{"id":15797,"date":"2023-12-18T20:09:36","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T20:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=15797"},"modified":"2023-12-18T20:09:36","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T20:09:36","slug":"the-passing-of-shane-macgowan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2023\/12\/18\/the-passing-of-shane-macgowan\/","title":{"rendered":"The Passing of Shane MacGowan"},"content":{"rendered":"

I sat for a while by the gap in the wall
\nFound a rusty tin can and an old hurley ball
\nHeard the cards being dealt and the rosary called
\nAnd a fiddle playing “Sean Dun Na Ngall”
\n<\/em>lyrics from \u2018The Broad Majestic Shannon<\/a><\/span>\u2019 by Shane MacGowan.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t close to Shane \u2013 celebrity brings an understandable reserve \u2013 but he was someone I hung out with in latter years, travelled alongside, and helped take care for a short time.<\/p>\n

I have also been told he gave a typically back-handed compliment to an article I wrote describing his last trip to London<\/a><\/span> for the launch of an exhibition of his art work: \u201cGod he\u2019s a windbag, but then so was James Joyce.\u201d Needless to say, I am still chuffed. Alas, he was rather less enamoured by my amateurish songwriting \u2013 which I recall later in this piece. This at least provides some reassurance that he wouldn\u2019t give a compliment unless he meant it.<\/p>\n

Shane MacGowan‘<\/a>s funeral mass on Friday, December 8 might have re-awakened a Catholic faith in its most ardent opponents, while conservatives regard it as scandalous<\/a><\/span>. Who else could have summoned leading mourners into dancing joyously before the altar, after a sublime ceremony that merged tradition with frivolity, and formality with raucousness? In death, as in life\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"
Shane MacGowan’s Madonna<\/a><\/span>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Holy Mary Mother of God \/ pray for us sinners \/ now until<\/em><\/strong> the hour of our death\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In Shane\u2019s mind, Mary was a powerful female icon. A warrior woman, \u2018Calming her people\u2019<\/span><\/a>. He was capable of reconciling \u2013 as only a poet can \u2013 anger at the Church over covering up paedophilia, and what he viewed as a betrayal of the Irish Revolution, with a simple Catholic faith.<\/p>\n

As with many second-generation Irish emigrants, Catholicism seemed intrinsic to his identity. Importantly, this was a choice rather than an imposition. However, while his heart throbbed with a paradoxically profane Catholicism, this was not to the exclusion of other faiths and traditions. The array of deities, daemons and angels festooning his mantlepiece suggested syncretic beliefs. Spiritual nourishment was maintained by a steady supply of pre-blessed Eucharists, ferried up from Nenagh. Shane could always get his hands on the best stuff.<\/p>\n

Importantly, once the wild touring years with The Pogues had drawn to a close, he decided to move to Ireland to take up residence in his mother Therese\u2019s (n\u00e9e Lynch) ancestral cottage in Carney Commons<\/span><\/a>, County Tipperary.<\/p>\n

Having been born in Kent, he could easily have lived out his days in England, mournfully recalling the old country, but Shane remained \u2018Loyal, true and faithful<\/a><\/span>\u2019; coming home like a Fenian prisoner \u2018From dying in foreign nations\u2019. Even the demise of The Pogues can partly be attributed to his insistent Irishness: creative differences emerged when others in the band, many of them with no Irish background, proposed moving beyond an Irish sound, as the documentary If I Should Fall From the Grace of God \u2013 The Shane MacGowan Story<\/span><\/a> reveals.<\/p>\n

He returned, as he saw it, to Ireland when the Celtic Tiger was in full roar, restricting the pre-modern society he had encountered as a youth to the margins. It\u2019s fair to say he struggled to reconcile himself to a brash, individualistic and increasingly homogenous society, but never departed.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LfEuXYpMIYc<\/p>\n

Patrician and Spailp\u00edn<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Romantic poet W.B. Yeats and the Punk singer Shane MacGowan might be viewed as being at opposite points on a spectrum of Irishness: one epitomising a patrician Anglo-Irish literary tradition; the other a performer representing what Joe Cleary<\/a><\/span> has described as the \u2018spailp\u00edn<\/span><\/a><\/em> [lit. \u2018journeyman\u2019] culture\u2019 of \u2018hard labour and hard living, of wandering and exile, resentment and loss \u2026 nurtured by two languages.\u2019<\/p>\n

Thus, when declaring his will in ‘The Tower<\/a>‘<\/span> (1928), Yeats portentously claimed to be one of the \u2018people of [Edmund] Burke and of [Henry] Grattan\u2019. He also scorned \u2018Porter-drinkers\u2019 randy laughter\u2019 and the \u2018base born products of base beds\u2019 in his valedictory ‘Under Ben Bulben<\/span>‘<\/a> (1928).<\/p>\n

In contrast, Shane MacGowan explicitly portrays \u2018the slaves that were spat on\u2019 from the Tower in his song \u2013 based on personal experience \u2013 about rent boys, \u2018The Old Main Drag<\/span><\/a>\u2019 where the protagonist is \u2018spat on, and shat on and raped and abused\u2019. His oeuvre<\/em> positively celebrates intoxication and fornication, although he was in many respects even more of a romantic, as tracks such as \u2018A Pair of Brown Eyes<\/span><\/a>\u2019 and \u2018The Song with No Name<\/span><\/a>\u2019 attest.<\/p>\n

I heard Shane express his dislike of the Anglo-Irish poet \u2013 although he did record a version of Yeats\u2019s anti-war poem \u2018An Irish Airman Foresees His Death<\/span>\u2019<\/a>. He preferred the aesthetic of Brendan Behan in particular.<\/p>\n

There is, nonetheless, a striking parallel. Both poets while living in London a century apart, consciously embraced their Irishness, which helped each of them develop distinctive voices. Yeats would no longer simply be a Romantic poet in the mould of Wordsworth: he forged a distinctively Irish Romantic tradition. Likewise, MacGowan would no longer be another Punk singer in the shadow of Johnny Rotten: he became an Irish Punk balladeer, and an inspiration to a rising generation of distinctively Irish song-writers.<\/p>\n

In his autobiography, Yeats describes walking homesick through Fleet Street in the 1880s and hearing a little tinkle of water, whereupon he saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball on its jet that reminded him of lake water. \u2018From that sudden remembrance\u2019, he wrote, \u2018came my poem \u201cInisfree,\u201d my first lyric with anything in its rhythm of my own music.\u2019<\/p>\n

A body of water provides the title for perhaps MacGowan\u2019s most poetic song, \u2018The Broad Majestic Shannon\u2019, which features an aging Irishman dwelling on his youth in County Tipperary after many years of living in London. The rusty tin can and the old hurley ball is Shane recalling his own childhood. It\u2019s a song that also conveys homesickness, joining Shane MacGowan\u2019s soul to the great river of Ireland flowing through Tipperary \u2013 where his ashes are to be scattered<\/span><\/a> \u2013 just as places in Sligo will forever be identified with Yeats.<\/p>\n

Perhaps one day tourists will flock to The MacGowan county, just as they travel from far and wide to The Yeats County.<\/p>\n