Yup, it's an Enya song question

[doe_witch]

Okay, let's put it this way... like some 90s children, I grew up listening to Enya. For better or worse, I still totally possess some of her albums, and this one song is one of my favorites but it has also driven me lyrically mad.

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The liner notes and the lyrics I can find on Google include some Irish Gaelic for part of the song, and while I don'

Comments

[honorh]

It almost looks like Old English, but I don't think it is. Could it be an antiquated form of Gaelic?

[hhimring]

As I understand the description, those parts you're asking about are based on Scottish mouth music from the Hebrides and those words are chosen for the sound and don't mean anything (but I don't speak Gaelic).
Apparently Plains tribes have a comparable technique of singing meaningless words, says Wikipedia--not sure whether that's the resemblance you're hearing, though.
Enya singing Navajo wouldn't be so very absurd--she and Clannad have experimented quite a lot with languages and apparently Clannad have sung in Mohican--but in this particular song it's unlikely she would, because apparently the title Ebudae is an old name for the Hebrides.

[doe_witch]

Ah, yes, my post was getting long enough as it was, but I had started to wonder about the beginning/end lyrics were from that Hebrides singing tradition, because of the title and what the actual Irish lyrics translate to. If nobody else can identify those syllables as actually meaningful, I might settle for your explanation and allow myself to finally live in peace. Although there are some phonemes in these sections that I personally find a bit "unusual" for mouth music- namely, some of the fricatives/affricates. But I also know nothing about the theory of mouth music, especially not regarding any Scottish variety.

Re: the Plains singing traditions, I am very much not an expert, but I had actually been thinking certain syllables really did sound like combinations of syllables that I've heard or read in a few indigenous American languages. And there is a certain "pulse" to the rhythm/notes that reminds me of what I've heard in some Navajo music, not Plains (example here). At the same time, considering it more, I have also heard this

[ext_6254841]

My brain has also thought it saw some similarities between some elements of Sámi joik and certain kinds of Native American singing (incredibly vague, I know - I apologize). My hypothesis is that humans have been doing certain kinds of singing for an impossibly long time and have brought that with us as we expanded around the world. Hebridean mouth music could be part of that ancient tradition. Another thing I read somewhere suggests that music and singing could be more ancient than actual spoken language (though maybe not sign language), so we as a species could have been doing this for a really, REALLY long time. What if "nonsense" vocals like this helped humans develop spoken language? (brain explodes)

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[dorsetgirl]

Sorry I haven't got time atm to check this out, but I remember reading somewhere that it was a made-up language she and her collaborator like to use sometimes.