Colin Randall writes: many more artists than the three in my headline have sung and/or recorded Rare Auld/Ould/Old Times, Pete St John’s charming song about Dublin past and present. For some years I associated ir with Drew and his famously gravel-coarse voice. I like that voice on other songs but persuaded myself I didn’t care for Rare Auld Times. Altogether too sentimental, I thought. I was wrong.
It is right to look back with fondness and perhaps even anger at what has been lost in the cause of progress. Often change is for the better but even when it is, being human means thinking if it wasn’t broken, there was no need to fix.
And that is what St John sang about when wrote the song. The house where he was born, his trade as cooper (making wooden barrels for Guinness), historic buildings had all gone.
Even a girlfriend, Peggy, had been lost, not to another Dubliner, bad enough, but to an overseas student with “skin as black as coal” (I give St John the benefit of the doubt before deploring this as borderline racism). It all seemed worse when he returned to Ireland from a spell working across the Atlantic. though he may be in a minority of Irishmen troubled by the loss of Nelson’s column, blown up by the IRA in 1966. [Up went Nelson and his pillar, too,” as goes the song The Go Lucky Four had a massive Irish hit with].
Imelda May: by Raph_PH
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As for sentimentality, it’s there, too. But the Colin Randall of today is not the Colin Randall of half a century ago. I no longer mind. St John – real name Mooney – was known for it. Listen to The Fields of Athenry, which vi with Song for Ireland and Grace for the role of Irish national anthem if ever The The Soldier’s Song is judged to have runs its course. Plenty of Irish people already regard it as such and it’s sung with great emotion before, during and after football games involving Ireland (or Celtic). Even Liverpool fans sing their own adaptation in retaliation for Celtic supporters stealing You’ll Never Walk Alone.
Now to the music. St John, who lived to the grand age of 90 but died three years ago, wrote it for the Dublin City Ramblers. I find their version workmanlike, adequate but unexceptional.
For my own comparisons, we turn to the Dubliners,
Drew sang it well. Luke Kelly sang it even better. But best of all, for me, is Imelda May. The sheer passion she puts into a song about her own city, added to her wonderful qualities as a singer in impressively various styles, inspires a truly gorgeous rendition at an 80th birthday concert for the Dubliners’ fiddler John Sheahan. John naturally takes part, encouraged by May to play a short solo.
Whatever I once thought, it’s a splendid song. The artists mentioned are not the only ones to have done it justice and you, the resders, may not agree with my opinion. Listen to the different versions and tell me what you think. You may even champion the Dublin City Ramblers.
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