Ed Sheeran has given the Irish a chance to air gripes with Galway Girl

20 Sep 2026, 09:00 by Darach Ó Séaghdha, https://www.thejournal.ie/author/darach-Ó-séaghdha/ · TheJournal.ie

Darach Ó Séaghdha Author and linguist

In Calling 353, bestselling Motherfoclóir author and podcaster Darach Ó Séaghdha casts a linguistic eye on how we talk about what it means to be Irish, the signs we post to each other about Irishness – and what really lies beneath it all.

IT HASN’T BEEN a great week for global megastar Ed Sheeran, whose attempts to smooth over the controversial, politically-motivated dropping of Macklemore from his US tour have backfired spectacularly.

It is entirely possible that public relations courses will use his statement as an example of what not to do in a PR crisis. As is the way of things in the social media landscape, the controversy has given people with unrelated grievances towards the singer a chance to air them to a preheated audience.

One of those grievances relates to his relationship with Ireland.

The lyrics of Galway Girl, the Ed Sheeran version, have been a bone of contention with Irish audiences for some time. It tells the tale of an Englishman (presumably Sheeran) who meets an Irish girl who plays the fiddle. Implausibly, she falls in love with him.

The gripes with Galway Girl

Much has been made of the fact that he claims to meet her in a Grafton Street bar, which wouldn’t hold up in court as Grafton Street does not have a bar. However, if we are to be generous the line says “I met her on Grafton street right outside of the bar,” so it is possible that she was standing outside one of the bars on the streets adjacent to that charming, pedestrianised thoroughfare.

Sheeran recorded Galway Girl with trad band Beoga, who are one of the support acts who have withdrawn from his US tour following the defenestration of Macklemore.

And what sort of a girl is this Galway girl?

Well, she has a hollow leg when it comes to putting the drinks away – brands of alcohol which Sheeran gives twee nicknames. She is a smoker, sharing a cigarette with the auburn troubadour who presumably got the filter horribly damp with his big wet mouth. She beats him at darts and pool, but still wants to kiss him after this pathetic series of failures.

There’s singing and dancing – he puts Van Morrison on the jukebox – and after they are ejected from the bar she invites him back to her place for Doritos and wine. Not Tayto or any of the respectable local brands of crisps that are such a beloved part of Ireland’s food culture, but poxy Doritos. The diminutive fence-sitting songwriter concludes that this was a perfect evening and that he would write a song about her – and you’ve guessed it, it’s the song he’s currently singing.

A poioumenon with a difference

The name for a work of art that tells the tale of its own creation is a poioumenon – other examples of this practice include Sk8r Boi by Avril Lavigne, the novel Little Women, the movie Elf and the TV show Gilmore Girls.

However, Galway Girl by Ed Sheeran differs from those works in one critical manner – it contains the line “what does it mean, the Gaelic ink on your arm?”

In the song, this line is not spoken by the English narrator but by the Galway Girl, the encapsulation of Irishness in her drinking, céilí dancing, fiddle playing, Carrickfergus-singing, dart and pool mastery and overall free-spiritedness… but who needs an English guy to translate a bit of the aul Gaeilge for her.

In fact, it is the only line she says in the whole song – the rest of the time she’s just entertaining the carrot-topped warbler.

Some people object to Sheeran calling the Irish language “Gaelic” but I’m happy to let that slide, it’s not unusual to meet Irish speakers from Gaeltacht areas who do the same.

It’s rather what the fantasy scenario discloses about what Sheeran thinks about himself and his entitlement to Ireland.

Here he is, a guy walking down Grafton Street and the coolest Irish girl ever sees his arm and thinks, “Wow, this guy has a tattoo in the Irish language, I hope he’ll explain it to me in exchange for kisses.”

Getting a tattoo in a language you don’t speak is a dangerous game, and we’ve all seen the cautionary tales of “gullible westerner” or “this guy has an Asian fetish” and the like being written in Mandarin on some person’s skin. There are examples in the Irish language too, with “an bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas” turning up more than once.

The unintelligibility is the point

The problem stems from the customer not wanting a line of Chinese or Irish literature that interests them but rather they have an English phrase or word in mind which they want translated into the mystical tongue. The unintelligibility is not an accident, it’s the point.

Emigrants staying part of the conversation

Sheeran’s debut album was released in 2011, a time when a whole new wave of Irish emigrants were leaving the island and engaging with the complexities of their Irish identities in painful ways that were new and old. Unlike prior generations of Irish emigrants, internet technology made it possible for them to stay part of the national conversation, leading to the #HomeToVote movements supporting two of the decade’s key referendums.

In 2026 Ireland has a Galway Girl as president, one who could presumably beat Ed Sheeran in pool and darts if her basketball and keepie-uppie skills are anything to go by, and when she received President Trump in the White House she made her position on war and genocide very clear.

There are two songs about Galway Girls written by horny tourists; maybe it is time to let them tell their own story.

Darach will be back next Sunday with more thoughts on the words and Irish cultural phenomena that unite us.