“Ireland, Ireland!” The Alternative Irish National Anthem
For those of you who want to sing the Irish national anthem but don’t want to learn the Irish language, or have learned it but find that all that fighting talk is not how you wish to celebrate a small open economy with candles in its windows, I give you now an alternative anthem
Specially recorded for The Irish Times with St. Patrick’s Day almost upon us, is “Ireland, Ireland!” by The Duckworth Lewis Method - who you may know as Neil Hannon and Thomas Walsh.
So yes, it’s not a million miles away from the “My Lovely Horse” of Father Ted fame.
Called “Ireland, Ireland!”, I believe in the tradition of Filthy, Rich, & Catflap (successor series to The Young Ones) playing Trivial Pursuit and “Iceland comma Rejkjavik full-stop” that this new anthem should be called “Ireland Comma Ireland Exclamation Mark”.
Here are the lyrics - you can listen or download the song from The Irish Times
Ireland, Ireland!
By The Duckworth Lewis Method
Ireland, Ireland, damp sod of earth
lost on the surf of the North Atlantic.
Ireland, Ireland, mountains and mist,
Vodka and chips, it’s so romantic.Joyce and Heaney, Beckett and Wilde,
Bill O’Herlihy, Dunphy and Giles,
Evans, Hewson, Mullen and Clayton,
Westlife and Jedward the pride of our nation!Ireland, Ireland, once we were poor,
Then we were wealthy; now we are poor again.
Cows and horses, donkeys and sheep,
Munster and Leinster, Connacht and ******.Chinese, Polish, Africans too,
Doing the jobs we don’t want to do.
An Irish stew, a nation of nations,
Working for peanuts in petrol stations.Ireland, Ireland, you are the best
Place to the west of Wales and Scotland.
Sometimes it’s heaven, sometimes it’s hell,
But I’d rather be Irish than anything else.
Written by ‘Duckworth & Lewis’ c.2010
And from the article in the Irish Times by Elaine Edwards, here’s Thomas Walsh’s thoughts on how “Ireland, Ireland!” might fare:
We’re completely at the whim of The Irish Times and the nation. We’re not getting ahead of ourselves, but we’d like them to sing it before the Scottish game this weekend.
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