"A Nation Once Again" is a song written in the early to mid-1840s by
Thomas Osborne Davis (1814–1845). Davis was a founder of
Young Ireland, an Irish movement whose aim was for Ireland to gain independence from Britain.
Davis believed that songs could have a strong emotional impact on people. He wrote that "a song is worth a thousand harangues". He felt that music could have a particularly strong influence on Irish people at that time. He wrote: "Music is the first faculty of the Irish... we will endeavour to teach the people to sing the songs of their country that they may keep alive in their minds the love of the fatherland."
"A Nation Once Again" was first published in ''
The Nation'' on 13 July 1844 and quickly became a rallying call for the growing Irish nationalist movement at that time.
The song is a prime example of the "
Irish rebel music" subgenre. The song's narrator dreams of a time when Ireland will be, as the title suggests, a free land, with "our fetters rent in twain". The lyrics exhort Irish people to stand up and fight for their land: "And righteous men must make our land a nation once again".
It has been recorded by many Irish singers and groups, notably
John McCormack,
The Clancy Brothers,
The Dubliners,
The Wolfe Tones (a group with
Republican leanings) in 1972, the
Poxy Boggards
The Poxy Boggards are an American folk band based in Pasadena. The band was founded in 1994 by Stuart Venable and Bill Roper, and first performed that year at the Southern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire. Since that time, they have achieve ...
, and
The Irish Tenors (
John McDermott,
Ronan Tynan,
Anthony Kearns) and
Sean Conway for a 2007 single. In
the Beatles' movie ''
A Hard Day's Night'',
Paul McCartney's Irish grandfather begins singing the song at the
Metropolitan Police
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...
after they arrest him for peddling autographed pictures of the band members.
In 2002, after an orchestrated e-mail campaign, the
Wolfe Tones' 1972 rendition of "A Nation Once Again" was voted the world's most popular song according to a
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...
global poll of listeners, ahead of "
Vande Mataram", the national song of India.
Davis copied the melody for the chorus from the second movement of
Mozart's clarinet concerto
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622, was completed in October 1791 for the clarinettist Anton Stadler. It consists of three movements, in a fast–slow–fast succession.
The work was completed a few weeks before ...
.
Famously, Winston Churchill used this phrase in an attempt to get Ireland to join forces with the British during
World War II. Churchill said ‘now or never. A nation once again’ proposing that if Ireland joined forces with Britain then a united Ireland would be the reward. The Irish Prime Minister
Éamon de Valera did not respond to Winston Churchill's telegram.
[Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade/National Archives of Ireland/Royal Irish Academy. Retrieved 25 February 2019]
"Telegram from Winston Churchill to Eamon de Valera (Dublin) (No. 120) (Most Immediate) "
/ref>
Lyrics
The lyrics use a simple ABABCDCD rhyme scheme, with verses of eight lines, and alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. Davis describes how he learned of ancient fighters for freedom as a boy — the three hundred Spartans who fought at the Battle of Thermopylae
The Battle of Thermopylae ( ; grc, Μάχη τῶν Θερμοπυλῶν, label=Greek, ) was fought in 480 BC between the Achaemenid Persian Empire under Xerxes I and an alliance of Greek city-states led by Sparta under Leonidas I. Lasting o ...
. The "three men" may refer to Horatius Cocles and his two companions who defended the Sublician Bridge, a legend recounted in Macaulay's poem "Horatius, published as part of the Lays of Ancient Rome, in 1842, or alternatively to the three assassins of Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and ...
( Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus and Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus) who aimed to preserve the Roman Republic from tyranny. He relates this to his own hopes that Ireland may yet be freed, and be no longer a British "province" but a nation of its own. The use of the term "once again" refers to Gaelic Ireland
Gaelic Ireland ( ga, Éire Ghaelach) was the Gaelic political and social order, and associated culture, that existed in Ireland from the late prehistoric era until the early 17th century. It comprised the whole island before Anglo-Normans co ...
, the pre-modern island of Gaelic culture largely independent of foreign control. Davis mentions his belief that only moral, religious men could set Ireland free, and his own aims to make himself worthy of such a task.
References
External links
''A Nation Once Again'' on IrishSongs.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nation Once Again
1844 songs
Songs about Ireland
The Dubliners songs