tura-lura

1. IrelandA filler lyric (vocables).

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

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

   4 more examples

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

   1853, Frederick Marryat, Poor Jack, H.G. Bohn, page 213

   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

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

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

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

   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, unattributed/traditional, “Jug of Punch”, Soodlum's Irish Ballad Book, Oak Publications, unpaged

plural tura-luras

1. The Irish lyric.

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

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

   5 more examples

   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.

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

   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.

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

   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.

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

   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...

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

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