Soldiers' Songs
By Meadbh Gallagher
It was never my national anthem. It was for the Artane Boys Band
just before the All-Ireland but all I was waiting for was the
last line when it merged with a pre-start roar that always said
more.
Then it was for the Pope when he came to Ireland and it was
radioed out with religious anthems, all to get the Young People
of Ireland out to Ballybrit Racecourse, where John Paul II told
us he loved us and my father was so smitten that he followed him
up to Knock to hear more.
It was only in the Irish pubs of London that I ever sang it from
beginning to end, and it was then always and only sung at the end
of the night as an effective replacement for the ``Have Ye No
Homes To Go To'' refrain from the bar.
The emotions dragged out with its singing were never enough to
make it my anthem. It was too much macho, too much the property
of Fianna Fáil and the ones I'd run away from, and too much of
the promise to be cannon fodder. And that was just the Irish
version.
But, because it was London, we sang it with chins stuck out,
hands behind back joined at the wrist or hanging straight at the
sides, and legs just far enough apart to look the part.
All the hunger strike songs - ``Irish Ways and Irish Laws'',
``Ninety Miles from Dublin Town'', Chumbawamba's ``Homophobia'', even
Tom Robinson's ``War Baby'' - these and dozens more were my
anthems, not this.
After London, there it was again at the close of night on RTÉ,
suddenly, without the words, not so macho after all and a quiet
relief after years of ``God Save the Queen'' drifting in from other
flats.
Now, there are rumblings about replacing the national anthem. The
Irish Independent tells us an unpublished report of the Forum for
Peace and Reconciliation has been outed again, and the Anthem is
on its hitlist.
I, for one, won't stand in their way. But if it is to go, what
will be our anthem of choice? Amhrán na bhFiann may not survive
much longer than its 100th birthday but there could be worse, I
know.
Because if it's left to the powers that be, its replacement will
have words written for John Bruton, the tune of a cross-border
Band Aid song, the march of a Celtic Tiger and it'll be the
property of Fianna Fáil.
National anthems don't have to be just about the past. They also
don't have to have enough nationalism to beat the band. That's
why raising this issue now is like rushing to put a clean white
shirt on before a potato's scrubbed or a child washed in the
house. We might argue over whether our past is undecided or our
present confused, but our future is definitely a long way off the
finishing touches.
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