Memories of Inishmaan led me east of Galway to the little market town of Athenry. It appears on the very edge of the map I put at the head of my last post.
Athenry is a sleepy place that may have remained unremarkable in its obscurity were it not for a song written in the nineteen seventies by a man called Peter Mooney whose stage name was Pete St John. That song, "The Fields of Athenry" reflects on past injustices and perhaps how the potato famine and forced transportation affected ordinary lives.
It is a very simple song but the chorus has lifted so many hearts, creating a supernatural sense of togetherness and identity - mostly in those who have Ireland in their blood. It is sung in stadiums by Liverpool supporters, Celtic supporters and The Irish national rugby team to name but three:-
Low lie the fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small free birds fly
Our love was on the wing we had dreams and songs to sing
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry
Peter Mooney died in 2022 at the age of 90 but I suspect that his famous song will last forever - well almost forever.
It has been recorded by several individuals and bands but I think that the definitive version is by the Dubliner - Paddy Reilly. With his mellow, tuneful singing voice he took the song where it needed to be - finding its rightful place in Ireland's rich cultural heritage. Here's Paddy Reilly in 2010 in Cork Opera House:-
At Pete St John's wake in a Dublin bar in 2022, we see and hear Paddy Reilly as an old man singing the song that made his name too. He was with Glen Hansard who also sang at the funeral of Shane McGowan. I must admit that I began to weep half way through this unplanned version:-
Stewart prepared a special Easter Sunday dinner. The Lamb of God was on the menu with roasted potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, leeks, carrots, parsnips and peas. For dessert, Shirley had followed the vegan sticky toffee pudding recipe in the first "Bosh!" cook book and all was good. Earlier there had been an Easter egg hunt for the little ones and then we all went off to a Sheffield museum that I had not visited in many years - The Emergency Services Museum at West Bar. Greatly improved and still run by volunteers, it was a perfect excursion for all of us and we finished up in the museum's little cafe enjoying a light lunch. We had seen police cars, ambulances, fire engines and even a redundant lifeboat called "City of Sheffield". We all enjoyed the visit. As you might imagine, I will be coming back to this museum in a future post. On the way there, the roads had been blocked off near Sheffield Children's Hospital as 750 motorcyclists arrived at Weston P...
The view from Simon's back yard. It takes an hour and a half to travel to the village where I was born and raised. Today, Shirley came with me and saw my brother Simon for the first time since August 2019. As a nurse for more than forty years, she was not daunted by his changed appearance. With the cancer and everything he has become a bag of bones. So painfully thin - like a malnourished prisoner working on the Burma railway under Japanese supervision. Wasting away. We stayed all afternoon. Shirley had his washing machine on and we changed his bedding. I had bought a new fitted sheet, duvet cover and pillowcases from Tesco. Shirley said that his old bedding was "disgusting". We brought tins of mushroom soup and cans of "Fanta" and "Coke" and some pots of chocolate mousse plus a couple of pints of milk. They were received with zero gratitude. In fact, he insisted that six cans of soup was far too many. I encouraged him to have a bath while...
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