Amhrán na bhFiann

The story

The song was first written in English as "A Soldier's Song", "early in 1910 or late in 1909", with words by Peadar Kearney and music by his childhood friend and neighbour Patrick Heeney, who composed it on his melodeon with Kearney's help on the refrain; Seán Rogan, later of the Irish Citizen Army, may also have helped and first wrote it down in notation. Kearney wrote much of the text in the Swiss Café on O'Connell Street in Dublin. Rejected by The United Irishman, the text was published in 1912 in Bulmer Hobson's magazine Irish Freedom. The Irish Volunteers took it up as a marching song; rebels sang it in the General Post Office during the Easter Rising of 1916, and it grew more popular among the prisoners in Frongoch internment camp afterwards. Sheet music followed in Dublin in late 1916, and in December 1916 Victor Herbert published arrangements in New York, where the first commercial recording was made in early 1917.

During the War of Independence it was called the "Sinn Féin anthem", and British forces confiscated copies as seditious; Éamon de Valera's platform at the East Clare by-election of June 1917 carried its opening lines on a banner. In the Civil War of 1922–23 both the National Army and the anti-Treaty "Irregulars" sang it. The Irish Free State at first adopted no anthem: ex-unionists still regarded "God Save the King" as theirs, and W. T. Cosgrave's government feared both deepening unionist hostility in Northern Ireland and leaving the song to its republican opponents. "Let Erin Remember" served abroad, at the 1924 Olympics among other events. On 12 July 1926 the Executive Council quietly adopted "The Soldier's Song" as the national anthem, and from 1928 the Army band played only its chorus, in an official arrangement by Fritz Brase from 1929. The state bought the copyright in 1934 for £1,200 and again in 1965; under EU law the English words passed out of copyright on 1 January 2013.

The Irish translation by Liam Ó Rinn, later chief translator of the Oireachtas, was printed in the Freeman's Journal on 3 April 1923 and in the Defence Forces' magazine An tÓglach that November; it may date from as early as 1917. Encouraged by the Gaelic Athletic Association from the 1930s, the Irish words came to eclipse the English, though no Irish version has ever been officially adopted. Its opening words share a phrase with the name of the party Éamon de Valera founded in 1926, Fianna Fáil, a name the Volunteers had used earlier; ministers and a 2018 Seanad report held that the anthem carries no party meaning, since the translation came first.

Only the chorus is the official anthem, and the President's salute is made of its first and last bars. It is played at all GAA matches, including those in Northern Ireland, where unionists regard it as the anthem of the Republic alone; the Northern Ireland government drafted bans on it in the 1930s, and all-island rugby and hockey teams play Phil Coulter's "Ireland's Call" instead or as well. Critics have called it militaristic, anti-British or musically weak, and proposals to replace it recur; a 2017 poll found 84% in favour of keeping it, and the Seanad's 2018 report recommended no change to the words and an official version in Irish Sign Language.

What it says

A rebel marching song in which soldiers pledge to fight for Ireland's freedom from English rule, calling on Irish people of every background to join the struggle and recalling earlier risings and help from Irish Americans. Its mood is martial and rousing.

The words