Fear gu aois, is bean gu bàs -- A son is a son until he comes of age; a daughter is a daughter all her life
Apparently gaelic or something, tattoo idea I stumbled on (no tattoo for Ryan! Ryan hasn't the pain tolerance!). Heh. All I can think is "now you can say 'daddy's little girl' in two different languages!"
But, yeah, seriously. Did they disown males after they came of age, or is this just a comment on how women never had freedom? I'm never good at weird quotes like this.
2 comments:
It's an old Gaelic proverb or "seanfhocal" (lit. old word)
That's the Scottish Gaelic version. The Irish is:
Is é do mhac do mhac inniú,
ach is í d'iníon d'iníon go deo.
Your son is your son today,
but your daughter is your daughter forever.
I think it just means that sons go off to start their own families, go to war, emigrate to the New World in search of work. The girls were more likely to stay around in the locality, marry local and look after her parents in their old age. The farm normally went to the eldest son and the other offspring had to find other ways of making it in the world. The general trend was that the men left. Nothing to do with them being "disowned".
Ooh, I get it now. ^^ I'm really not good at old sayings like that. It takes me awhile to figure it out. I think of the son's staying with the family and the daughters leaving home when they get married more than that.
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