Let Erin Remember

Thomas Moore’s summons to Ireland’s heroic past — Malachi’s collar of gold, the Red Branch knights, the round towers under Lough Neagh — published in volume 2 of his Irish Melodies (1808) and set to the air “The Little Red Fox.” Uniquely among the Moore songs in this book, it took on a public, ceremonial life: it was played at the 1920 funeral of hunger striker Terence MacSwiney and served Irish athletes as an anthem substitute at the 1924 Olympics, and it remains a staple of pipe bands as a slow march. Some authorities connect its tune family to the fiddle tune “Red Haired Boy.”