Don’t decry our national anthem

THE outrageous suggestion has been made that when the copyright expires on our national anthem, it should be altered, edited or dropped altogether.

It is an interesting fact, frequently noted by visitors to our shores, that despite all, the Irish people on the whole do not show personal animosity towards either British or Protestant individuals.

Our history is what it is, we can hold up our heads among the nations as the “mouse that roared” against an empire that itself has since evolved into an amicable fraternity of nations. Just as with the French national anthem, the “militancy” of ours is an accepted part of the tradition. I would like to be a fly on the wall when our critics tried to tell the French to drop the Marseilleise. Traditions are born at crisis points in history and they feed future generations: they are not manufactured arbitrarily by bureaucrats. And, while I’m at it, the melody of Amhrán na bhFiann is excellent. Are the critics not grasping at straws to decry that too?

Micheál Ó Fearghail

Gleann Maghair

Co Chorcaí