The Fields of Athenry
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The Fields of Athenry is a song about the Irish Potato Famine, said to be composed in the 1970s by Inchicore songwriter Pete St. John.
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[edit] Content
"The Fields of Athenry" is a folk song about the Irish Potato Famine. It tells the story of the famine through first-person narrative.
The song, which was first recorded by Irish ballad singer Danny Doyle, recounts the tale of a prisoner who has been sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay, Australia, for stealing food to feed his starving family.
[edit] Composition dispute
The claim has been made that the words originate from a broadsheet ballad published in the 1880s by Devlin in Dublin with a different tune; however Pete St. John has stated definitively that he wrote the words as well as the music, so the story of the 1880s broadsheet may be false. [1]
[edit] Popular versions
The song has been recorded by many Irish artists such as Paddy Reilly, Frank Patterson, Ronan Tynan, Brush Shiels, James Galway, and The Dropkick Murphys.
The song is also associated with the Munster, London Irish and Irish rugby union teams and the football club Celtic F.C. (of Glasgow, Scotland) which has a strong association with Ireland. Loyalists have adapted the song, with the main line changed to "Low lie, the fields of Ballynafeigh". "The Fields of Anfield Road" is sung by Liverpool F.C. supporters to the same tune, but with suitably adapted lyrics referencing their history and stadium. The fans of Rangers F.C. sing the song "A Father's Advice" to the same tune.
A reggae version of the song was also recorded by the Century Steel Band in the early 1990s. The Boston punk rock band Dropkick Murphys also recorded a punk-rock version of this song on their 2003 album Blackout, as well as a softer version recorded specially for the family of Sergeant Andrew Farrar, an American Marine killed in Iraq [2]. Blaggards blended the song with Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues in a medley called "Prison Love Songs" [3]. Second-generation Irish Londoners, Neck, also recorded a "psycho-ceilidh" version of the song. Other punk versions of the song have been recorded by the bands No Use for a Name, The Tossers, and the Broken O'Briens.
The song is sung in the movie Veronica Guerin, by Brian O'Donnell, then aged 11, a street singer in Dublin. (The song is titled Bad News on the film's soundtrack.) [1] It is also sung a capella by a female character at a wake in the controversial 1994 movie Priest.
[edit] Lyrics
The Fields of Athenry — from the website of the composer. Supporters of Irish Republicanism sometimes sing the song with the lyrics "Our love was on the wing - Sinn Féin / We had dreams and songs to sing - IRA / It's so lonely round the Fields of Athenry."[4][5]
Trevelyan in the lyrics refers to Charles Edward Trevelyan, a senior British civil servant in the administration of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in Dublin Castle, who saw the Famine in classic Malthusian theory as a natural means of 'controlling excessive population'. Trevelyan is widely blamed for the inadequacy of the British Government's response. His reports to London underestimated the severity of the Famine and overestimated the problems that could arise in providing assistance to the starving.[citation needed]
Trevelyan's corn: According to Paddy Reilly being interviewed on RTE radio, this was a reference to maize/indian corn imported from America into Ireland for famine relief. A quantity was stolen from storage in Cork. The Irish were unfamiliar with the grain. It proved too hard to mill for flour and was used mostly in gruel.[citation needed]
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By a lonely prison wall, I heard a young girl calling Low lie the fields of Athenry By a lonely prison wall, I heard a young man calling Low lie the fields of Athenry By a lonely harbour wall, she watched the last star falling Low lie the fields of Athenry |
You can hear it at http://www.patricksarsfieldcsc.com/downloads/fields_of_athenry.mp3
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.chivalry.com/cantaria/lyrics/fields-athenry.html
- ^ Drop Kick Murphy's discography - The Fields of Athenry, Farrar version.
- ^ Review of Blaggards' "Standards".
- ^ http://www.utvlive.com/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=68913&pt=n
- ^ http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20060108/ai_n15993243
