Sunday, May 20, 2007

"the world is changing so fast"

I heard a great radio programme this morning about Irish elections of the past. When they were talking about the early 1980s, they played a bit of the Wolfe Tones' fondly remembered Arise And Follow Charlie, a hymn to then Fianna Fáil leaders Charles Haughey, who was running a highly personalised election campaign. Lyrics for this seem to be unavailable on the internet, but you can probably find it if you are one of those downloaders. They also played a bit of a less well remembered Fine Gael theme song, which turned out to be amazingly jaunty. I can't believe this was not a hit at the time, it sounded like the kind of song that would have swept to victory in the Eurovision. The lyrics went something like this:

Fine Gael, Fine Gael
[something that rhymes with Gael]
the world is changing so fast
don't look back to the past
Fine Gael, Fine Gael

I wish more political parties did songs. I would love to hear one about the Progressive Democrats or the People Before Profit Alliance.

You may be able to listen to this radio programme here: Bowman Sunday Morning

2 comments:

Trish Byrne said...

I think the missing line is something like "they are the ones we all hail", or similar.

I heard some of that programme too.

Seriously, is it me, or is this election over-covered?

Ian Moore said...

Whereas not enough is being said about twenty year old elections. I have just discovered that Arise and follow Charlie is adapted from an old Jacobite tune about, you know, Bonnie Prince Charlie. But I am still struggling to find lyrics.