Séamas O'Reilly: 'Celtic Symphony' detractors could do with thinking harder about their outrage

For those very few who are unaware, the song contains a recurring chorus of “Ooh ah, up the RA” which, for fairly obvious reasons, stirs controversy. 

Less controversy, it should be said, when Leinster Rugby played it over the tannoy at the RDS some months later but, then, well-heeled young men do tend to get more benefit of the doubt.

I hesitated to say much then, partly because each additional take deleted another small part of that team’s incredible achievement, but also because my feelings toward ‘Celtic Symphony’, and the controversy surrounding it, are nuanced.

For one thing, I dislike the song intensely. This is not a political response, but one of personal taste. 

As much as I might admire some of their other work, ‘Celtic Symphony’ strikes me as being to Irish folk music what ‘Mr Brightside’ is to rock, or ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)’ is to dance music. 

The ‘Up The RA’ bit makes me cringe, mainly because it’s a tuneless football chant stuck in the middle of a song — a big shout, in every sense — which, to my ears, sounds awful.

As to the song’s other alleged crimes, namely promoting paramilitary republicanism, I’m less sure. 

Its writer Brian Warfield maintains that the song venerates not the paramilitary movement of the Troubles, but the organisation from which the nation of Ireland, and its two ruling parties, trace their direct lineage; “the foundation of our State — Michael Collins and the IRA, that’s the people that we’re supporting” he said earlier this year. 

“We never said at any stage that it was going to be about the Provisional IRA”. 

I could raise an eyebrow at this since, within the song itself, the line is graffiti written on the wall of Celtic Park in Glasgow. This might suggest a more recent vintage in my mind, but I cannot really argue with the song’s author on his stated intent.

Either way, part of the reason that I wince at the chorus is because I know how it sounds and pretending otherwise is silly. 

In such moments, I don’t fear for the sensitivities of broadsheet columnists or red-faced politicians. 

I think of ordinary unionists I grew up around in rural Derry, who might hear such chants and discern a secret bloodthirstiness in the national character that would be hurtful and, I think, inaccurate.

Of course, the question of whether those singing along are even said to be supporting the aims and values of the Provisional IRA has also become garbled.

As with the Irish Football team, this week’s outrage was couched largely in terms not of support, but ignorance; young people, too ill-informed about the past to understand the words they were singing.

Bertie Ahern said that “young people… should educate themselves about what happened on this island”. In fairness, he also said “it is that education process that I would be far more interested in than worrying about a line of a song” but, handily enough, others were on hand to do the worrying for him.

Newstalk’s Shane Coleman worried that the song represented the “rewriting of history”; “I think people who were at that gig yesterday are too young” he said, “they’re too young to remember that it was horrible and it was ugly.” 

Some of those who were there, declared co-host Ciara Kelly, “the ‘Ra were never active in their lifetimes. So, it means nothing to them”. 

They should, the feeling goes, learn their history and think a little harder next time.

Quite apart from being infantilising, it’s an odd angle to come from, since any young person “educating themselves” would read from the song’s own author that it was not about the Provisionals at all, and perhaps wonder why they were tasked with doing so much supplementary reading on the Troubles in the first place.

Moreover, the idea that the Wolfe Tones have somehow weaponised the ignorance of young people belies the fact that they have been touring for over sixty years, and their members currently boast a combined age of roughly 6,000. 

They have played all over Ireland, and the wider world, to legions of fans, almost all of whom are in advanced years themselves.

Their presence as a main stage act comes not from TikTok but six decades of airtime on such seedy and underground platforms as the Late Late Show and party engagements for both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. 

(In the 90s, no less a hardline republican than Bertie Ahern suggested that their version of ‘A Nation Once Again’ would be his pick for a new national anthem.)

They are not, therefore, an unknown quantity. Nor is their most controversial song a horrifying new fad, representing the dissolving memory of a conflict with which its own writer says it has nothing to do. 

If there were young people singing along, is it not more likely they were echoing the practice of their own parents or grandparents; indulging in the nostalgia of hearing live for the first time, songs they remember being played on long, summer drives or country weddings?

We can balk at the song’s popularity without haughtily ascribing it to youthful ignorance, much less freighting it with sinister intent. 

We can approach rebel songs, and our own history, with nuance, even revulsion, but only if we do so in good faith, and with an openness to the idea that art itself, and those who enjoy it, may not align with our own interpretations. 

You don’t have to like ‘Celtic Symphony’ — believe me — to wonder if its constant, yearly detractors could do with thinking harder about their outrage themselves.