If there were ever to be a national day of commemoration for Irish emigrants, it would surely have to be on June 23rd, the date of Spancilhill Fair.
Yes, yes, I know the song says this was "the day before the fair". But it also says that the events described take place on a Sunday, and whenever St John's Eve - the traditional fair-date - fell on the Sabbath, festivities were always deferred for 24 hours. Sure everyone knows that.
Spancilhill is not the greatest Irish emigrant song ever written, but it is arguably the most popular. It has just the right amount of nostalgia (a lot) for those forced by circumstance to abandon their homelands. It's temptingly easy to sing, even for those who can't. And it includes most of the themes required for Irish-emigration-song immortality: a Clare childhood, love, loss, loneliness, death, and California.
Nobody dies during the song, but the man who wrote it was dying, although he was little more than 20 years old. Michael Considine was born in Spancilhill some time around 1850 and emigrated to Boston in 1870, intent on earning enough to bring his sweetheart, Mary MacNamara, after him. In the original lyric, she was identified as "Matt the Ranger's daughter", or possibly "Mack the Ranger's daughter" - there seems to be some confusion on this point. Either way, she never made it to America.
The ailing Considine moved to California and, knowing he wasn't long for this world, wrote the poem to commemorate his birth-place and his love. Oddly, according to most accounts, he sent it home not to Mary, but to his six-year-old nephew, whose father had died not long before. Six-year-old boys are not recommended as repositories of archive material, but somehow the document survived. Indeed, when the nephew lived long enough to see the song take on its own life, with variable lyrics, he was in the uniquely authoritative position of being able to confront errant singers with the original text.
In some versions of the story, Michael Considine made it back to Clare before his death in 1873. In others, he died in California, where he wakes at the end of the song, "far, far from Spancilhill". Although he had Mary question his sincerity in one verse (the original line was "Mike, you're only joking"), she is said to have remained faithful to his memory and never married.
Like other mid-summer celebrations, Spancilhill Fair's origins are probably ancient. It was held on what used to be considered the eve of the summer solstice - the eve of St John's Day in the Christian calendar. Unusually for a church feast-day, June 24th marks a saint's birth (John the Baptist is said to have been born six months before Jesus) rather than his death. But there may have been a tactical element in deploying one of Christianity's big-hitters to try and take out a deeply entrenched pagan festival.
The effort continues in the west of Ireland, where "Bonfire Night" is still celebrated on June 23rd. Around the world, tonight was and remains a time to pay homage to the sun at its annual height. I don't know if it still happens here, but one of the most famous customs was to set fire to wheels of hay and roll them downhill, symbolising the decline into autumn and winter that has already begun.
Tomorrow, with the bonfires out, the west will host a celebration of a more modern kind when the second Streets of London concert takes place in Turlough Park, Castlebar.
The first was in Dublin's Vicar Street in 2004, when the brilliant Lunasa topped the bill. Both the bill and venue have expanded this time, but Lunasa are again involved and proceeds will again go to two London emigrant charities, the Aislinn Return to Ireland Project and Cricklewood Homeless Concern. Sharon Shannon, the Fureys, and Dervish also play. Tickets are €25 or €60 per family, available at the venue.
I was in the Cricklewood Concern - a drop-in centre that provides support services including meals to the homeless - last Christmas when it was the subject of a visit by the Sam Maguire cup, and it was clear that times had changed. The Irish were no longer the dominant feature. West Indians and Bangladeshis stared at the famous trophy, having no idea what it was for. Few of those eating Christmas dinners would have known even the wrong words for Spancilhill.
But there were Irish there too, with the full range of emotions towards their country of origin. A grateful Kerryman told me he was coming home soon, under the Aislinn scheme, after a lifetime building Britain. He was still every bit as attached to his homeland as the young Michael Considine. By contrast, a man from Galway told me he had tried coming back and failed: the country was more foreign to him now than England. London is not quite California. But the Galway man was a reminder that for many of the Irish who went there in years past, home was just as far away.