It has rang out at packed sports arena, been done to death by drunks at closing time,denounced as sectarian, balladed, rocked and punked.

Often mistaken as a folk song, The Fields of Athenry was actually written by Dublin songwriter Pete St John in the mid 1970s. It is set during the Great Famine which devestated Ireland in the 1840s and it is about a family who’s father, Michael, has been sentenced to Botany Bay in Australia for stealing corn to feed his family.

Prison ships took tens thousands of men and women from Britain and Ireland to Australian goals in the 18th century. The term for this was ‘transportation’, and the alleged crimes ranged from petty theft to murder.

The song was first recorded in 1979 by Danny Doyle, and became a Top Ten hit in Ireland but is most commonly associated with Paddy Reilly who’s 1983 version spent 72 weeks in the Irish charts.

This song about famine, separation and unjust imprisonment, which can unite tens of thousands of fans and uplift team spirit, offers an interesting insight into the complex Irish psyche. Writing in The Irish Times, Johnny Watterson gave this account of Bernard Dunne’s world boxing title fight in Dublin against Ricardo Cordoba in March 2009, when “after a bloody bout defined by brutality, pain and reckless bravery the crowd spontaneously broke into The Fields of Athenry“.

Dunne, whose fight in the O2 against Ricardo Cordoba, was the same day as Ireland’s Grand Slam win in Cardiff, speaks of his own personal relationship with the song. The super bantamweight was on the canvas twice and practically out on his feet in the latter part of the fight. If he went down again it was over, his dreams shattered. Towards the end of the sapping battle of wills Dunne stood up in his corner, blood tricking from open wounds on his face and he heard the song. He raised a clenched fist in the air and stepped forward into an end game that will be remembered for generations, knocking out Cordoba with his final ounce of strength and becoming the World champion.

A few hours earlier in Cardiff Irish fans watching Ireland capture a (rugby) Grand Slam for the first time since 1948 were also singing the song as Brian O’Driscoll raised the Six Nations Trophy in the Millennium Stadium. The best day ever in Irish sport?

Glasgow Rangers soccer fans have claimed that the song is sectarian because it is the anthem of the rival Glasgow Celtic football club. Pete St John told the Scottish Daily Record in 1999: “It’s a song about the potato famine in Ireland, it’s that simple. I’d gone to Galway and read some Gaelic tracts about how tough life was in those dreadful times. The people were starving and corn had been imported from America to help them, but it was Indian corn with a kernel so hard that the mills here in Ireland couldn’t grind it. So it lay useless in stores at the docks in Dublin.

“But nobody trusted tha authorities, the Crown, to tell them the truth so hundreds of starving Irish marched on the city to get the grain. Some were arrested and shipped off to Australia in prison ships. I wrote a ballad about [in 1979], inventing Michael, Mary and a baby – a family torn apart because a husband stole corn to feed his family … all this information came from Galway so I set the song in Athenry”.

Pete St John added: “It’s a song about hard times in Ireland’s history, a bit like Flower of Scotland is the same to the Scots. But bigotry? It’s about as sectarian as I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”.

Charles Edward Trevelyan was a senior British civil servant in charge of Famine relief in Ireland. He defended the export of grain from Ireland on the grounds of free trade. He also held the view that famine was the work of a benign Providence seeking to reduce to expanding population.*

An internet posting suggesting that the song was derived from an old English ballad The Fields of Athenrye has been discredited.

The song is associated most with Glasgow Celtic Football Club, but also with the London Irish, Munster and Irish rugby teams and sung in Giants Stadium. The Fields of Anfield Road is sung by Liverpool football supporters to the same tune, but with some new lyrics. The fans of Glasgow Rangers Football Club sing the song A Father’s Advice to the same tune.

Ulster Loyalists have also adapted the song, with the main line changed to “Low lie, the fields of Ballynafeigh”.

The song’s chorus features in the film Bad News, about the murder of Irish journalist Veronica Guerin. It was sung by Brian O’Donnell, then aged ten. It also features in the 1994 film Priest.

As well as Danny Doyle, the song has been recorded by The Dubliners, Frank Patterson, Ronan Tynan and James Galway. Brush Shiels has recorded a rock version while the definitive punk or Celtic rock version is by the Dropkick Murphys.

The Fields of Athenry was the subject of a TV documentary by RTE broadcast in December, 2010.

The Fields of Athenry

By a lonely prison wall,

I heard a young girl calling:

“Michael, they have taken you away,

For you stole Trevelyan’s corn,

So the young might see the morn.

Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay.”

(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 fields of Athenry.

Chorus

By a lonely prison wall,

I heard a young man calling

“Nothing matters, Mary, when you’re free

Against the famine and the crown,

I rebelled, they cut me down.

Now you must raise our child with dignity.”

Chorus

By a lonely harbour wall,

She watched the last star falling

As the prison ship sailed out against the sky

For she lived to hope and pray

For her love in Botany Bay

It’s so lonely round the fields of Athenry.

Chorus

Copyright: Pete St John

*A Dictionary of Irish History: 1800 – 1980, DJ Hickey and JE Doherty.