A Nation Once Again

Background

Thomas Osborne Davis, a Protestant nationalist from County Cork, was a co-founder of the Young Ireland movement, which sought Irish independence from Britain. His view of Irish identity was Romantic: he considered Ireland a spiritual reality rooted in historic cultural tradition, open to anyone who adopted it as homeland regardless of religion or origin. Davis believed Irish national identity should be secular and disapproved of clerical influence on Daniel O'Connell's repeal movement.

Influenced by Johann Gottfried von Herder, Davis saw nationality as shaped by climate, geography, history, and inclination, not genetics. He envisioned an Ireland where Catholic and Protestant could unite through shared education and recollections to resist England's influence. Davis argued that songs had strong emotional impact, writing that "Music is the first faculty of the Irish" and that "A song is worth a thousand harangues."

Lyrical themes and narrative

The song is an Irish rebel song, variously classed as a war song or an anti-war song. Its narrator dreams of Ireland becoming a free nation with "our fetters rent in twain" and exhorts Irish people to fight for their land. The narrator recalls learning as a boy about ancient freedom fighters, including the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae and the three Horatii. He declares that only moral, religious men can set Ireland free, and aims to make himself worthy of that task.

Tunes

Davis copied his melody for the song from Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. The first published tune, by an anonymous composer, appeared in the collection The Spirit of the Nation but was unsuccessful due to its complexity. In 1881, Dublin-born journalist and part-time composer Thomas Sherlock, who had strong Fenian sympathies and edited nationalist papers, wrote a new tune. Another version was composed by Edward Comerford, a conductor and music teacher from Dundalk.

Comerford came from a nationalist family: his father Patrick was a Young Irelander, and his brother Matthew was a Young Ireland member and treasurer of the Dundalk chapter, later chairman of the local Ancient Order of Hibernians and secretary of the moderate National Volunteers. At Easter 1916, Matthew surrendered the National Volunteers' rifles to the British Army, for which he was made an MBE in 1920 and denounced by the IRA. The first public performance of Edward Comerford's version occurred on a Tuesday in early March 1886 at Dundalk Town Hall, at a concert for the Dundalk Poor Relief Fund.

Comerford changed "boyhood" to "childhood" in the first line so it could be sung by feminine voices, and the Dundalk Democrat reported he gave the theme a "more martial air."

Legacy

From the 1880s onward, the song became an unofficial anthem of nationalist Ireland. During World War II, British prime minister Winston Churchill used the title phrase in a telegram to taoiseach Éamon de Valera on 8 December 1941, writing "Now is your chance. Now or never. 'A nation once again'." This was interpreted as offering a united Ireland if Ireland joined the Allies, though Lord Cranborne later stated no deal over partition was contemplated.

De Valera did not respond, and Ireland remained neutral. In The Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night, Paul McCartney's Irish grandfather sings the song to police after his arrest. In 2002, The Wolfe Tones' version was voted the world's most popular song in a BBC World Service global listeners' poll.

Did You Know?

• John McCormack recorded the song in 1906, and The Dubliners also recorded it using the Johnson tune.
• Davis's lyrics use a simple ABABCDCD rhyme scheme with verses of eight lines and alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter.