Hands up all who know the words, in English or Irish, of our national anthem, The Soldier's Song, whose centenary is being celebrated this year by a new postage stamp, writes Paul Hurley.
But if you can't remember them all, don't feel too embarrassed. A few weeks ago Yves Leterme, hoping to be Belgium's new Prime Minister, was asked on TV if he knew his country's anthem. He said he could recall only "a little bit" of it. Pressed to render a few bars, he began singing France's La Marseillaise.
Our Croker-patronising Taoiseach is unlikely to let us down like that. But he, and many of you, may not know much about the origins of the anthem or the man who wrote it.
Peadar Kearney, the oldest of three boys and three girls - and an uncle of Brendan Behan - was born in Dublin in 1883. Both his parents came from Co Louth - his father, John, from Collon and his mother, Katie McGuinness, from Dunleer. When they first lived in Dolphin's Barn, Peadar went to the Model School in Cook Street. In one of the schoolbooks there he was taught I am a Happy Little English Childand God Save Our Glorious Queen, which he tore out of the book. Though not a member of any political organisation, his father, an insurance agent, was determined to make his eldest son "a good Irishman".
The family moved house many times and when they lived in Marino, Peadar went to the Christian Brothers' School there. After being caught "mitching", he was taken from school at 14 and sent to work. Soon after, in 1897, his father died and he had to support his mother and siblings. His first of many "blind-alley" jobs was in O'Neill's cycle puncture mending business in North King Street. Later he worked as a messenger boy in Strong's of Greek Street; in an Aungier Street butcher's shop; as a "three-farthing galloper", delivering telegrams at three farthings each in post offices; in Lafayette's, the photographers; and as a billiard-room marker at the Catholic Commercial Club in Upper O'Connell Street. His best-paid job, at which he spent most of his life, was as a house-painter, starting at 8 pence an hour for a 50-hour week.
It was in the Gaelic League in 1901 that he first met Sean Barlow, stage manager of the Abbey Theatre. They became life-long friends, going cycling and fishing together. Sometimes young Kearney got walk-on parts at the Abbey and twice he toured England with the company. He later got a small part in Lennox Robinson's 1915 play The Dreamers, about Robert Emmet, and he also played the role of Major Sirr in another Emmet play by HC O'Mangan.
In 1903 Kearney began collaborating at writing songs with another Dubliner, Patrick Heeney, who played the melodeon and wrote music. Four years later Kearney wrote the words of The Soldier's Song. He did so in a week, mostly at the Swiss Café in a basement on O'Connell Street and also while staying with his married sister, Mrs Bourke, in 10 Lower Dominick Street. Heeney wrote the music.
It was first printed by Kearney's friend Bulmer Hobson in the IRB paper, Irish Freedom, in 1912. After the formation of the Irish Volunteers it was regularly sung on marches and was eventually adopted as their rallying song. After 1916 it was also sung in the internment camps in Britain and Ireland and soon became the de factonational anthem, replacing the old Fenian one, God Save Ireland.
The anthem complete with words and music was first published in December 1916 by Seamus Whelan of 19 Upper Ormond Quay and printed by Patrick Mahon in Yarnhall Street. It was first published in New York about the same time, with a musical arrangement by Victor Herbert. Interestingly, Kearney wrote an extra verse in 1937, 30 years after the original. Heeney never saw the song in print: he died of tuberculosis in 1911. It became the official State anthem in 1926.
Among other songs on which they both collaborated were The Flag of Greenand Michael Dwyer Keeps His Word. Kearney also wrote the words for The Three-Coloured Ribbon, Down in the Village, In Green Killester My Love and I Were Lyingand the better known Down by the Glenside. In his very informative 1957 book The Soldier's Song - the Story of Peadar O'Cearnaigh, Seamus de Burca described Kearney as "only 5ft 6ins tall, but as straight as a lance. He was pale and delicate-looking with an oval face and a small mouth."
He won the first prize of three guineas for the best short story in Irish in the Derry Peoplein 1903 and later taught Irish for some time in Grangecon, Co Wicklow. He also spent some months in 1910 working as a house painter on Tory Island. Four years later, when he was 32 and she 18, he married Katie Flanagan, who worked as a shirt-maker in McBirney's drapery business on Burgh Quay.
Kearney, who joined the IRB in 1903, fought as a member of B Company, Second Battalion, at Jacob's biscuit factory in 1916 and was later interned in Ballykinlar Camp, where he learned to play the fiddle. After the Treaty in 1921 he was also interned for 12 months in Kilmainham and Portlaoise Prisons. Up to March 1916 he had been working as "property man" in the Abbey Theatre. Among six other members of its staff who also fought in the Rising was the actor Arthur Shields, a brother of Barry Fitzgerald.
Peadar Kearney died, aged 59, at his home in Inchicore, Dublin, on November 24th, 1942 and was buried in the Republican Plot in Glasnevin Cemetery.