Green, White and Gold

We have a St. Patrick’s Day tradition in our household. We watch Darby O’Gill and the Little People. 

If you’re unfamiliar, Darby is a 1959 live-action Disney film about a bumbling caretaker at an Irish estate who has an ongoing rivalry with King Brian, the ruler of the leprechauns in the nearby countryside. Darby finally catches King Brian and teases out his three wishes while dealing with the impending loss of his job and home. He’s being replaced by the lord of the manor for a young Sean Connery, an easy tradeoff if ever I saw one. 

It’s a ludicrous film. It was probably pretty crazy even sixty-plus years ago; today, it’s like a blast of insanity from another dimension. It’s aggressively, proudly cliche when it comes to “Ireland” and the “Irish experience.” The brogues are thicker than Guinness and everyone you see has a mischievous gleam in their eye, from the parish priest to the naughty horse who keeps running into the hills. 

Ostensibly it’s a movie about Ireland. It’s more of a reflection on how Americans perceive Ireland. Just about every Irish stereotype you can think of is present somewhere in the film. Decades after the Irish first began their migration to the United States, it’s the most silly, endearing and outlandish aspects of their culture broadcast to the world. A reflection reflected back to the point of distortion. 

There are moments when that tangle of assumptions and stereotypes can be cleared away, and the nobility within the reality can emerge. “Long Journey Home (Anthem)” ignores every stereotype and builds its own broad mythology of the Irish-American experience from an equal mix of truth and aspiration. 

It’s achingly gorgeous, builds beautifully upon a growing orchestral accompaniment, and Costello’s ideally suited to the lead vocal. Even when he’s building to a vocal crescendo, his tenor cuts through to the truth. By the final moments, he’s joined by that choir, and the rich aching glory of the song blooms in full. 

“Long Journey Home (Anthem)” certainly does what it says on the tin. It functions well as an “anthem,” in the sense that it’s an inspiring, aspirational song about a body of people–Irish-Americans. But like any great anthem, it doesn’t shy away from the sacrifices made. It’s poetry rooted in reality–the rails “laid in the loam” by those who emigrated to the United States in search of a better life, are the rungs on the ladder their descendants ascend. 

America is built on the backs of its least powerful citizens. That bottom layer of humanity is most often defined by race. That theme weaves through the history of the Irish in America, and it courses through “Long Journey Home.” The colors bleed–red white and blue, green white and gold–and they mingle in the blood of those who died here laying those rails and struggling from the bottom up. 

But it’s not a song about injustice or cruelty; it’s a song about rising above those things to aspire toward a better life and a better country. We can’t forget the sweat and blood spilled to reach today; we must honor it even as we move beyond it. The past births today; today seeds tomorrow. For each child grown tall, another lies in the earth. “Long Journey Home” lifts the sorrow and struggle of the Irish in America up as a tribute to the present it has enabled, and the future it makes possible. Every life lifted and death mourned is within it, in the string and drum and fife.