SeanfhocailIrish proverbs & blessings, sourced

Toast prints

Go dtí tú slán

May you come back safe.

For an emigrant’s card or any send-off where what you mean is “come back to us safely”.

Go dtí tú slán May you come back safe. THE ANCHOR Go dtí tú slánBeannacht · Irish blessingSay it: guh jee too slawnÓ Dónaill 1977 · seanfhocail.ie

The wording is quoted exactly from the record and its cited source; personalisation touches only your own names and date, never the Irish.

About this saying

Ó Dónaill’s dictionary abbreviates its own headwords to a tilde, so what the 1977 entry literally prints is “Go ~ tú slán”. And the headword it sits under is a verb form the dictionary marks as literary: the present subjunctive of the verb come. Expanding that tilde correctly is what settled this record’s wording, and the citation records the expansion.

The gloss Ó Dónaill gives (“may you come back safe, safe return”) is what separates this blessing from its near-twin Go dté tú slán, one letter and one verb away. This one blesses the return; that one blesses the going. Two farewells, not two spellings.

Related prints