This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to… Songs about Emigration

I said goodbye to a friend bound for Australia last weekend. It was almost surreal parting with the words “see you in a few years” . Himself and his wife went back down the country to spend the last few days with family before heading to the other side of the world. I thought naturally of his parents and family.
Still though like half the country we have the Sunday chats with various family on Skype and then every few months we manage to find a common time with those in New Zealand to say a few words. Seeing new nieces and nephews, waving to cousins over Skype.
The sad part is of course that our leaders had boasted during the boom that emigration was over, no longer were we rearing our young to go abroad. Thats struck a chord with many. Cork and briefly Belfast was the furthest I ever moved away from Dublin but in the years after I left school in the 80’s many of my friends left. Christmas time in the pub was full of returning emigrants from London, Germany and the odd one back from the US.
In my in-laws there is a photo from a wedding in the early 60’s, it was the one and only time all the seven siblings were together. Each one reared to leave….
Whats is disgusting though is that each person emigrating is not treated as the family tragedy it often is or as a failure of the state…..instead this Government and the last (and ones before them) treat it as a triumph of one less on the live register.
As for the music its strange there are plenty of songs about Irish Emigration, with ‘Thousands are Sailing’ possibly the best. Often its not the emigrant songs that remind you of home but any song can remind you of home …. I had a friend who reminiscing about home always mentioned a certain ‘Smokie’ song! (not icluded here thankfully)….