The Wolfe Tones republican anthem A Nation Once Againhas beaten off stiff competition to reach the top 10 in a BBC Internet survey to find the world's favourite song.
The song is now jockeying for a top 10 position alongside classics such as John Lennon's
Imagine
, Queen's
Bohemian Rhapsody
, Led Zeppelin's
Stairway to Heaven
and
Hero
by Mariah Carey.
The Dublin-based Wolfe Tones are well known for other anthems such as Come Out Ye Black and Tansand Padraic Pearse.
A BBC spokeswoman said the "enormous" support for the song had come from an e-mail distributed around the world encouraging Irish people to vote for it. The e-mail gives "800 years of oppression" as the reason for choosing the song.
"There's this e-mail going round telling people to vote for the song, it seems to be a bit of a laugh but the lyrics meet BBC producer guidelines and so the votes have been accepted," a BBC spokeswoman said.
Wolfe Tones' banjo player Brian Warfield said: "We've just come back from a tour in America and we find all this a great craic, it's something that we would never have expected. We're absolutely thrilled to bits".
The song was written in the 1840s by a republican Protestant lawyer, Thomas Davis, a Co Cork leader of the Young Irelanders movement.
Voting for the BBC music poll closes at midday today. The result of the poll will be revealed on the Internet on December 21st.