Folk hero beloved home and abroad

IT WAS in 1967, as the beginnings of the Troubles were brewing in the North that Tommy Makem penned his trademark song Four Green Fields.

And in the days before his passing, as British Army operations came to an end four decades later, many would say that the prophesy of the song’s closing line had come true: “My fourth green field will bloom once again, said she.”

Born in November 1932, the same year as Johnny Cash, Tommy Makem was to become a folk legend of equal significance in the US as at home in Ireland.