Wolfe Tones short-listed for world's favourite song

"A Nation Once Again", the republican anthem made famous by the Wolfe Tones has beaten off stiff competition to make the shortlist for a BBC Internet music poll to find the world's favourite song.

The song is now jockeying for a top 10 position alongside classics like John Lennon's Imagine, Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven.

The Wolfe Tones have said they were "absolutely thrilled'' with the news. Banjo player Brian Warfield, from Cork, said: "We've just come back from a tour in America and we find all this a great craic, it's something that we would never have expected. We're absolutely thrilled to bits".

A BBC spokeswoman said the "enormous'' support for the song had come from an

e-mail distributed around the world encouraging Irish people to vote for it and gives "800 years of oppression'' as the reason for choosing the song.

Voting for the BBC music poll closes at midday today. The result of the poll will be revealed live on the Internet on December 21, when the Top 10 will be played on the BBC World Service's Wright Round The World programme.