{"id":102044,"date":"2025-10-24T18:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T18:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/102044\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T18:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T18:53:09","slug":"laughing-for-ireland-frank-mcnally-on-bobby-sands-and-kneecap-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/102044\/","title":{"rendered":"Laughing for Ireland? Frank McNally on Bobby Sands and Kneecap \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Driving up north recently, I passed a mural of Bobby Sands<\/a> with his famous quotation: \u201cOur revenge will be the laughter of our children.\u201d And, reflecting on what kids find funny now, more than 40 years later, I wondered what he would have made of Kneecap<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He could hardly have imagined such a development, in fairness. Rap music as we know it today was still in its infancy when Sands died. Blondie had just introduced it into the pop mainstream in January 1981. The idea of the British hit parade ever featuring a band rapping in Irish was still in the realms of unwritten science fiction.<\/p>\n

That the word Kneecap might one day acquire comedic value would itself have seemed far-fetched. But as he died so that future Irish children might laugh, Sands could not possibly have foreseen a world wherein young audiences, Irish and British alike, would be chuckling at a band of that name whose songs celebrate lifestyles of narcotic excess: one of the things the original, non-ironic kneecap was designed to discourage.<\/p>\n

During his lifetime, it was still common for republicans and socialists to speak of the \u201cimperialist yoke\u201d, or the \u201cyoke of oppression\u201d. Today, the only \u201cyokes\u201d young people talk about are a collective term for certain psychoactive pills, including ecstasy.<\/p>\n

Hence the Kneecap song Get Your Brits Out, which, if I understand the lyrics correctly, is a sort of cross-community appeal to various named members of the Democratic Unionist Party to forget politics and join the band in getting off their heads, viz: \u201cAnd don\u2019t be runnin\u2019 round like silly old Tans\/Just take these yokes and we\u2019ll go for a dance\/Go for a dance, go for a dance.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0UK prosecutors to appeal decision to throw out terror case against Kneecap rapperOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Yes, Bobby Sands would surely have approved of the band\u2019s success in helping make Irish fashionable with the young. He might even have laughed along at the robust combination of Irish and Anglo-Saxon in such songs as C.E.A.R.T.A:<\/p>\n

\u201cFoc m\u00ed, n\u00ed fhaca m\u00e9 na bastaird\u00ed\/Carr dubh ina bhfolach ar \u00e1r mullach is iad taobh istigh\/Seans ar bith, go bhfaighidh siad mo mh\u00e1la MD,\/Mar t\u00e1 c\u00f3isir ann anocht \u2019s n\u00edl f\u00e1ilte roimh an RUC.\u201d <\/p>\n

Still, we might have to break it to him gently that the surprise police raid described there is targeting the narrator\u2019s bag of MDMA (\u201cmh\u00e1la MD\u201d), another version of ecstasy on which our young heroes are getting wasted.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that Kneecap\u2019s lyrics do sometimes also include cogent critiques of policing, pointing out ways in which it might be improved, as for example in the classic Your Sniffer Dogs Are Shite. <\/p>\n

And yet, even there, the bottom line \u2013 literally \u2013 is also a celebration of drugs. The song ends on an ostensibly serious note, with the question: \u201cAll jokin\u2019 aside lads, c\u00e1 bhfuil an fucking snaois?\u201d (I had to look up \u201csnaois\u201d in a glossary of Kneecap slang. It means \u201csnuff\u201d, although possibly not of the kind our ancestors would have put up their noses at wakes.)<\/p>\n

Brave as they undoubtedly were, most of those who died for Ireland have left us limited guidance on the problem of how to live for it<\/p>\n

The implication of Sands\u2019s quotation is that life during the Troubles was too serious for laughter from the young. If so, the ceasefire babies of Kneecap are making up for it now, albeit in ways he might not have approved. But it\u2019s to his credit, I suppose, that a man about to die for Ireland could have considered something as apparently frivolous as laughter to be central to his vision of the future.<\/p>\n

This is rarely the case with martyred saints (of which, to republicans at least, Sands is certainly now one), who tend to set standards the rest of us can never match. This was the theme of an essay George Orwell wrote once, on Mahatma Gandhi, reflecting on the great Indian\u2019s extremely ascetic life with some scepticism. <\/p>\n

\u201cMany people genuinely do not wish to be saints,\u201d Orwell commented, adding drily, \u201cand it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brave as they undoubtedly were, most of those who died for Ireland have left us limited guidance on the problem of how to live for it. Rude reality is rarely romantic. To the question \u201cWas it for this (the sons of R\u00f3is\u00edn\/Wild Geese\/Lord Edward Fitzgerald, etc)?\u201d the answer tends always to be no.<\/p>\n

An exception was \u00c9amon de Valera<\/a>, who nearly died for Ireland but survived to reach 92, while embodying an austere way of living that fewer and fewer of his fellow citizens wished to emulate. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s just as well he didn\u2019t live to hear what Kneecap are doing with his first official language; although, in fairness to de Valera, he did once pre-empt Bobby Sands in elevating the spirit of youthful comedy to a national aspiration. <\/p>\n

Outlining his vision of an ideal Ireland in 1943, he included an image of laughing \u201cmaidens\u201d. Unfortunately, this great moment was soon overshadowed by controversy. Ever since, there has been argument among historians \u2013 a humourless bunch \u2013 about whether the maidens in question were said to be \u201chappy\u201d, or \u201ccomely\u201d, or both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Driving up north recently, I passed a mural of Bobby Sands with his famous quotation: \u201cOur revenge will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,8933,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-102044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-irish-diary","11":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}