THE Fields of Athenry has got a huge boost. That swelling, surging chorus by the massed Irish fans in Poland following the defeats of their team has gone world-wide on the Internet. The song has been given a new lease of life. Its singing is being seen or heard as a musical demonstration of accepting defeat with spirit and humour.
However, there is a downside to the rejuvenation of The Fields. It will now be bawled out with great gusto at many other matches. This could push it further into a musical zone that associates it with alcohol-fuelled singing.
Even before Euro 2012, The Fields was established as a sort of anthem at international rugby and soccer matches. It swells and billows round the terraces and stands. It wells up at intervals, partially energised by drink, some of the notes flat as stale ale.
Sometimes the song subsides and dies away, as if the effort to keep it going is beyond the lungs of those who have had a drink or two before coming to the game.
A dissonant chorus of the song is later heard again, in pubs. And the inebriated state of The Fields is not over quite yet. Some people arrive home from the game in the small hours, easing themselves out of cars, staggering out of taxis, flopping out of buses. With haggard faces and hoarse voices, they give a final rendition of the song. It echoes round the deserted streets; curtains in houses may be seen to move as those disturbed from their slumbers peer out to see who is making the racket. I once overheard a man say to another: “If I hear that bloody Fields of Athenry again at 3am there will be no holding me back”.
It’s a serious matter for a song when someone makes an unfriendly remark like that. It’s a sure sign that it’s falling into disrepute. Exactly the same thing happened to Galway Bay. This song, written in 1947 by Dr Arthur Colohan, an Irish medic living in Leicester, became very popular in this country, greatly helped by recordings by Bing Crosby and Josef Locke.
The trouble was that everyone thought they could sing it. No pub gathering could end without a rendition of it. It was bawled out at parties and get-togethers, at wakes and weddings and every country ball.
From then on, Galway Bay, was on the downward slide.
All too often, after closing time, it was sung in hoarse snatches in the highways and byways of the country. I distinctly remember court reports in the provincial newspapers that brought it into further disgrace.
“Defendant singing Galway Bay at 4am fined £20 for breach of peace”.
“Galway Bay woke up half the village, says sergeant”.
There was a headline in one of the Midlands papers which ran “Sleep of parish priest
disturbed by rendition of Galway Bay in small hours”. Needless to say, the justice severely admonished the late-night songsters for such a serious breach of the peace. He warned them about any further small-hours excursions to Galway Bay and ordered them to deposit £30 in the church poor box.
Thus the song got a bad reputation. It went into decline. People had heard it far too often, usually sung by those whose singing aspirations had been falsely buoyed by drink.
No reputable singer would consider it any more because it was now associated with tuneless bellowing by people well under the weather. It became the Untouchable of the song repertoire.
A sure sign of its decline was its being parodied. Comic versions were sung at pantomimes and in parish halls. One parody ended with the words: “And if there’s going to be a life hereafter, And somehow I think there’s going to be, I will ask my God to let me make my heaven, Where Galway Bay’s unheard eternally”.
It’s not only humans who can be ruined by the demon alcohol.
Strange as it may seem, songs can be become victims too. All the signs are there, for anyone with ears to hear that The Fields of Athenry is in danger of going the way of Galway Bay.
Of course it might be saved from such a fate, at least to some degree, if someone could persuade singers of the calibre and reputation of Andrea
Bocelli or Kiri Te Kanawa to record it.