A song that reverberates through history

AS DERRYMAN Mickey Mullen reminded readers of The Irish Voice in these pages recently, and as Paul Brady’s song recalls, it can frequently be ‘nothing but the same old story’ when the Irish diaspora shows its face in Britain.

During 2009 there was a small furore in a few Scottish newspapers over Tommy Sheridan singing The Fields of Athenry on Celebrity Big Brother. In one sense this reaction was shocking, but paradoxically it would also have come as no surprise to many of the Irish descended in Scotland.

However, the episode would also be baffling for youngsters who love to listen to and sing the song, but who are yet to be initiated into some of Scotland’s cultural pre-occupations and prejudices. It would also surprise many people in Ireland, in the Irish diaspora and millions of others with little or no Irish connections, who have all sang, listened to and played the song at home, weddings, funerals, pubs, clubs, parties and at sporting events.

Media shortcomings

The media in Scotland has, of course, a crucial part to play when issues regarding racism and religious prejudice emerge. The media creates and reflects values and ideas and contributes significantly to relevant perceptions and actions.

The people involved in the Scottish media have largely come through Scotland’s education system where there are huge limitations and gaps concerning Scotland’s immigrant peoples, their cultures and identities—especially with respect to its historically largest ethnic and immigrant community.

A resultant lack of knowledge, awareness and a penchant for not breaking ranks is the norm for many in the Scottish media. Many who inhabit that environment can be overly career-orientated, collect most of their information from the internet, want to keep themselves in a job or, more seriously, follow the established ideological line and inadvertently say too much about their own prejudices. The alternative way might truly challenge ethnic, religious and racial injustice and bigotry in Scottish society.

To those with a degree of knowledge about such things, some of the newspaper reporting on the Sheridan-Fields of Athenry matter was prejudicial and indeed, nonsensical sensationalism, at its best. To recall, the song was not ‘cut’ by Channel 4 as reported in a leading Scottish broadsheet and it had nothing to do with the previous Jade Goody-Shilpa Shetty row as it stated. In fact, a Channel 4 spokesman said: “All music or lyrics are generally removed from live streaming given such may be subject to copyright and may not have been cleared for broadcast.” The Times reported that ‘even whistling or humming is routinely excised from live footage, which is broadcast after a 15-minute time lag.’

Worldwide anthem

Written by Pete St John, The Fields of Athenry has been twice in the Irish pop charts, once sung by Danny Doyle and once by Paddy Reilly—the latter had it in the charts for 72 weeks in the early 1980s. It has been recorded by internationally renowned artists like Frank Paterson, Brush Shiels, Dominic Kirwan, James Galway, The Dubliners, California punk band No Use for a Name, New Zealanders Hollie Smith and Steve McDonald, The Durutti Column, Canadian group The Tartan Terrors, Serbian bands Orthodox Celts and Tir na n’Og, Polish band Carrantuohill and in 2005 by a Hungarian folk-rock band Sacra Arcana. The Dropkick Murphys recorded a punk-rock version on their 2003 album Blackout, as well as a softer version they recorded for the family of Sergeant Andrew Farrar, a US Marine killed in Iraq. It has been sung or played on The Royle Family and Coronation Street and by pop star Shane Ward. The list is long.

As a sporting anthem it has been adopted by, amongst others, Galway United FC, Munster, London Irish and Ireland rugby union teams. It has been recorded in the movies Veronica Guerin, Priest, Dead Poets Society, 16 Years of Alcohol and The Matchmaker. Millions of people have purchased or downloaded its recording.

Celtic connection

In Scotland, in particular, it has partly been made famous as a result of Celtic football supporters collectively singing it since the early 1990s. Dundee United Football Club very graciously played it for Celtic fans as they celebrated their club winning the league there in May 2008. Possibly its most beautiful mass rendition came about in the half hour before the UEFA Cup Final in Seville in 2003 when many thousands of the descendants of those that survived the Great Hunger in Ireland in the mid-19th century, and others, sang along.

The Fields of Athenry is primarily a love song written about a family in Ireland that is suffering as a result of the Great Hunger. It’s a song that partly encapsulates an experience that is an aspect of the genealogy of a vast number of Celtic followers. If Celtic supporters were privileged to be the subject of the BBC programme Who do you think you are? you can be sure that for most of them An Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger) would form part of their family’s recent past. Celtic and its supporters’ charitable origins can be attributed not only to a Catholic-Christian ethos, but also to an extent to a direct experience, memory, knowledge and understanding, of the horror of famine. In the world of sport, it is something that distinguishes the club and most of its support.

The roots of the so-called famine lie in the British conquest and colonisation of Ireland. In terms of the numbers who died, the famine catastrophe was even worse than many of those we see in modern Africa. Millions were also forced to flee the island. Ireland’s population was halved in ten years and arguably most of the island’s population took until the 1990s before a recovery was noticeable. Most of those who had to flee could never return even if they wished, while many hundreds of thousands died on coffin ships or within a relatively short space of time after landing in Britain or the USA.

Celtic Football Club and most of its support have their roots in such events and it is an extraordinarily appropriate song for the club to play and the support to sing. It is after all an intrinsic part of who and what they are. It’s a song of suffering, love, of protest and rebelling against injustice, and of man’s inhumanity to man in a ‘famine’ that should not have happened in the first place. It might also be worth remembering that the British Government in the form of then Prime Minister Tony Blair apologised for the famine in the 1990s.

Let the people sing

The Fields of Athenry is of course a song in the same vein as many other similar type songs sung by many people in other countries. It is a song with meaning, quite unlike the often-vacuous football chants in football stadiums and those that have dominated popular music for years. The Fields of Athenry reflects significant aspects of the personal, family and community histories of many supporters. Anyone that would want Celtic supporters to cease singing such a song should be seriously challenged regarding their ignorance and/or bigotry. When songs such as The Fields of Athenry cease to make sensational or ‘sectarian’ headlines and when some people in Scotland acquire more cultural, political and religious honesty in addressing relevant prejudice and bigotry, maybe we will all be able to move forward and genuinely appreciate, and live together with, our national and ethnic distinctions.

Maybe the last say on this matter should go to well-known Rangers’ fan, Donald Findlay QC. When this TV moment hit the headlines, he was approached by The Times on the issue-controversy over The Fields of Athenry. He replied: “Only the most narrow-minded bigot would call it sectarian.” Wise words.

PIC: GERARD GOUGH