Cork’s very own royal invitation — no offence, like

Joe McNamee profiles a song composed in honour of the visit by Queen Elizabeth II — Come Up To Gurrane Lizzie Windsor

THE dust covers are off the good chairs in the parlour, the fixtures and fittings getting a lick and a spit in anticipation of her arrival. Meanwhile, the hope is rowdy neighbours won’t make a holy show of the lot of us.

We’re, of course, talking about Queen Elizabeth II whose impending Irish visit has riveted the nation. The gardaí are quaking at the security implications of protecting the royal personage on her wide-ranging tour, fearing a republican element overly-enthusiastic with the céad míle fáiltes. Conversely, there’s a sizeable slice of the populace (mostly female, the same crowd who downed tools for the recent nuptials of Kitty and Bill), for whom QEII is just another celeb.

Then you have idealists and pragmatists singing from the same hymn sheet: the former believe in ‘letting bygones be bygones, moving on to a brighter and more harmonious future between two island neighbours’; the latter agree but on closer reading, ‘harmonious future’ means ‘greatly enhanced opportunities to turn a buck’.

Even those who profess not to care at all have been making a right old ruckus, not in the least bit shy in letting us all know how much they don’t care.

After Queen Victoria’s first visit to Cork in 1849, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Clarendon, was relieved it had passed off without incident, calling Cork’s nationalist municipal authority “the most notorious ruffians in Ireland, worse even than their brethren of Dublin”. Cork City Council are definitely onside this time, scheduling trips to the English Market, the high-tech Tyndall Institute and UCC.

But one Corkman wants to show the queen that Leesiders are more than just well-fed geniuses.

Songwriter Tim O’Riordan’s latest release, Come Up To Gurrane, Lizzie Windsor, invites herself to sample the enormous cultural diversity of ‘real’ Cork, including bowling, hurling, porter and sulky racing.

And then to be ferried up to the northside suburb of Gurranabraher in a 00C Transporter Van to savour a most superior vista of the city by the Lee.

O’Riordan, the frontman of Natural Gas, also penned 2004’s best-selling The Langer, and while they have offered to play their new song during the queen’s visit to the English Market, you suspect O’Riordan might prefer to take his cues on royal etiquette from another Corkman, Ronan O’Gara, who famously greeted QEII with his hands in his pockets.

“I’m not a royalist, no,” O’Riordan chuckles, “I wrote it for a bit of craic. I got a lovely call from a stranger last night thanking me for raising Cork’s profile, saying how great it is to have a laugh in these trying times.

“I wrote it to mark the occasion — there was never any intention to be malicious and I’d hate if anyone thought that.”

It is as much a celebration of Cork as any marking of the occasion. “There’s a knack Cork people have of overstating; we’re very good at blowing our own trumpet, very self-confident.

“Writing the song, I was trying to bring it down to our level, calling Elizabeth ‘Lizzie Windsor’, which is what she’d be known as if she lived here. It’s a very colloquial song — Jimmy Crowley would have been an influence on me. The art of ballad-writing is to keep things local.”

While The Pfizer Riser, about Viagra, is another of O’Riordan’s songs, it would be wrong to dismiss him as a novelty number merchant; he is firmly rooted in the folk tradition.

“I don’t know if ‘Langer’ will be carved on my grave stone but I’m not resentful, I’m delighted I wrote that song but there’s another side to us.

“The guys I play with are very serious trad and folk musicians. This song is a parody of an old Scottish song, Will You Gang To The Highlands, Lizzie Lindsay, which I’ve been playing for years.”

Neither is it the first Irish ballad to reference an English queen with a twist on her name. “My song is a lot more gentle than Follow Me Up To Carlow,” guffaws O’Riordan. Revived by Planxty, it has the line: “Now for black Fitzwilliam’s head, we’ll send it over dripping red, to Queen Liza and her ladies.”

That was about Elizabeth I but O’Riordan harbours no similar ill-feeling for Elizabeth II.

“The way I look at it, she’s only a figurehead, an old woman the same age as my mother, who has never really called the shots. I’ve no hard feelings about it, it might be good for tourism and I’d hate to think anything nasty would happen — people throwing eggs at her.

“After the visit, we might better appreciate the symbolism, especially after the visits to Croke Park and the Garden of Remembrance.

“Anyway, there’s another song which refers to a queen’s visit here, Take Me Up To Monto, which has the Dublin lord mayor telling Victoria to póg mo thón, taking her up to Monto, Montgomery St, one of the greatest dens of iniquity in Europe at the time.

“All I’m suggesting is coming up to lovely Gurrane to gaze down on the beautiful city by the Lee.”