A future united Ireland is as much at stake as today’s rugby clash

“A CROWD of us were going along the Shepherd’s Bush Road when out of a lane came a chap with a donkey — just the sort of donkey and just the sort of cart they have at home,” Michael Collins recalled. “He came out quite suddenly and abruptly and we all cheered him. Nobody who has not been in exile will understand me, but I stand for that.”

In his book, An Irish Voice, Gerry Adams wrote: “It’s funny, the things that remind you of home and make you homesick, that let you know you’re an exile.”

He was describing his first trip to the US, where he met so many homesick people from Ireland that he became homesick himself.” And he was only allowed into the US for 48 hours that time. If you understand what they were saying, then you can understand the fervour with which the crowd at the Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey sang the Irish national anthem at the World Cup game against Italy in 1994. Some of the players later said it was the most moving experience of their lives.

The crowd had long finished yet the music continued for some time, because the band got the anthem wrong. They played the first stanza and the chorus of the Soldier’s Song, whereas our anthem is just the chorus.

It was not the first time that people got it wrong. When Terry Mancini played soccer for the Republic of Ireland against Poland at Wroclaw in 1973, the Poles made the same mistake.

“Their anthem doesn’t half go on!” Mancini whispered.

“Shut up,” Don Givens replied, “this is our anthem.”

When Eamonn Coughlin won the gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Finland in 1983, the same mistake was made, and it was made at all three of the Republic of Ireland’s matches in the 1988 European Cup finals in Germany, the five games in the 1990 World Cup finals in Italy, as well as when Michael Carruth won the gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and at all of Ireland’s four games in the 1994 World Cup, and again after all three gold medals that Michelle Smith collected at the Atlanta Olympics.

The Finns, Germans, Italians, Spanish and Americans all got the Irish national anthem wrong. It looked suspiciously like somebody was misinforming them, so after the third foul up at the Atlanta Olympics I called the Government Information Service (GIS) to find out if anyone there knew the exact national anthem. The first two people I spoke to were unsure although the second person said that she would check it out and call back. An hour later, she called to say that nobody there knew.

The next day, the GIS sent me the following answer: “The text of the Soldier’s Song (Amhrán na bhFiann), consisting of three stanzas and a chorus, was written in 1907 by Peadar Kearney, who, together with Patrick Heeney, also composed the music. It was first published in the newspaper, Irish Freedom, in 1912. The chorus was formally adopted as the national anthem in 1926.”

Seventy years later, the Government Information Service was unsure of the national anthem, and even fewer people knew what the words meant.

Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh, who is the voice of Croke Park for many people, suggested during the past week that we should update and modernise the words of the anthem.

Many people who sing it do not know the Irish words. They are often just singing something that sounds like the words, as boys used to do saying Latin prayers while serving Mass in previous generations.

There is the story of the American who was impressed by the rousing rendition of a ballad he heard at the end of a previous night. He didn’t know the name of it, but he said it ended with, “Shoving Connie around the green.”

FOR what it is worth, the words of the anthem in English are: “Soldiers are we/ whose lives are pledged to Ireland;/ Some have come/ from a land beyond the wave./ Sworn to be free,/ No more our ancient sire land/ Shall shelter the despot or the slave./ Tonight we man the gap of danger/ In Erin’s cause, come woe or weal/ ‘Mid cannons’ roar and rifles peal,/ We’ll chant a soldier’s song.”

At a Fine Gael árd fheis in the mid-1970s, then Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave was about to deliver his presidential address when a student from Trinity College got on stage and delivered, on live television, a brief but passionate appeal for a new national anthem. It was a student prank that was greeted with tremendous applause.

The Taoiseach, and those around him, must have been relieved that the guy got off the stage so fast, as the Taoiseach’s own address would undoubtedly have been upstaged, if the young man had to be wrestled from the microphone.

JJ Barrett threw his toys out of his pram this week over the playing of the British national anthem, God Save the Queen, at Croke Park today. He is the author of In the Name of the Game, which highlighted the GAA’s role in bringing people of Kerry together after the civil war, a conflict in which the worst atrocities had been committed in that county.

After the fighting, Con Brosnan, a Free State officer, managed to get safe passage guarantees for republican players like John Joe Sheehy and Joe Barrett to play games, and they used football to overcome some of the bitterness. Winning six all-Ireland championships together helped bind the wounds, and it probably explains why Kerry people take their football so passionately.

Barrett’s call for the return of his father’s medals from the GAA Museum, and urging others to do likewise, will mean nothing to the British. But it is an affront to the GAA and an insult to fellow Kerryman, Sean Kelly, who had the vision as president of the GAA to try to emulate the earlier Kerry generation in developing the harmonising potential of the association.

In the Name of the Game ably deals with the earlier magnificent contribution.

It is a pity that the author does not recognise that the IRFU is playing a similar role both in Northern Ireland and the island as a whole. We enshrined in our constitution, by an overwhelming majority, the right of the majority in Northern Ireland to retain their British ties as long as this is a wish of a majority there.

It is for nationalist Ireland now to convince our unionist brethren that they would be respected, would get a fair deal and would be happier in a united Ireland.

President Mary McAleese made a splendid appeal yesterday as she reminded people of how the England team honoured their commitment in 1973 after Scotland and Wales had refused to travel to Dublin the previous year, following another Bloody Sunday.

After Ireland won one 1973 game by 18-9, the English captain, John Pullin, famously remarked: “We might not be very good but at least we turn up.” They lost the match, but they won the respect of the great majority of Irish people that day.

President McAleese hopes the English team will be treated today with the hospitality and respect they deserve on this sporting occasion. Hopefully, the playing of God Save the Queen will not be marred by the yobbish behaviour of any of our people aping the National Front-type thugs.

This is our chance to show that we are different, and that such behaviour is alien.