In his autobiography,
Changeling, Oldfield states that he just wanted "sounds", not "sensible" lyrics. He asked
Clodagh Simonds, an Irish musician with whom he was working, to come up with something in
Irish. She wrote down the first words that came into her head: :Daddy's in bed, The cat's drinking milk, I'm an idiot, And I'm laughing. Oldfield states that Simonds had telephoned a relative or friend to translate these words into
Irish for the song. As the album, like many of Oldfield's at that time, did not have a lyrics sheet, attempts were made to decipher the lyrics; one such attempt which has persisted over the years was: These lyrics are written in an English-based respelling system, but all four lines are easily recognisable as an Irish translation of the English words, although the first two lines have undergone a process of partial scrambling: combinations of
vowel +
semivowel are kept intact, but otherwise the lines are written backwards (so, e.g., '
corresponds to ') and some word spaces have been changed. In standard Irish orthography, the lyrics are (with English translation, since the translation does not match the original exactly): The word
idiot ( in Irish) was Anglicised into
Ommadawn and used as the title of the album. Prior to his autobiography, Oldfield had denied this meaning of '''', calling it a
nonsense word, apparently as a ruse to enhance the mystery of his music. ==Related releases==