1 And all but thy government, Éire, have pleased me/Thou waterful land (Columcille’s Farewell to Ireland)
2 To hell or to Connacht
3 The Flight of the Earls
4 Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire
Councillor Claus of Alaska – Alison Healy on the other Santa
A rebate Christmas – Alison Healy on the surprising ways people spend their time on the big day
Name Shame – Frank McNally on the continuing tragedy of the forename “Kevin” and a bad night for “Shamrock” in London
Kiss of Death? – Frank McNally on the rise and fall of mistletoe
5 Lament for Limerick
6 - 7 Ditto for Kinsale and Kilcash
8 He gave what little wealth he had/To build a home for fools and mad/And shew’d with one satiric touch/No country wanted it so much
9 Swift has sailed into his rest/Where savage indignation/Can no longer lacerate his breast
10 Carolan’s farewell to music
11 The minstrel boy to the war has gone
12 The pipes, the pipes are calling
13 The Last Rose of Summer
14 For Ireland’s freedom/We’ll fight or die
15 Emmet’s speech from the dock
16 She is far from the land
17 In 1803, we sailed out to sea/Out from the sweet town of Derry
18 My body to Ireland, my heart to Rome, my soul to God
19 So fare thee well, sweet Liza dear
20 And likewise to Derry Town
21 – 22 And twice farewell to me comrade boys, who dwell on that sainted ground
23 Goodbye Mick
24 Goodbye Pat
25 Goodbye Kate and Mary
26 The anchor’s weighed, the gangway’s up, I’m leaving Tipperary
27 Goodbye Muirisín Durkan
28 By a lonely prison wall/I heard a young girl calling
29 Fare thee well, Enniskillen
30 Fare thee well sweet Donegal, the Rosses, and Gweedore
31 Ditto Sweet Anna Liffey, Green Valleys, and My Lovely Dinah
32 The night before Larry was stretched
33 I am stretched on your grave
34 Such is life
35 The man had killed the thing he loved/And so he had to die
36 The wallpaper and I are in a duel to the death. One of us must go.
37 They’re all gone now, and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me
38 They lived and loved and laughed and left
39 Grace, just hold me in your arms
40 He shall not hear the bittern cry
41 I got more than one bullet I think. Tons and tons of love dearie to you and the boys and to Nell and Anna. It was a good fight anyway.
42 Yerra, they’ll never shoot me in my own county
43 Observe the sons of Ulster marching towards the Somme
44 Cast a cold eye/On life, on death/Horseman pass by
45 Commemorate me with no hero-courageous tomb/Just a canal back seat for the passer-by
46 Finnegan’s Wake (with the apostrophe)
47 Finnegans Wake (without)
48 The American Wake
49 A Painful Case
50 An Irish Airman Foresees his Death
51 For he comes, the human child/To the waters and the wild
52 – 54 Well known, alas, is the case of the poor German who was very fond of three and who made each aspect of his life a thing of triads. He went home one evening and drank three cups of tea with three lumps of sugar in each cup, cut his jugular with a razor three times and scrawled with a dying hand on a picture of his wife good-bye good-bye good-bye.
55 Krapp’s Last Tape
56 On a quiet street, where old ghosts meet, I see her walking now
57 The reason I left Mullingar
58 I’ll take you home again, Kathleen
59 And that’s the cruel reason I left old Skibbereen
60 Then the ship struck a rock/Lord, what a shock
61 And I woke in California/Many miles from Spancil Hill
62 The Blasket school of Literature
63 I’m an old woman now, with one foot in the grave and the other on its edge
64 I have done my best to set down the character of the people about me so that some record of us might live after us, for the like of us will never be again
65 So I waved goodbye with a wistful eye/And I left the girls of Tuam
66 Thousands are sailing
67 Many young men of twenty said goodbye
68 The Leaving Cert
69 The blessing of a poor old man be with you night and day
70 The blessing of a lonely man whose heart will soon be clay
71 – 73 Lament for Staker Wallace, Oliver Goldmsith, Brendan Behan
74 Heaney’s Spring Break
75 Her father didn’t like me anyway
76 Say goodbye to Madame George
77 – 80 Say goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye to Madame George
81 Now the song is nearly over/We may never find out what it means
82 Happy Christmas your arse, I thank God it’s our last
83 Noli timere
84 Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite
85 Goodnight and may your God go with you
86 We get here and the skips containing the team’s training gear are missing
87 The pitch is like a carpark
88 We had no goalkeepers for the five-a-side
89 Packie said they’d worked hard. Alan said they’d worked hard. I said: “Do you want a pat on the back for working hard – is that not why we’re here?” I did mention that they wouldn’t be too tired to play golf next day and, fair play, they dragged themselves out.”
90 “You were a crap player. You’re a crap manager.”
91 I have done the State some service.
92 The dead man was known to the gardaí
93 Slán tamaill
94 Slán go fóill
95 Slán abhaile
96 Slán go deo
97 Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord
98 Don’t let the door hit you on the way out
99 His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
100 “The Irish goodbye”