{"id":630393,"date":"2026-09-20T10:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T10:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/630393\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T10:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T10:38:10","slug":"ed-sheeran-has-given-the-irish-a-chance-to-air-gripes-with-galway-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/630393\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Sheeran has given the Irish a chance to air gripes with Galway Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Darach \u00d3 S\u00e9aghdha<\/p>\n

Author and linguist<\/p>\n

In Calling 353, bestselling Motherfocl\u00f3ir author and podcaster Darach \u00d3 S\u00e9aghdha casts a linguistic eye on how we talk about what it means to be Irish, the signs we post to each other about Irishness \u2013 and what really lies beneath it all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

IT HASN\u2019T BEEN a great week for global megastar Ed Sheeran, whose attempts to smooth over the controversial, politically-motivated dropping of Macklemore from his US tour have backfired spectacularly.<\/p>\n

It is entirely possible that public relations courses will use his statement as an example of what not to do in a PR crisis. As is the way of things in the social media landscape, the controversy has given people with unrelated grievances towards the singer a chance to air them to a preheated audience.<\/p>\n

One of those grievances relates to his relationship with Ireland.<\/p>\n

The lyrics of Galway Girl, the Ed Sheeran version, have been a bone of contention with Irish audiences for some time. It tells the tale of an Englishman (presumably Sheeran) who meets an Irish girl who plays the fiddle. Implausibly, she falls in love with him.<\/p>\n

The gripes with Galway Girl<\/p>\n

Much has been made of the fact that he claims to meet her in a Grafton Street bar, which wouldn\u2019t hold up in court as Grafton Street does not have a bar. However, if we are to be generous the line says \u201cI met her on Grafton street right outside of the bar,\u201d so it is possible that she was standing outside one of the bars on the streets adjacent to that charming, pedestrianised thoroughfare.<\/p>\n

Sheeran recorded Galway Girl with trad band Beoga, who are one of the support acts <\/a>who have withdrawn from his US tour following the defenestration of Macklemore.<\/p>\n

And what sort of a girl is this Galway girl?<\/p>\n

Well, she has a hollow leg when it comes to putting the drinks away \u2013 brands of alcohol which Sheeran gives twee nicknames. She is a smoker, sharing a cigarette with the auburn troubadour who presumably got the filter horribly damp with his big wet mouth. She beats him at darts and pool, but still wants to kiss him after this pathetic series of failures.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s singing and dancing \u2013 he puts Van Morrison on the jukebox \u2013 and after they are ejected from the bar she invites him back to her place for Doritos and wine. Not Tayto or any of the respectable local brands of crisps that are such a beloved part of Ireland\u2019s food culture, but poxy Doritos. The diminutive fence-sitting songwriter concludes that this was a perfect evening and that he would write a song about her \u2013 and you\u2019ve guessed it, it\u2019s the song he\u2019s currently singing.<\/p>\n

A poioumenon with a difference<\/p>\n

The name for a work of art that tells the tale of its own creation is a poioumenon \u2013 other examples of this practice include Sk8r Boi by Avril Lavigne, the novel Little Women, the movie Elf and the TV show Gilmore Girls.<\/p>\n

However, Galway Girl by Ed Sheeran differs from those works in one critical manner \u2013 it contains the line \u201cwhat does it mean, the Gaelic ink on your arm?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the song, this line is not spoken by the English narrator but by the Galway Girl, the encapsulation of Irishness in her drinking, c\u00e9il\u00ed dancing, fiddle playing, Carrickfergus-singing, dart and pool mastery and overall free-spiritedness\u2026 but who needs an English guy to translate a bit of the aul Gaeilge for her.<\/p>\n

In fact, it is the only line she says in the whole song \u2013 the rest of the time she\u2019s just entertaining the carrot-topped warbler.<\/p>\n

Some people object to Sheeran calling the Irish language \u201cGaelic\u201d but I\u2019m happy to let that slide, it\u2019s not unusual to meet Irish speakers from Gaeltacht areas who do the same.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s rather what the fantasy scenario discloses about what Sheeran thinks about himself and his entitlement to Ireland.<\/p>\n

Here he is, a guy walking down Grafton Street and the coolest Irish girl ever sees his arm and thinks, \u201cWow, this guy has a tattoo in the Irish language, I hope he\u2019ll explain it to me in exchange for kisses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting a tattoo in a language you don\u2019t speak is a dangerous game, and we\u2019ve all seen the cautionary tales of \u201cgullible westerner\u201d or \u201cthis guy has an Asian fetish\u201d and the like being written in Mandarin on some person\u2019s skin. There are examples in the Irish language too, with \u201can bhfuil cead agam dul go dt\u00ed an leithreas\u201d turning up more than once.<\/p>\n

The unintelligibility is the point<\/p>\n

The problem stems from the customer not wanting a line of Chinese or Irish literature that interests them but rather they have an English phrase or word in mind which they want translated into the mystical tongue. The unintelligibility is not an accident, it\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n

Being asked, and appearing in that instant to know the language, is the intention. And in Ed\u2019s mind, a Galway Girl who is deeply invested in Irish culture was going to be so impressed by this tattoo that she\u2019d ignore his other shortcomings and spend the evening and a small portion of the morning with him.<\/p>\n

Galway Girl is not a good song but it is an interesting cultural artefact in how it gives an unguarded account of how a third-generation Irish descendant in England engages with that part of his heritage.<\/p>\n

Emigrants staying part of the conversation<\/p>\n

Sheeran\u2019s debut album was released in 2011, a time when a whole new wave of Irish emigrants were leaving the island and engaging with the complexities of their Irish identities in painful ways that were new and old. Unlike prior generations of Irish emigrants, internet technology made it possible for them to stay part of the national conversation, leading to the #HomeToVote movements supporting two of the decade\u2019s key referendums.<\/p>\n

In 2026 Ireland has a Galway Girl as president, one who could presumably beat Ed Sheeran in pool and darts if her basketball and keepie-uppie skills are anything to go by, and when she received President Trump in the White House she made her position on war and genocide very clear.<\/p>\n

There are two songs about Galway Girls written by horny tourists; maybe it is time to let them tell their own story.<\/p>\n

Darach will be back next Sunday with more thoughts on the words and Irish cultural phenomena that unite us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Darach \u00d3 S\u00e9aghdha Author and linguist In Calling 353, bestselling Motherfocl\u00f3ir author and podcaster Darach \u00d3 S\u00e9aghdha casts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[196764,8720,267628,93,267629,61,60,171164,278],"class_list":["post-630393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-calling-353","tag-ed-sheeran","tag-emigrants","tag-entertainment","tag-galway-girl","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-identity","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}