Go ndéana Dia trócaire ar a hanam
Written for English speakers and editorial rather than sourced. It will get you close enough to be understood, and it is not a substitute for a native speaker. Recorded audio is planned; see About.
When to use it In a sympathy card or a spoken remembrance of a woman.
About this saying
Between 1937 and 1939 the Irish Folklore Commission asked the schoolchildren of Ireland to write down the lore of their own houses. The Schools’ Collection, now half a million manuscript pages. On page 312 of volume 1047, a pupil of Leac Chonaill school in Co. Donegal opened a story he had often heard from his mother with this prayer for her soul, in his own school-copybook spelling. That is the attestation: not a dictionary’s example sentence but the prayer doing its work in a family, written by the person who meant it.
Provenance
Where this wording comes from. We publish nothing we cannot point at.
- Folklore archiveNational Folklore Collection: duchas.ieThe Schools' CollectionCBÉS 1047:312, Leac Chonaill school, Co. Donegal; collector Séamus Mac Grianna; manuscript spelling modernised