Why Am I Crying to 'The Fields of Athenry?'
Thoughts on Irish folk music before St. Patrick's Day.
Why am I crying while listening to “The Fields of Athenry?” With St. Patrick’s Day approaching, I’ve returned to my playlist of appropriate songs for the holiday. While there are songs that aren’t typically traditional folk music that you’ll hear spilling out of pubs on March 17, there are quite a few tracks by The Dubliners and The Pogues, as well as the likes of Dropkick Murphys, The Mahones, etc.
While when most people imagine Irish folk music they think of celebrations of hard-drinking and fighting the British, lately I’ve been finding a lot of sadness underlying the tracks. It’s sort of like that scene in The Other Guys. While the songs are “full of rich history,” I’m slowly seeing the humanity in the moments of anxiousness and depression that underpin these tracks.
The other day, I had a few moments and I decided to strum out a few Irish folk songs on my guitar. As I began “The Fields of Athenry,” I started getting choked up. The tears were welling in my eyes as I reached the chorus.
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 field of Athenry
The song was written in the late 70s from the perspective of a person going through the Great Famine between 1845 and 1852. Even though it’s not something I’ve personally been witness to (though I do anticipate that the next harbinger of American Apocalypse will be famine), I found that the waiting, longing, and fear of losing have been constants in my life for as long as I could think. Any young person who’s heard “Dirty Old Town,” could see that a song written decades before they were born could be easily transposed to your life in the current moment, whether you’re viewing the song affectionately or disgustedly.
What I find as I get older and look back on various periods of the world, it does seem like a universal human desire to seek love, validation, to rise above the mundane, and or escape the daily horrors that face your world. Many of the traditional songs that I’ve fallen in love with over the years touch on those. Whether it’s looking at a beautiful woman (like in “Black Velvet Band” or “Molly Malone”), seeking adventure (“The Irish Rover”), paying tribute to figures of history (“Brian Boru’s March”), or simply looking for fun (“MacNamara’s Band”), you could easily find stand-ins for these tracks in modern pop music.
Naturally, there are also the historical songs that speak to death, loss, and battle. “Danny Boy” has remained popular as a funeral song, and I’ve grown fond of “The Foggy Dew” since I first heard it as the Dropkick Murphys’ walk-up song in 2013. I realize now that each of those has a deeper meaning rather than just familiarity or sounding badass, blaring from a theater’s speakers. “Danny Boy” touches on the loss and the unsure nature that it brings in a way that’s comforting and soothing. “Foggy Dew” is a staunch reminder that some things, like liberty, are truly worth fighting for, and it could easily be applied as we watch war continue across the globe, with people defending their homelands, and we’re facing the rise of American Fascism for the better part of a decade.
One of the songs that makes me feel the most connected to the folks from hundreds of years ago isn’t even a folk song, nor is it even an Irish song. It’s a folky punk number by an American. Steady Hands’ “Song for Rosemary” is about walking the streets of Ireland and feeling at home but also connecting with those old songs that he’s had instilled in his blood. When I went to Ireland when I was 14, I didn’t have the experience of feeling like I’ve returned home, and I don’t think it would change if I went now.
That being said, the songs have always connected with me. Whether it was repeating “MacNamara’s Band” for my parents after choir class in grade school or learning both the traditional version of “Whiskey in the Jar” before going to Ireland in 2009, the songs have always spoken to me. “I head down to Galway, the city I lost/Try and find some of these girls that inspired these songs,” Sean Huber sings in the second verse.
I’ve always been drawn to the music. While the land may not ground me in some grand sense of biological instinct, the melodies, and the solemness of the lyrics do. This all leads me to say that Irish folk music belongs in the emo canon.