This is the Irish national anthem. The music was composed by Peadar Kearney and Patrick Heeney, the original English lyrics by Kearney, and the Irish language translation by Liam Ó Rinn. The song has three verses, but the national anthem consists of the chorus only.

The first draft, handwritten on copybook paper, sold at auction in Dublin in 2006 for €760,000. It was used as marching song by the Irish Volunteers and was sung by rebels in the General Post Office (GPO) during the Easter Rising of 1916. After the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, a large proportion of the IRA’s men and apparatus became the National Army. The “Soldiers’ Song” remained popular as an Army tune, and was played at many military functions.

In 1934, the Department of Finance acquired the copyright of the song for the sum of £1,200. Copyright law changed in 1959, such that the government had to reacquire copyright in 1965, for £2,500. The copyright expired at the end of 2012, the 70th anniversary of Kearney’s death.

The lyrics are those of an Irish rebel song, exhorting all Irish people to participate in the struggle to end the hegemony (“despot” over “slave”) of the English (“Saxon foe”) in Ireland (“Inisfail”). There are allusions to earlier Irish rebellions, and to support from Irishmen from the United States (“a land beyond the wave”) and elsewhere.