THIS AIN'T no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around. Onstage at the Mean Fiddler, nationalist troubadours Eire Óg are cheerleading the crowd through a spirited rendition of "Can you hear the Rangers sing? I can't hear a fucking thing!".
As I stare at the stage in rapt amazement at what's unfolding before my eyes, I become aware of a slight nudging movement to my right. There's a bloke trying to move past me and get closer to the stage, holding a pint of Guinness with extreme care in one hand for fear he might spill a drop. He's about 35 years of age, with blond hair and bleary red eyes. He appears to be out of his mind with drink, though this hardly sets him apart from the bulk of the people in the venue tonight.
The guy makes eye contact with me, then notices that I'm wearing a Celtic shirt, and grins savagely. He extends a hand. It would be pretty ignorant to refuse, so I shake hands with him heartily.
He then leans forward and, with great care and deliberation, plants a great big slobbery kiss on the side of my neck.
It's easy to believe that most young people in Ireland today don't give a shit about things like a united Ireland or cross-border institutions, and that they're more concerned with getting enough points to do Arts in TCD than with helping to "free" the six counties. In an age when the continued expansion of the European superstate threatens to make all borders obsolete before we quite realise it, you wonder why anybody in this country would bother with hardline nationalism any more. Most people of my acquaintance tend to mentally switch off when yet another news story comes on the radio about the North. Either that or they literally switch off.
Tonight's gig gives the lie to all that. It's a small but powerful demonstration of the kind of rabid Provo-worship I didn't think existed any more, at least not among the 18-35 urban demographic. Eire Óg are a Scottish four-piece who specialise in luridly green republican ballads, and all the tickets for their two-and-a-half-hour set at the Fiddler (billed as a "Celtic FC 1997/98 championship celebration") have been snapped up quicker than Jonathan Gould on a free transfer from Bradford City. The place is absolutely stuffed to the rafters. That's a lot of #40 replica shirts.
Throughout, the chant of "The I - the I - the IRA!" constantly goes up, as does the time-honoured "Ooh, aah, up the 'Ra!". Call it armchair republicanism if you want (I certainly would), but this is undeniably one manifestation of what it means to be Irish in the dying days of the century, and those who espouse it will tell you that it's equally as valid as the U2/ Riverdance/ Cranberries/ Roddy Doyle/ Temple Bar nonsense which a lot of cultural commentators (who should have known better) started spouting a few years ago. The difference is that Eire Óg and their ilk don't get analysed to death in the quality broadsheets' cultural supplements.
It's one example of a particular type of latent republicanism which appears to be still alive and well in late-'90s Ireland. On my frequent visits to Tullamore in Co. Offaly, for instance, it's impossible not to notice that Celtic fans outnumber Man United and Liverpool supporters by two to one, that ballad groups are easily the biggest draws in the town's pubs, and that The Wolfe Tones are never off the jukebox.
It's also very much a south-of-the-border thing, if the composition of Eire Óg's crowd is anything to go by. The crowd's accents are uniformly northside Dublin; I don't hear one Northern Irish voice all night.
Roughly 60% of the people here are wearing Celtic jerseys; at least another 30% are wearing the away strip, or variations on it - golfing tops with the club crest emblazoned on them, that sort of thing. Several wags have put tasteful names-and-numbers on the backs of their shirts, such as "Gibraltar 3" and "Pope's 11".
One clown, for reasons known only to himself, is going around with an orange shirt on, though nobody has been foolish enough to walk in wearing a blue top with "McEwans Lager" written on the front. (Later, a rumour spreads through the crowd that there will be an impromptu burning of a Rangers shirt outside the venue after the gig, but the promise of potential pyromania fails to materialise.)
I myself have opted to wear my green-and-white home shirt tonight, partly for reasons of camouflage, and partly because I have a vast affection for Celtic FC, although not the mutant strain of An Phoblacht militancy that many of their fans carry around with them. Indeed, it probably isn't an exaggeration to claim that most of the non-Celtic fans in Ireland probably have The Bhoys down as their second team, behind Liverpool or Man United (or, this year, Arsenal).
But if you take any interest in Celtic FC at all, it won't have escaped you that they have some of the maddest, most psychotic, most rabidly ignorant fans ever to wave a Papal flag.
Eire Óg know their audience very well. They're confident enough to leave gaps of 2-3 minutes between songs, during which the crowd invariably take up the slack with IRA chants, and all they have to do to get a rousing cheer is mention Bobby Sands - at one point, when the singer croons "May God shine on you, Bobby Sands" there's a spontaneous round of applause. There are also some imposing-looking gentlemen in the crowd sporting t-shirts which bear the hunger-striker's face and the words "Bobby Sands - Irish Martyr - 1954-1981".
As 'A Nation Once Again' grinds to a halt, one burly bloke in a Sands garment begins screaming, "Fuck the Queen! Fuck the English! Fuck Rangers! Fuck the RUC!" as his two mates struggle manfully to hold him upright by the arms. Having already behaved like baboons for much of the evening, the crowd now abruptly transmogrify into Monkees, launching into a heartfelt chorus of "Cheer up Walter Smith, oh what can it be, to a sad Orange bastard and his shit football teeeeeeeaaaaaaammmm!!!"
Then, down the front, a fight breaks out. The venue security wade in and drag the two miscreants out a side door. Up on stage, the frontman of Eire Óg pleads, "Lads, we've had a wee bit of trouble down here at the front. Can we please have no violence? We're all Celtic fans here tonight. We're here to celebrate our glorious team." Loud cheers.
Apart from this one outbreak of fisticuffs, there's a slightly surprising lack of aggression in the air. The exchange I have with one guy at the bar - he concludes the conversation with a cheerful cry of "See you in Glasgow, man!" - is typical. Given that we're dealing with an 800-strong gang of beered-up Celtic fans, you might expect at least a few of them to have trouble in mind, but other than the aforementioned fistfight, the most frightening thing that happens all night is when a skinhead guy several feet away from me starts vomiting on his shoes.
With the crowd now putty in their hands, Eire Óg launch into the home straight of their repertoire. They hammer through a couple of Wolfe Tones covers ('The Boys Of The Old Brigade' and 'The Broad Black Brimmer'), and then 'The SAM Missile Song' - basically a cover of 'Yippee-Eye-Ay' with a new chorus of "Tiocfaidh ár lá/sing up the 'Ra!" - gets a particularly hearty reception. So does a hard rock version of 'The Fields Of Athenry' which is every bit as bad as it promises to be. The crowd sit down on the venue floor en masse for the first couple of verses.
The supporters of Celtic may be unashamed sentimentalists, but they like to think they have a decent grasp of what goes on behind the scenes at their club. After a messy feud with the team's ex-coach Wim Jansen, Celtic chairman Fergus McCann and his right-hand-man Jock Brown are about as popular with the supporters as the poll tax. Both are seen as dour, faceless bean-counters whose allegiance to Celtic can only be viewed in fiscal terms. This is particularly unfair to McCann, who has spent millions of pounds of his own money on the redevelopment of the club's Parkhead stadium, and whose cash enabled Jansen to buy nine new players last season.
Another thing which counts against McCann in the eyes of the fans is his well-publicised Bhoys Against Bigotry campaign, in which he has vowed to ban supporters from Parkhead if they sing sectarian songs. As uphill tasks go, this is a bit like trying to transform Afghanistan into a Jewish state. Tonight, 'A Nation Once Again' is dedicated to McCann, with the singer yelling, "We're going to show him what a real rebel song is!"
Predictably, 'Amhrán na bhFíann' is the final number in the set. Everybody present bellows out every last word of it. At the climax, the venue erupts in an almighty roar of nationalist defiance. "Our CD's on sale outside in the lobby," announces the singer as his band pack up and leave the stage. Perhaps mindful of the half-cut state of most of the audience, he repeats his sales pitch four times.
Outside, four blokes draped in tricolours are engaging in a bit of drunken tomfoolery on a nearby traffic island, but what strikes you is the speed and stealth with which the crowd has melted away into the night: there are only 20 or so people still milling about. Final proof, as if it were needed, that this truly is a glimpse of the invisible Republic. n