Chuala mi e

This is a driving piece of Gaelic puirt-a-beul (‘poorsht-a-beel’) or mouth music – the name for songs written to accompany dancing. It’s probably a fragment of a longer piece and is about some piece of hearsay: ‘I heard it three times, a fourth time when my lover came back to me’.
Traditionally, puirt-a-beul is sung unaccompanied and in unison but the tunes harmonise very well. Frequently they are sung in sequences of three or four, each song leading without a break into the next. Chuala mi e works well as the second song in the following set of four: Tha bean agam; Chuala mi e; Còta fad air Dòmhnull lòm; ‘S ann an Ile (all published by Canasg).