As Shane MacGowan once said, "God is Irish."
It was hard to disagree with him yesterday as the great and the good gathered to bid a Pogue and a rogue a final fond farewell. His funeral cortege brought parts of Dublin to a standstill and later in the day, he helped turn a normally peaceful country church into a damn fine venue for a mad hooley.
His widow Victoria always said that Shane hated funerals and did his best to avoid them but somehow we think that somewhere out there he still has a ghost of a smile on his face.
And as you might expect from a man who rarely did - or imbibed - things in half measures, Shane's send-off was a three-part affair. On a very bright and fine Friday morning there was a chance for Dublin city to pay its respects to the man and then it was his native Tipperary's turn to show true love for a true son of the soil.
As for part three... Well, we daresay, as you read this, there may be a few stragglers making their way home from the mother of all wakes in Nenagh or maybe they're searching out the next watering hole to raise another parting glass to a man who meant so very much to them.
It began in style at 11am (a frightfully early hour for a man who often traded day for night and night for day) when the proud boys and girls of the Artane Band arrived on the streets of Ringsend in Dublin to parade in front of a horse-drawn carriage bearing Shane's humble wicker casket, which was draped in a tricolour.
Almost immediately mourners and well-wishers, some holding photographs of the singer, gathered and a lovely brass version of Rainy Night in Soho inspired the first of several impromptu singalongs as the cortege wound its way through the city.
We detected the canny hand of Shane’s novelist sister Siobhan in the route of the procession through streets famous for their literary and historical resonance. The route took in Mac Mahon Bridge, named in honour of Liberties boy Seán Mac Mahon who fought in Boland’s Mills in 1916, while a pitstop on Westland Row may have been a reference to the birthplace of Oscar Wilde, and another outside Sweny’s Pharmacy on Lincoln Place was a nice nod to James Joyce’s Ulysses, although Shane always claimed to be a Finnegan’s Wake man.
But this day-long farewell to Shane was all about bringing it all back home to Carney, the townland in the parish of Finnoe, about eight miles from Nenagh and three miles from Borrisokane in Tipperary, where Shane had spent so many joyful childhood summers.
His suitably epic three-hour funeral service was held in St Mary’s of the Rosary Church in Nenagh and it was here that the town’s most famous and favourite son would reach his journey’s end of a truly extraordinary life. It completed the circle - St Mary’s was where Shane would attend mass with his late mother Therese.
The pews were thronged, with President Michael D Higgins in the front row, while across the aisle sat Siobhan and the elderly Maurice MacGowan, the man who had done so much to foster his children’s artistic lives.
Fr Pat Gilbert, a personal friend of the surprisingly devout Shane, was the celebrant and he revealed that grew up listening to Lizzy, The Rats, The Undertones and The Pogues. Quoting his old friend’s lyrics, he hailed him as the bard of our times and got the measure of the man in a deeply personal, funny and quietly powerful sermon.
The offering of symbols also raised more laughs from the pews as a hurl, a Tipp flag, a Led Zeppelin album (a band who knew a thing or two about symbols), and the beer tray that Pogue Spider Stacey would bang on his head to keep time during gigs were left on the altar. But it was the glorious sight of a humble box of Barry’s Tea being held aloft by Fr Pat that may have been the image of the day. "Shane drank up to fifty cups of tea a day," Victoria avowed.
A deeply serious Gerry Adams, who first befriended Shane when the pair met at an arts festival in Belfast in 1997, quoted from the Song of Solomon and thanked him for his "genius songs and attitude" and Tipperary’s proud fight for Irish freedom a century earlier. Later Bono, marooned out in Vegas, sent a recording of a reading from St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.
Glen Hansard was the musical director for this particular gig and the afternoon soon took on the shape and atmosphere of a hooley that might slide into chaos at any moment. Anarchic and somehow solemn, it was all very Shane. And given that The Pogues didn’t so much marry punk to Irish trad as force it into a shotgun wedding, it was enjoyably raw and raucous stuff.
Under the indulgent eyes of the President and an altar full of priests, Mundy and Camille O’Sullivan sang Haunted, Shane’s gorgeous duet with the late Sinead O’Connor, and at Siobhan’s personal request, Declan O’Rourke and Imelda May delivered a stirring version of The One, Shane’s moving duet with Máire Brennan.
But it was a pin-drop performance of Rainy Night in Soho by Nick Cave, a man who doesn’t believe in an interventionalist god, that was the standout of the day. Some claimed to have observed a single tear splash onto the piano keys as he crooned out the song’s final, heartbreaking line.
Siobhan delivered a wise, warm and funny eulogy and an endearingly scatty Victoria delivered a loppy eulogy, which took in everything from the time Shane was busted by a priest for self-administering daily communion, to the times she came home to find him communing with rebel Irish poet James Clarance Mangan - a forebearer to Shane if there ever was one - in the loo or waxing philosophical with Freddie Kreuger in the attic.
An all-star, cross-generational band of Dubliners, Pogues and Frames belting out Fairytale in New York had them dancing in the aisles and also outside in the freezing cold winter’s evening. A finale of The Parting Glass added gravitas and grace to a day of celebration and remembrance.
It was possibly the most well-behaved the surviving members of The Pogues have been in years and it was certainly the most fun anyone’s ever had in a church.
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
