tura-lura

English

Interjection

tura-lura

1. (Ireland) A filler lyric (vocables).
   • 1853, Frederick Marryat, Poor Jack, H.G. Bohn, page 213:

     “Well, off with you then, and I’m off too. Sing tura la, tura la, tura lura la.”

   • 1913, James Royce Shannon, “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral”, “That’s an Irish Lullaby”, M.Witmark & Sons, New York:

     Over in Killarney, many years ago / My Mother sang a song to me in tones so sweet and low / Just a simple little ditty, in her good ould Irish way / And I’d give the world if she could sing / That song to me this day

     Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral / Too-ra-loo-ra-li / Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral / Hush now don’t you cry!

     Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral / Too-ra-loo-ra-li / Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral / That’s an Irish lullaby

     Oft, in dreams I wander to that cot again / I feel her arms a huggin’ me as when she held me then / And I hear her voice a hummin’ to me as in days of yore / When she used to rock me fast asleep outside the cabin door

   • 1964, “Old Iron, Bits o’ Brass”, in Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, page 102:

     Bring your old iron, bits o’ brass / Tura-lura-laddi / Bring your old iron, bits o’ brass / Tura-lura-lido

   • 1982 June, unattributed/traditional, “Jug of Punch”, Soodlum's Irish Ballad Book, Oak Publications, →ISBN, unpaged:

     Tur-a-lur-a-la, tur-a-lur-a-lae / A small bird sat on an ivy branch, and the song he sang was a Jug of Punch

   • 1982 June 25, Kevin Rowland, “Come On Eileen”, Too-Rye-Ay, Mercury Records:

     Toora loora toora loo rye ay / And we can sing just like our fathers […]

     Toora loora toora loo rye ay / And you’ll hum this toon forever

Noun

tura-lura (plural tura-luras)

1. The Irish lyric.
   • 1945 June, Daphne Alloway McVicker, “I Weep for You”, part 1 of 3, Cosmopolitan, Hearst’s International, volume 119, page 103:

     Carole was gracious. “You don’t do so badly. They tell me Mick Kelly’s throwing too-ra-loo-ras in your direction.”

     “Mick’s swell,” Betsy agreed. “I like him a lot. He’s got ideas.”

     “Well, don’t let him get away with them.” Carol’s eyebrows arched.

   • 1998, Richard McKenzie, Turn Left at the Black Cow, Roberts Rinehart, page 273:

     Ava thinks I’m miffed because she didn’t use my suggestion of a shamrock garland so I could make a tura lura lei, but she’ll be sorry comes the day when someone else cashes in on the idea.

   • 1999, Saúl Yurkievich, “Julio, Oh Buccaneer of the Remington”, in Critical Essays on Julio Cortázar, G.K. Hall, →ISBN, page 27:

     And all this because of a desired destiny that now is not literature, that goes beyond profession and artifice, that is incandescent Tura-lura-lura where the imagination recognizes no other limit than that of the word constrained to enunciate the order that everything disturbs and perturbs.

   • 2003, Henri Godard, Fable for another time, translation of Férie pour une autre fois (1952), University of Nebraska Press, →ISBN, page 67:

     I heard a thing or two coming from that place, let me tell you! Tura-luras and the blood running high! and the squawks of the seagulls during the storms...

   • 2004, The Oxford Companion to Canadian History, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 343:

     She sang songs like ‘Ça va venir découragez-vous pas’ and ‘La Gaspésienne pure laine’, which sketched a humorous portrait of ordinary life at the time, inventing a distinctive ‘turlutage’—a technique using nonsense syllables (not unlike the ‘tura-luras’ or ‘diddle-dum-dees’ of traditional Irish songs)―as a refrain.

   • 2004 July, Tim Mcloughlin, “When All This was Bay Bridge”, in Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books, →ISBN, unnumbered page:

     A few more minutes and I feared I’d start sounding like one of these tura-lura-lura motherfuckers myself.

   • 2013 October, Victor Hugo, “Paris Atomized”, Les Miserables, Penguin, section 3, unpaged:

     This creature […] hisses and sings, applauds and hoots, tempers Hallelujah with turalura, chants all sorts of rhythms from De Profundis to the Chie-en-lit […]

See also

• tooraloo