The Irish national anthem is a
source of some tension and confusion. At frequent intervals over
the past seventy-five years, its text has been attacked as
inappropriate. The same objections have been repeated: that its
militaristic subject matter and sentiments are irrelevant for a
modern, independent, neutral state, or that the text perpetuates
attitudes which are an obstacle to reconciliation. Within the
past year the leaders of both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have
expressed a willingness to consider alternatives. Perhaps
correspondingly, the anthem is popular and quite widely used in
Republican circles, not least in Northern Ireland.
The music
has also been attacked, in less specific terms, as not being of
sufficient caliber for a national anthem. A suggestion which
regularly recurs is that there might be a competition to find a
new anthem.
Peadar Kearney, an IRB member
and the author of many popular political songs and verses,
produced the text of ‘The Soldier’s Song’, working in
collaboration with Patrick Heeney, who was mainly responsible
for the melody. The original text was in English and consisted
of three stanzas and a chorus. The words and music may well have
been written as early as 1907. The text was first published in
Bulmer Hobson’s Irish Freedom in September 1912, with, however,
no attribution of author.
It became increasingly popular
as a marching and rallying song among the Volunteers between
1912 and 1916; it confirmed that they were ‘Soldier’s rather
than ‘rebels’. On the belts of their uniforms, the Volunteers
wore the words ‘Óglaigh na hÉireann’, ‘Soldiers of Ireland’. By
general account it was in the internment camps after the Easter
Rising that ‘The Soldier’s Song’ came to be widely used. Before
independence the song and music were published on a number of
occasions, in Ireland and in the United States, with the consent
of Peadar Kearney (Patrick Heeney died in 1911).
After the establishment of the
Irish Free State, ‘The Soldier’s Song’ continued to be strongly
associated with the army. It was played routinely as a
ceremonial closing at army meetings and festivities, much as
‘God Save the King’ was used by the British. In the first years
of the Free State, there was, however, no officially adopted
national anthem. Thomas Moore’s ‘Let Erin Remember’ was often
played on formal occasions abroad. ‘God Save Ireland’ and ‘A
Nation Once Again’ were also used.
Both the
government and other bodies recognized the need to designate an
anthem formally, not least to discourage renditions of ‘God Save
the King’ from unionists in the Free State. The approach of the
Olympic Games in Paris in 1924 prompted the Department of
External Affairs to ask the office of the President of the
Executive Council to take steps to establish an anthem. Various
suggestions were made, including a public competition or,
alternatively, asking ‘a number of Irish poets and writers’ to
submit verses which might be used together with the music of
‘Let Erin Remember’. It was assumed that the text would be in
Irish. Despite further prompting, the government took no
decisive action, and ‘Let Erin Remember’ was played at the
Olympic Games.
In this situation, on June 12,
1924, the Dublin Evening Mail announced a competition for a set
of verses for ‘A National Hymn to the Glory of Ireland’,
occasioned by the lack of any ‘national hymn or anthem for use
on ceremonial or convivial occasions’. A prize of £50 was
offered for a text, the assumption being that music could be
written later. W.B. Yeats, Lennox Robinson and James Stephens
were appointed to evaluate the results.
On October 22, the Dublin
Evening Mail was forced to publish its committee’s conclusion
that having ‘read the poems…we are all agreed that there is not
one amongst them worth fifty guineas or any portion of it…Most
of the verses submitted to us were imitations of “God Save the
King”‘. The competition was opened once again, but now the
editors themselves selected six anonymous entries and asked
readers to vote for their favorite. On March 10, 1925, Mrs. Mary
Farren Thomas of Clontarf was awarded the £50 prize for ‘God of
Our Ireland’. And here the matter was dropped; what started as a
publicity ploy for the newspaper became a burden and an
embarrassment.
It did
however direct public attention to the absence of an accepted
anthem and occasioned considerable editorial comment and
correspondence in newspapers. The Evening Mail’s distinguished
committee of writers expressed the view that ‘national anthems
have always in the past been one man’s thought, written out for
that man’s pleasure, and taken up by a nation afterwards’.
The army’s own publication, An
tÓglach (The Soldier), commented on the debacle:
‘The Soldier’s Song’ is good
enough for the present…The note of defeat or sorrow is absent
from it. In the songs of the past, sadness, disappointment and
failure had too much prominence. The new spirit was caught by
the writer of ‘The Soldier’s Song’.
The decision was made by the
Executive Council to adopt ‘The Soldier’s Song’ as the national
anthem for all purposes. The reasons for choosing this rather
than another air are not recorded, but it seems likely that by
this point ‘The Soldier’s Song’ had become so firmly established
by custom that replacing it would prove difficult, and William
Cosgrave is on record as wanting to retain it. The decision was
not accompanied by any publicity, and was announced only by
means of a brief answer to a backbencher’s question in the Dáil
on July 20, 1926.
The timing was convenient: it
came shortly before that year’s Dublin Horse Show. The Horse
Show was mainly a domestic rather than an international event
before 1926. ‘God Save the King’ had formerly been an important
feature of the ceremonies. W.B. Yeats’s sisters, attending in
1921, noted that ‘there was no National Anthem—it was
significant of the changed public opinion in Ireland as regards
England’.
In 1926,
however, invitations were issued to foreign teams, including one
from Britain, and the event was bigger and more festive than
ever before. When the various teams arrived at Kingstown, they
were met by bands playing their particular national anthems. The
Irish Times reported that ‘for the first time the tricolour flag
of the Free State floated over the Governor General’s box on the
grandstand’, and noted that when he visited the show ‘The
Soldier’s Song’ was played. Similarly, national anthems were
played as teams were led onto the field for the culminating
international competition on Friday August 6.
The relationship between the
text of Kearney’s ‘The Soldier’s Song’ and the Irish national
anthem is still complex. Not long after adopting it, the
Executive Council embarked upon the practice of regarding only
the chorus as the anthem. The Executive Council, in March 1929,
authorized Colonel Fritz Brasé, director of the army band, to
write a suitable arrangement which was approved and published
the following July. Brasé’s arrangement consisted of the refrain
only and, by implication, from this point on only the chorus of
‘The Soldier’s Song’ constituted the national anthem.
At the
same time the title of the anthem was settled. Earlier
publications had given various titles, including ‘A Soldier’s
Song’, ‘The Soldier’s Song’, and even ‘Soldiers of Erin’. It was
however decided to use the title ‘The Soldier’s Song’. These
official positions have been confirmed by successive governments
in their correspondence, despite the fact that the other verses
of the song, and variant titles, are frequently printed by
non-official sources.
Today,
relatively few people have heard the music and verses of ‘The
Soldier’s Song’ played in public. The lyrics are those of an
Irish rebel song, exhorting all Irish people to participate in
the struggle to end the hegemony ("despot" over "slave") of the
English ("Saxon foe") in Ireland ("Inisfail"). There are
allusions to earlier Irish rebellions, and to support from Irish
Americans ("from a land beyond the wave").
The chorus
is the established National Anthem. Slight variations exist in
published versions; the following texts are from the Department
of Foreign Affairs' sheet music. |