May the Road Rise to Meet You

Introduction

There are a couple of different directions and thoughts I’d like to explore with what’s often called “The Irish Blessing”, which is the basis for the choral anthem today.

First, let’s take a look at the words, at least as one common English translation

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
And rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

• What is your history with this poem or song? What does it mean to you? Are there particular times and places where you’ve seen this used traditionally?

• There are lots of Irish blessings (and curses). Why do you think this one has become so popular?

Let’s listen to one fairly straightforward a capella version of the Irish Blessing, by Joyce Eilers. Does this do anything for you or give you some additional insights into this text?

Translation and History

The history of this poem is hard to find. I wasn’t able to find anything that seems at all authoritative. It’s just listed as a traditional Irish blessing, and there appear to be versions of this in song for multiple centuries back. The main thing I’ve found is that some people ascribe this to St. Patrick, but that’s pretty generally regarded as inaccurate. So, I think the most we can say is that it’s old, lots of people throughout time have arranged these words to different musical presentations.

There are a few interesting aspects of the English translation, though. For what it’s worth, here is what I’m told is the original Gaelic:

Go n-éirí an bóthar leat
Go raibh an ghaoth go brách ag do chúl
Go lonraí an ghrian go te ar d’aghaidh
Go dtite an bháisteach go mín ar do pháirceanna
Agus go mbuailimid le chéile arís,
Go gcoinní Dia i mbos A láimhe thú.

Plugging that Gaelic into Google Translate gives the following English back:

Good luck on your road
May the wind be always at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face
The rains fall soft upon your fields
And until we meet again,
May God in you palm of His hand.

It’s interesting that what’s apparently a quasi-literal translation of the Irish idiom is what has become popular. At least to me, “may the road rise to meet you” isn’t a commonly used idiom in English. At least not something like “get on the ball” or “right up your alley”. We do have the idiom that “the ground came up to meet him”, which means that someone stumbled and implies that the person was a bit intoxicated. However, for the Irish, the essence of that first line is “May you have a successful journey” or “Good luck upon your travels”, and is kind of like the older expression of “Godspeed”.

• What has gone through your mind thinking about that first line? What about the other lines of text in this poem?

I do have to wonder why this particular text has become so popular. The Irish are pretty famous for having lots of blessings (and several curses as well). I found several sites with lots of pages of Irish and curses including one at irishcultureandcustoms.com and another from wisegeek.com. Injecting a bit of humor that I think represents a good part of what we culturally appreciate about the Irish:

May those who love us, love us.
And those that don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts,
And if he doesn’t turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles,
So we may know them by their limping.

Some Different Presentations

So, getting into the music side of this a bit, there are a few different presentations I want to listen to around this song.

The first is by a group called Acoustix and is a Barbershop Quartet version of The Irish Blessing. I’m pretty sure that’s the first Barbership style piece we’ve done in this class.

I added this one in after I’d published the column, and it’s a very bare presentation with just an Irish lass and guitar.

Another version is by the Texas A&M University choir and alumni, and is pretty close to the version I’ve done before. The choir I was in in Kingsport used something sort of close to this version after every baptism.

The last version I want to do is an SSAA version of the Phillip Stopford arrangement that the choir is doing today.

The question in the end is whether any of this helps us live a more Christian life and helps us bring others to Christ. For me, some of these bring peace, others challenge my thinking a bit.