A Nation Once Again

The story

Thomas Osborne Davis, a Protestant nationalist from County Cork, was one of the three co-founders of Young Ireland, the movement that sought Ireland's independence from Britain. He held a Romantic idea of Irish identity, shaped by Johann Gottfried von Herder: Ireland was a spiritual reality grounded in historic culture, and anyone who took it as their homeland, whatever their religion, was Irish. He believed songs could stir the Irish more than speeches and set out to teach the people the songs of their country. "A Nation Once Again" first appeared in Young Ireland's newspaper The Nation, which Davis co-founded and edited, on 13 July 1844, and quickly became a rallying call for the growing nationalist movement.

The words found their lasting music only slowly. Davis took his melody from Mozart's Clarinet Concerto; the tune by an anonymous composer printed with the text in the collection The Spirit of the Nation proved too complex to catch on. The Dublin journalist Thomas Sherlock, who had Fenian sympathies, wrote a new tune in 1881, and Edward Comerford of Dundalk, son of a Young Irelander, another, first performed at a charity concert in Dundalk Town Hall in the week before 6 March 1886 and published that June; Comerford changed "boyhood" to "childhood" in the first line so that women could sing it too, but no recording of his version is known. The tune that lasted was written by the Dubliner James J. Johnson in 1887, who also composed the music for "God Save Ireland". It was an immediate success and is the version most often performed today.

From the 1880s the song became an unofficial anthem of nationalist Ireland. It is counted among the Irish rebel songs and has been classed both as a war song and, conversely, as an anti-war song. John McCormack recorded it in 1906, and it has since been recorded by Our Lady's Choral Society, the Clancy Brothers, the Dubliners, the Wolfe Tones and many céilí bands. On 8 December 1941 Winston Churchill used its title in a telegram to Éamon de Valera, pressing Ireland to join the Allies; some read it as an offer of Irish unity, though the British government said the next day that no deal over partition was meant. De Valera did not reply, and Ireland stayed neutral throughout the war. In 2002, after an organised e-mail campaign, the Wolfe Tones' recording was voted the world's most popular song in a BBC World Service listeners' poll.

What it says

The singer recalls learning as a boy of the ancient fighters for freedom, the Spartans at Thermopylae and the Horatii, and dreams of the day when Ireland will be free. He holds that only righteous, upright people can win that freedom and hopes to make himself worthy of the task. Its mood is hopeful and resolute.

The words