“Nice photos. This video made me think of the Welsh word “Hiraeth”. There is no direct translation to English but it is typically considered to mean something like a homesickness for the places from your past that you can’t return to or even those you’ve never been to and nostalgia for your past self, the people who are gone, or the emotions you used to feel. Happy memories that are also sad because of grief for loved ones that have passed on which makes your home, or the present time, not the same as before.”
—Folk Survival
The comment above was only the second or third time I’ve encountered the word hiraeth. The other times I ran into the unusual word was right here on Blind Pig and The Acorn when readers spoke of it.
A quick search will share the same or at least similar definition that Folk Survival gave. And more than a few sites agree there is no exact direct translation for the word to English.
However the feeling it describes is known by most humans.
That bittersweet feeling of remembering and longing for a time that’s no longer here. Maybe it’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who no longer walk the same paths you do. Maybe it’s our very family—father, mother, sister, brother, children. Or a homeplace that now belongs to someone else or has been erased by progress.
I suppose for me it’s all those things. But it’s more than that.
It’s the clink of coffee cups on the counter, barefeet down the hallway, the slamming screen door, guitar sounds from the couch, cigarette smoke and spit cups, earnest preachers hollering out the gospel, the sound of water as it runs in sinks to prevent freezing, the excitement of a weenie roast out behind the house made even better by a cold watermelon that’s rested in the creek since morning, the laughter of children as they see who can swing highest on the grapevines in the Coleman Gap, guitars, mandolins and high lonesome tenors floating out open windows as kids run in dusky dark playing hide and seek and catching lightening bugs.
The closest word I can think of in the Appalachian language to mean hiraeth would be lonesome.
I’m often lonesome for a time, place, and people that can never be reproduced or recreated. The unique thing about being lonesome or hiraeth for something that’s gone, is with the feeling of grief and longing there is also a feeling of joy. A great joy of having lived and experienced the people and places that are no more.
Last night’s video: Saint Patrick’s Day Traditions Observed in the Mountains of Appalachia & A Fiddle Tune from Katie.
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
One of my favorite words. I think it applies to people with dementia too. Many times they say they want to go home. Where that is often remains a mystery.
Somehow I did not get this read til April 23. I sure am glad I found it tonight.
I had never heard the word hiraeth either, but that completely sums up how I was feeling after my youngest child married and left home, oh how the sadness set in. I first chalked it up to menopause but the older I get the stronger those feelings set in. Your words truly sum up that feeling Tipper!!
Wow! Such a response to a word most of us have never heard. Like others, it touched me also. Guess I experience hiraeth most often when I long for my mountain home and its people of the past and present.
Tipper, I have never heard the word Hiraeth before, but I’ve known lonesome. Today’s subject is deep and thought provoking and emotional to me. Have you ever heard someone say, “I wonder where the time goes?” Could the answer be in Hiraeth?
Tipper,
This post truly touched my heart. It was beautifully written. You have a poet’s heart.
You sure stirred up a hornets nest today – memories, feelings, emotions, etc. I usually read your post much earlier in the day but lately I seem to get to busy to sit down until later. I’ve found the comments to be educational and may re- read them later when I go back to checking your post earlier in the day. Todays comments are exceptional.
Tipper • an amazing word that elicited some truly heartfelt responses; what a great read!
Tipper, I’ve been feeling this way a lot lately. It seems like the older I get the more I feel this way. Thank you for sharing in such a beautifully written way. 🙂
I dream so frequently about my childhood home on a horse farm in southwest Georgia. I walk through it with my mother and sister, father and brother, and we have problems to solve, meals to get, things to say to one another. That place belongs to a developer now.
It is like the Portuguese word “saudade”–that feeling of homesick longing. I guess every culture and every time has had those deep longings in the soul.
Yes! The perfect word. I just turned 65 and both my parents are gone. Such a bittersweet feeling of hiraeth. So many great family memories and so great to know we’ll be together again in Heaven, but I miss them both fiercely. I am so thankful to still have my sister (15 months younger than me). Thank you for sharing this perfectly descriptive word. (Your friend in SC)
I’m always homesick for Kentucky. I was born there and left when I was just a small baby, but I “miss” it. I always feel so happy and so whole when I visit. It’s like a feeling of belonging that just gives me so much peace. I loved being in the Carolina mountains and that feeling was always the closest to what I feel in Kentucky. I guess there’s something to it if there’s a word for it.
I feel this word in my heart. Lonesome for my momma’s soft hands on my face.
My children climbing into my lap.
My mammaw’s fried ham and biscuits.
My daddy’s voice from the pulpit.
The treasures of my heart pulled out and examined and smoothed with my hand and then gently tucked back in my heart where they are loved.
Being the son of a typesetter, I became a collector of words very early in life. I still collect them and you have give me a jewel, Tipper. Thank you!
Learning that it is Welsh word and knowing a bit about Welsh pronunciations, I just had to find it on YouTube. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m68eXtHUjLE
There are several things that give me the feeling of hiraeth. First, the sound of steam trains in the night working in the train yard. The house I grew up in in Raleigh is 6 blocks due East of the old Seaboard passenger depot and the roundhouse. Steam locomotives were in the most common use until I was 12-14 years old. In an age before air conditioning we slept with windows open hoping to catch cool night breezes. The sound of those huffing engines working in the night bring on hiraeth for that time and place when I felt totally secure and had no real responsibilities weighing in my life.
Another instance is to remember the bustle of Fayetteville Street and downtown Raleigh before any malls were built. I spent many Saturdays roaming downtown and the museums in that wonderful childhood freedom and sense of security, that no harm would befall me.
Thank you, Tipper, for reminding me of those times. I thank God for them.
Thank you for sharing- growing up in deep East Texas sawmill town by a train tracks- the smell of cresote does this for me- sleeping with the window open with a fan- hearing the sounds of summer- there is nothing that beautiful in today’s world. My sons are out on their own and the last one prepares to leave- I miss them being babies- now I know there’s a word for the lonesome..
Donna, you described my feelings exactly although I grew up in the boonies in GA. When I was a kid I would get up early in the morning and listen to Don & Earl on WCKY in Cincinnati OH singing “I’m Homesick For Heaven….I’ve got a longing to go” and think that must be the place I’m longing for.
Feel it more and more as I age and life continues to change. The world situation is so sad and brings back memories of other horrible times and events. My only child moved in with his girlfriend this week–never lived away from our home before. We’re seeing our Mother-in-law drift away out of life and she is the last of her generation at 97. Hopefully spring will help everyone to cheer up some.
I didn’t know the word but know the feeling. One of those is my Granddad Nick Byers’ gristmill where I would scoop out hot meal straight from the hopper and eat it. Folks came with the “turn” of corn on their shoulder or on on a sled pulled by an old mare or mule. This was on hwy129 (Murphy Hwy, union County GA) diagonally across the road where Randall Twiggs Garage is. At the time of Grandad’s mill an old store was where the garage is. It was owned my Jim Elliott and when he died Poole Deaver bought the store. Poole died from TB and Thelma Little, his widow, married Jewel Twiggs and it became Twiggs Groc. Yeah, good memories.
There is a Welsh word for when a preacher gets into a big way of preaching and it almost sounds like singing. The word eludes me right now. I’m not sure this is the word but think it might be hyle. Maybe a Bling Pig reader will know the right word.
Dear Tipper,
Remember George Ella Lyon’s poem you published years back called “I am From’ It was meant to be a ‘fill in the blank’ type exercise in poetry writing. A person gave thought to all of their experiences to make their version of the poem personal. Well, I experienced a lot of hiraeth while writing my personal poem–so much that it brought many tears from my eyes. Once I did a reading of some of my personal stories to a church group–and when I got to “I am From” I couldn’t get through it without a sob. I hiraeth a lot these days 🙂 . The world is in turmoil, but I can go back to a tree swing made by my Daddy, feeding the chickens and gathering eggs, playing in the creek with my best friends, going shopping with my Mama at Newberry & Denton’s Five and Ten Cent Store, hearing my Daddy sing along with Mull’s Singing Convention and the Gospel Jubilee while we got ready for church on Sunday mornings, playing “cars” with my brothers under the hickory nut tree-oh, we were engineers and knew how to build roads, bridges and tunnels, my joy when my Mama told me she was expecting a baby right after I’d married and left home. My surprise when I was told I was also with child, and my son and baby sister grew up together–both born within five months of each other in 1977, sitting at the supper table together, holiday dinners at my grandparent’s house–in 1958 all of us could fit at the table with me in a high chair and now family spills out into the living room, the porch, the spare little bedroom. Sometimes I feel like the link between who used to be and who is now. I knew my great-grandmother, who sat on the porch and dipped snuff and loved to watch us children play, and she is my grandchildren’s great-great-great grandmother, who know her only through pictures and my remembrances of her.
Here, in East Tennessee, while the rain is softly falling and the thunder is rolling, the lightening is flashing, but the birds are still singing I think I’ll do a little hireathing.
Hiraeth. Tipper, your words are poetry to my mind. The older I get the more I think of my loved ones on the other side. There is a hiraeth in my heart and I long to see them again. For whatever reason I’ve thought of my father a lot recently and of my son who died 4 months ago. Through much suffering and prayer, the Lord has assured me we will have a great home coming.
Oh my, Tipper. that is such a feeling, and I thought it was only in these mountains. They have a beauty, yet a deep sadness from all the footsteps that are no longer walking in these hills. One sound I can never forget, and it is becoming less common. It is the far off lonely sound of a train whistle That was heard often in my childhood, and as a matter of fact my siblings would go and wait by the speeding train while the engineer threw off candy. I did not need the candy, but I suppose I got my fix from that far off sound. What has surprised me more is it has never been the proms, vacations, or new cars in life that I remember and miss. I miss the down home people who were part of my life. I think back to the time when a young neighbor and I spent the night in their root cellar just ’cause. We were oblivious to the potential for a snake visit. Such happy memories making fun out of nothing. She left home as did I, and we did not stay in touch. Why? I searched later and found her on Find A Grave, as she had died very young. “Hiraeth” is perhaps us looking deeper into our lives, but it has made me place more value on each and every thing in life no matter how small.
Tipper,
Your post this morning really spoke to a deep part of me. A place that has felt hiareth even though I’ve never heard the word spoken. I know the feeling. It is a deep nostalgic longing for yes, days gone by, and for people that have passed from my life, but it is also a calling to go to another place, a place that I somehow know and can’t get out of my mind.
I remember when our boys were small we took a trip to the Appalachians and I felt I had come home in a sense. However, I was there as a tourist, and didn’t know the every day way of the natives, yet I really did, and later discovered my life experiences parallels in so many ways to the people of those mountains. The parallels are uncanny at times. I talk the same way, eat the same things, think the same things. We also took trips out west to the Rocky Mountains, but they didn’t make me feel the way the Appalachian mountains made me feel. When we left Appalachia I felt I was leaving something or someone that was dear to me. I felt nostalgic, lonesome, and even heartbroken and very sad.
Later on, in fact in the past 10 years I have done my research into the history of my family, and the family of my husband, and they came here from there. Appalachia was their home, the place they had a farm and plowed the land, planted the crops, raised their children, and then due to societal upheaval they found they needed to push further west and that is what they did. They came to Texas and started a new life, yet their mountain ways remained with them, the essence of who they were, and that was passed on to me. I’m sure that is true for many, many people that moved west. They left what they already loved because they had to for the survival of the family. However, as they came west, their hearts longed for the mountains, the hills, and hollers, yet they trudged on determined to make a good life in a new place. They never forgot, they passed on the longings, the joy, and remembrances to their children, grandchildren, and finally in time to me too.
Now we have a grand daughter and her husband that are Bluegrass singers. She has several songs on YouTube. She plays the mandolin and guitar. Her sister plays the fiddle and piano and her brother plays the banjo and guitar. My son passed on the love of folk tunes to her as well as her siblings. My son, their dad learned to play the dulcimer just a few years ago.
I hope you understand what I’m trying to convey. It’s part and parcel of who I am. Each time we go back to those mountains, it’s a nostalgic, happy time, yet sad, so sad when we leave. I totally get what Donna said and feel much the same way.
What is your granddaughters name on YouTube. I would love to watch her videos. I love hearing new bands,and especially bluegrass.
I’ve never heard that word before, but I understand the feeling of longing for days gone by that hold such precious memories for me with my family and friends. Thank you for sharing and educating us on words from our ancestors.
Do you remember the opening phrases to Squire Parsons’s Sweet Beulah Land? “I’m kind of homesick for a country to which I’ve never been before.” Is that possible? Is that Hiraeth?
Many of us share that feeling. It’s like you long to be in a place where what once was still is. I have some ideas about that if anyone cares to listen.
Now let me hit you with some deeper questions. We all agree that God created the Heavens and the Earth in the first six days and rested on the seventh, right? So, what did he do on the eighth day? Did He go back to creating? Is He still resting? Is it still the seventh day? Has God destroyed anything He has created? From something to nothing? Not to rubble, to dust or to ashes but to absolute nothing?
Could were we have been and where we are going be the same place?
Ed,
I sure would love to listen to you expound on the deeper things you have pondered concerning what God did or did not do on the 8th day as well as are we going to a place we’ve been before.. a place we called home. Is that what we pine and long for in this fleeting life? We spend our whole life getting back to where we wandered from and to the Father that patiently awaits our return.
Also I would like to say Beulah Land is one of my all time favorite hymns. I cry with heart rending emotion every single time I hear it or sing it. Yes, I’m homesick for a country I’ve never seen before.
Ed,
I think Sweet Beulah Land perfectly describes Hiraeth! We are aliens here…. only passing through. More and more I realize this world is not my home.
I think maybe the Great Creator is resting (I must investigate this passage!), but working at the same time–working in His children’s lives, waiting for the appointed time to call His children Home to Heaven.
Your post hits home: to this day, whenever I hear bluegrass music, I have to go looking for it. The last time was in a parking lot. The guy was sitting in his car with the radio on. He looked at me and grinned when I tapped my ear.
A very well written and one of your best posts. It captures the nostalgia of home, place, and family. All the things you enumerated bring back fond memories for me. Unfortunately most of them are gone, but I’m thankful I got the experience.It is a lonesome feeling of time passing on and change.
Donna, I know that feeling. When I was growing up , I always had the feeling of longing for my real home even while in the only home I had ever known. I think some people are always feeling out of place until they find their true home. I have found mine.
Hiraeth is a new word to me, but the emotions that it describes are very familiar. your blog this morning touched my heart. Thank you for sharing this with us.
I have never heard the word but the feeling it describes is the story of my life. When I was a child, I hated those lonesome mountains back home. To this day, the sound made by birds, bugs and frogs bring back memories of a time when that was the only sound that could be heard in those quiet hills. Not much has changed in the many years since I moved away. Hiraeth still surrounds me when I go back for visits.
oops forgot to say, I really enjoyed your fiddle tune, Katie!
I understand your feeling of missing a loved one and the older we get, of course, more loved ones are missed. Remembering and wishing you could just have them with you one more day even though you know you will some day see them again. I think the thread that runs through it is feeling “Loved.”
As this is a new word to me, I wanted to know how to PRONOUNCE it… Heeeee Rie th is how to say this correctly. It’s a good little word. I heard the time change is OVER. There will be a permanent time change to what else- daylight savings time!!! Thank God for tiny changes!
Hiraeth. Melancholy? This feeling can rise at a moment’s notice with a sound or a smell or a sudden memory. It brings a smile and then a longing that can be both comforting and painful. We have all seen much illness, suffering, death, and loss the past two years and now thanks to technology we are watching a war on the those undeserving in real time. I long for those more innocent times, Mama’s cooking, little bare feet, missing loved ones, one more opportunity to ask my parents another question. I am grateful to have a name for it.
I don’t recognize this particular word, but I’ve encountered the concept in a lot of other languages and cultures; C.S. Lewis talked about its playing a major role in his conversion to Christianity. I think the best explanation is that it’s a longing for the way we know things are supposed to be, for the only other home we can know and that’s Heaven.
I never heard the word Hiraeth, but I have certainly experienced it. A sound, smell or place can bring back a flood of memories. The sound that tire chains make when a car or truck is traveling on a snow covered road. That is a sound that is seldom heard today but once in a while I will hear it and I’m back in the 1950’s and 60’s. I’m 72 years old now and often wonder, “whatever happened to that young girl”? It seems she was so busy being a nurse, having babies and working on building a house on my husband’s family farm. My PopPop use to say….youth is wasted on the young. And I certainly now know what he meant. Today I’m a little slower, still working full time…..but appreciating all the little things that I experience along the way. The good Lord has had a plan for my life all along and I’m just trying to keep on following it. I try to remember the little and big things I experience today will be part of those memories tomorrow. thank you for introducing me to a new word.
The feelings of hireath have washed over me many many time over the past two years. I would never want my family that have passed to come back into this scary world but I do need the comfort they gave me while they were here. God is Good All The Time ❤
I had never encountered “hireath” before but it describes me for the last 30 years. And the hireath just keeps growing stronger. If there is such a thing, I am an ‘hireather’, also known I believe as a ‘melancholy’.
Your description reminds me of what my Grandma called “sweet sorrow”. She never explained just what that was. I reckon it is the dark strands and light strands woven through each life. We often think we could do well without the dark strands but it is not possible to not have them, for here and now anyway.
I wonder how the Welsh pronounce that word; as ‘hy wreath’ or ‘hy wraith’ or something else? Seems the Welsh are known for being somewhat mystic and having spiritual gifts. Also read once that ” Jones” is a Welsh name. Both my wife and myself are related to Jones but we did not inherit any mysticism I don’t reckon.
Tipper, You described it perfectly “lonesome – feeling of grief and longing but also a feeling of joy”. It seems the older I get the more I have those feelings for things in my past. Also for me the longing is for a lifestyle, one of simplicity, minimalism and slowing down in this fast paced world and absorbing the things in God’s creation more and being “in” the world but not “of” the world.
Wow! Did I ever jump down a rabbit hole any deeper than this one? Nope. My new word to explore!
Tipper, your words hit a target. I am undone. You so beautifully defined yearnings heretofore unnamed. HIRAETH.
I have never heard of the word but it is an exact description of my life now. How I long for the yesteryears. In the last 10 to 12 years so many of my loved ones have passed with the worst being my wife and daughter that I find myself not caring if tomorrow ever comes but only thinking of the past. That feeling or thought stays in my mind both day and night. On April 15 it will be one year since my wife’s death and the hurt and pain is as bad today as it was when it happened. Between going together and being married we were together for 50 years. I know as a Christian God is with me but as a human at times it does not feel like it. A lot of times the feelings are so strong I want to go to sleep and never wake up, but I know I have to keep trying to go on for my son and grandsons.
“…lonesome for a time, place, and people that can never be reproduced or recreated.”
Ugh. You got me with this one, because that’s me in a nutshell right now. I didn’t know there was a word for it, and it makes sense that there’s no way for us to say it, because the feeling, too, is beyond words or expression.
Oh for the good ole days. Memories usually kept in a photo album or conversation with someone that shared common memories. Front porch – rockin’ chair conversations. With high tech being what it is and never really hearing someones voice or looking in their eyes, there is no person to person relationships. So sorry that the youth of today will miss what we had back ‘in the good ole days’. God Bless Tipper and your extended family now with Austin. Give them my best.
I really like this word. It combines a nostalgic feeling with love of home, family. And place.
I don’t seem to recognize the word, maybe hearing it would jog my memory. I do, however, know the feeling it denotes. I suppose the older you get the more hiraeth you feel. A sweet longing for things past.
Miss Cindy, I didn’t recognize the word either but I agree that the older you get the more hiraeth you feel.
Wow! Tipper! This post hit a feeling that I have had my entire life square on the head, but could never put into words. Even as a very little girl, I would feel so lonesome sometimes, my heart would literally feel like it was broken in two. All my life so far, ever since I can remember, I would feel something pulling at me, like I needed to be somewhere else, but I could never quite get there, it was beyond my reach. Hireath. I grew up with the sound of the freeway, the constant sound of cars and trucks as they hurried past. That sound can bring on the deepest hireath you have ever felt in me. I become so restless when I hear tires on a road, it is hard to describe. It calls to me to follow it. You want to know something even deeper, crazier sounding. Even as a little girl, the tug I would feel, felt like it was coming from the Appalachian Mountains. I grew up so far away from here – San Diego. As a child I didn’t know these mountains even existed. But what I know about them now – the way of life here, it has called me to it. Literally all my life. Like there was someone calling me from here since I was little. A certain person? And the deep lonely feeling made me want to go find that person, and the way of life I should be living. I have moved all over the United States, traveling in pretty much every state. And that feeling constantly beckoned me to move on, to keep going until I was where I was supposed to be. This morning, this post put into words a lot that has been in my heart all my life. It is almost the answer I have been searching for so far. How can a small child feel that pull so strong? A child has not had enough memories to make them miss something so deeply as you described for hireath. So I am still questioning – what is it I am missing? Who is it? There are many things I can say I truly miss now as an adult now – people, places, things, all my yesterdays for sure. But this feeling your post has made me face this morning, is not from something I have already known in my life. I feel like it is something that is supposed to be, my purpose. It is almost eerie to me, scary in a sense because I firmly believe in God. I do not believe in reincarnation at all. So this hireath I have felt is not something from my past. It is in my future. I strongly believe God has a purpose for each of us to serve Him in our lives – our service to Him glorifies Him, brings lost souls to Him, furthers His kingdom. The joy we get in life is when we are in His Will for our lives, that is when we are truly happy. I have been praying about moving again. I feel a tug at me that I can’t explain. So I think where am I supposed to go now? Florida? Minneapolis? San Diego? But every time I pray, God closes the door for me to move. I even felt Him lay on my heart last week that He wants me here, in North Carolina. Today this post was more of a confirmation I am to not move away because here is where I really do feel content. That restless call I have always had is not as strong now as it has been in the past. Maybe I am to move somewhere else in this state, but not out of it. I know all my rambling here probably sounds strange to others. And I really am thinking out loud. But your words really have made me ponder this lonesome feeling of hireath, and how it describes a feeling I have had all my life, and why it has pulled me here to where I am today, and what more is there? Who? Why? Where? I feel like I am close to the answer. Your words have given me more of a clue. They are more for me to seriously pray about. God is so very good! And my desire is to serve Him. Again, I know this comment is long and rambly, and I briefly thought about not posting it — but maybe others have had this feeling like I have. Maybe reading other commenters thoughts about your post will give me a little more answers. I do feel like God had you write this post in an answer to my recent prayers. Maybe it was to give me more peace on staying here, and to take my thoughts constantly off of “should I move?”, and instead to put my focus on living life simply where I am now for awhile. Thank you!
Donna. : )
Yes, God is so very good.
My goodness that word sums up how I feel alot of the days. So many have fleeted through my life and I long to hear the voices that have gone silent. I remember so many details of their lives. There are fried pies and reunions with long tables of food. Homemade ice cream and the family softball game. I can still feel the heat and sound of my grandmother’s gas heater with a can of water in front. Caramel cakes and lingering Christmas visits. Lots of sewing, quilting and crafting. Let’s not forget the sweet tea and cornbread and milk.
Our memories are like time machines that allow is to spend a moment in the past and appreciate the blessings of our lives.
I guess that what hireath is too me. I have never heard this word before now. Thanks for sharing it!