IS INISHEER one of the most beautiful songs there has ever been?
I’ve heard it played on an accordion as a coffin was lowered into a grave on an overgrown hillside cemetery and it is seared in to my brain. I don’t have the words to describe the music itself.
Why would you reduce music to words? But it sure as hell gets to me.
One time many years ago I was studying for an exam when a friend suggested putting on some music. He put on the first Pogues album, Red Roses for Me, and specifically The Boys From The County Hell.
I had to plead with him to turn it off.
How, I tried to explain to him, can I try and study whilst listening to a song that makes me think I should go out and get so drunk that I can’t stand.
And not only should I do this, not only is it my cultural duty to do this, it is probably the one true thing I should do with my life instead of trying to pass an exam which might lead to a stable life of sorts.
It’s just a song, he said. He was English. God love him. Luke Kelly and Raglan Road.
I’m a little allergic to some of the stereotypes that we Irish are supposed to embody.
One of my children’s biggest joys is ‘Irish’ things in UK or US movies. They giggle with glee at how removed it is from reality.
Inisheer, which is the smallest of Co. Galway's Aran Islands, has inspired many songsTrue, too, I grew up with a lot of stereotypes about the Irish that were only negative. Drunk, stupid, violent. The good old days that the we-want-our-country-back brigade think was so great. So, I’m not attracted to the simplicities of stereotypes.
But music. Irish culture and music. Music and Irish culture. So fare thee well, sweet Donegal. The Rosses and Gweedore. There are snatches in our heads.
Those of us who grew up in those communities created by the 1950s immigrants grew up in houses full of music and went to social clubs full of music too.
Showbands. Joe Dolan. Traditional. The Wolfe Tones and the rebel stuff. The older stuff. My father used to sing, because stereotype or not the Irish do love to sing, my heart is broken, The Goodbye Song, by Josef Locke, an Irish light opera singer.
Drink, drink, let the toast start, may young hearts never part. Mario Lanza. From the first movie he ever went to with my mother during which, as he used to tell with much glee, she fell asleep.
This isn’t an academic or sociological study but I could not have failed to notice over the years the lack of music elsewhere when I came from a house and a culture so full of it. My wife’s English family talked wonderfully but there never seemed to be music.
And my sister-in-law used to mention that I sang a lot and that she always associated our family home with music. Last night as I lay dreaming, of pleasant days gone by.
Have you ever travelled around Ireland and found yourself in a county you’d never been to before only to see a signpost for a place you know a song about.
Come back Paddy Reilly to Ballyjamesduff. Loughrea, oh, Loughrea, where the three counties meet. So here’s to the Boys of Kilmichael. There is something remarkable about such a small island with so many small townlands having so many songs about it.
Of course, emigration is one of the key factors yet again. From the schmaltzy to the heartbreaking it was the people who left, or if we are being cynical the people trying to sell records to them, who created so much of this music.
And if you haven’t listened to it on an English street and not felt the tears building then I feel a little sorry for you. Of course there’s the rebel songs too.
I remember the thrill I had as a young man when the English I met at college talked of radical punk songs they owned and I thought but you haven’t got a vinyl of The Men Behind the Wire by Barleycorn, have you? Music and posing? Try that one on.
The Miller of Drohan by Lúnasa, now is that not one of the most beautiful songs there has ever been? So many and so much about a place so small. Whisht, now for the singer.
Joe Horgan posts on X at @JoeHorganwriter
See More: Inisheer, Ireland, Irish Music
