Irish Baby Blessings

Irish blessings for a child ask for two things almost exclusively: length of life, and that the child turns out well. Go saolaí Dia é asks God to grant him long life, and it is the plainest of them.

The proverbs are more interesting than the blessings here, because Irish has a settled view about children that is encouraging rather than sentimental. Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí (praise the young and they will come on) is genuinely a piece of advice about how to raise someone. Is minic a rinne bromach gioblach capall cumasach, often a ragged colt made a powerful horse, says the same thing with less patience for worry.

For a christening card or a nursery print, the short blessings work better; for a message to the parents, the proverbs usually land harder. Every entry shows both a word-for-word rendering and a natural English one, which matters here because the literal versions tend to involve horses.