<i>The Fields of Athenry</i>
For those who know me, they also know how much I can’t help but mentioning Ireland from time to time. For those ones, I apologise in advance for spamming the Stup weblog digest with such an article.
Yesterday (Sunday), I watched Ireland being crushed by France (Ireland’s Call was probably not loud enough, the Irish didn’t even bother to come onto the pitch. Or did they?) in the rugby World-Cup quarter-final – not that I’m fond of sport; that was rather a matter of showing who the boss is to my girlfriend.
I watched it on French TV, unlike other matches. And I must admit the comments were quite a laugh. They started by talking about The Fields of Athenry. Fair enough, good idea, the French don’t know their left from their right and keep thinking Dublin is a few miles away from Liverpool. Well, a wee bit of researching before hand would have been great. First, your man mentioned it as being called Ze Fields of Atenree (Well, had I not been there, I would probably be still saying it this way). Then, he told the story: a mother crying the deporting of her son to Australia during the Great Famine. Everybody damn knows that it’s not his mother, but his wife! The song tells the story of Michael, who had to steal Trevelyan’s corn to feed his child, arrested and about to be exiled to Australia. The story goes that Lord Trevelyan had imported corn from America to struggle against the famine. It appeared that the corn was to be milled. People, starving to death, still saw it as corn, and broke into the stores. Some were arrested and deported to Australia.
It has become one of the Glasgow Celtic anthems, and whatever people might say, it has a political twist to it, even though the song could be sung by any poor people from Ireland to England.
Anyway, the waffling carried on until the so-called Irish “national” anthem, Ireland’s Call. Not quite, though. Oh, I came across this. Wonder this time whether to laugh or cry.
After a (long) while, Ireland finally managed to find their way and scored a try (I heard the sign-posts to the the try-line were written in Irish…), started the Loooow Liiiie the Fields… and the speaker said: “And they’re playing some celtic song!” Quite so. A song called The Fields of Athenry…
