Low lie the Fields: Irish at the Euro 2012

A few weeks ago the Irish national team, certainly not the most talented team in the world, made an appearance on the world stage at the Euro cup. They would eventually walk away winless after a 4-0 loss to Spain but the score isn't what I'll remember about this game. I'll remember the fans and their passionate singing of the "fields of Atherny" for the final ten minutes of the game.

The Irish fans, a people who've been hit as hard as anyone by the Euro-crisis, thanked their brave team with a somber and meloncholy tune about loneliness, hardship and eventual hope, a striking example of solidarity at a time when the people need to hold to each other. Of course, as cheeky Irishmen, they also had to poke a little fun at their German task mistress, Angela Merkel, whose insistence on a policy of strict austerity to pay down the national debt has caused no end of trouble for the working or out-of-work Irish, with a flag reading, "Angela Merkel thinks we're at work."

The whole affair reminds me of Nancy Scheper-Hughes ethnograpghy, Saints, Scholars, and Schitzophrenics, about mental illness in rural Ireland. In this beautiful piece of ethnographic work, Scheper-Hughes address some of the problems that rural Irishmen face while watching their friends and brothers leave in pursuit of prosperity somewhere else while they are left to tend the lonely fields back home. The Irishman who stays has to deal with social pressure from both direction. From the one side they are told that to leave faily property would be disloyal and from the other they are seen inferior to their brothers sisters who've left for other countries and often staying behind means being alone, as few women remain.

 The song the Irish fans sung was particularly fitting as it deals with the hardship of being left behind, "its so lonely round the feilds of Anthenry". In the song, a man is arrested and sent to Botany bay for stealing corn for his starving children and it features a dialouge between him and his love who he must leave behind. The character I think most of the Irish fans singing the song would most sympathize with would be the woman, which fits with Scheper-Hughes idea that the men had been in some way emasculated by their experiences.

 The book was written twenty years ago, long before the Euro-crisis reached what it is today, but I think the struggles it revealed are still experienced by Irishmen today and perhaps amplified by the deteriorating economy.

 The sound of those voices lifted into the air, celebrating their common suffering and hope has pushed me to give a shout-out to my comrades in Ireland, perhaps a few weeks later than I should have. To the people who've endured more than their share of hardship at the hands of the elite; to those who've watched their friends and families leave; to the oppressed periphery sliding into debt slavery; to those who still hold to hope; I wish you peace and love from America.