set.

    January 6, 2009

  • Lovely. Thanks for the link, s.

    January 7, 2009