Six golden rules for a good emigration song

IN HER riotously funny and piercingly accurate new book about the Irish, Tara Flynn outlines the Golden Rules for a good emigration song: 

1. Have a short memory. You must have forgotten – even forgiven – Ireland’s woes. Sing only its praises.

2. It should be in English, so the people in your Philadelphia flat-share can understand it.

3. Sing about how much you miss the greenness and bogs you only visited once on a school tour.

4. Sing about stealing corn, even though you thought it came in a can.

5. Something about Trevelyan. (The Fields of Athenry is probably the apex of the genre.)

6. Sing up, sing on. We miss you, too.

Giving Out Yards, The Art of Complaint, Irish Style by Tara Flynn is published by Hachette Ireland, £9.99 hardback