My my my…

Whether you’re a rubgy fan or nae, a visit to the Arms Park in Cardiff on international match day is glorious. Come back Mum! It’s not a sport’s column!

I attended a Wales v Ireland game in 2007 as the hosts claimed the Grand Slam. It has easily slotted into my top five sporting occasions.The singing led by Max Boyce reached the very heavens… ‘We were singing hymns and arias, Land of my Fathers, ar hyd y nos…’

Another popular crowd sing-along is the Tom Jones classic ‘Delilah’; My, my, my Delilah…

Alas, it will no longer be performed by choirs at international rugby matches following a banning order.

Banned?!

The decision has been taken because the lyrics are ‘problematic’ as they depict the murder of a woman by her jealous partner.

In a statement, the Welsh Rugby Union said it “condemns domestic violence of any kind.”

I would hazard a guess that 99.99 per-cent and more of those who sang along at matches also condemn domestic violence.

It is likely few would give much thought to the story as they wave their flags and plastic containers of beer.

Don’t tell them about the old Dubliners’ classic ‘Weila Waile’, a story of infanticide, often belted out in pubs on Aviva match weekend, or they might stop sending their teams over to play us.

It began as a children’s nursery rhyme with graphic lyrics describing an old woman stabbing a baby and being sentenced to death by hanging… altogether now!… ‘There was an old woman who lived in the woods weile weile waile… she stuck the penknife in the baby’s heart down by the River Saile’.

Both woman and baby ended deceased, down by the River Saile.

Indeed, there could be a cull of songs eulogising violence going down the decades.

Johnny Cash tracked down his Papa and smashed a chair across his teeth for giving him a girl’s name (A Boy named Sue) while life-long yellowbelly Tommy, who made a deathbed promise to his father to be a pacifist, sought bloody revenge on the Gatlin Boys after they attacked and molested his wife… ‘and he said this one’s for Becky as he watched the last one fall’ (The Coward of the County).

Suicide too has been the subject of songs. Not once but twice the Boomtown Rats sang of the awful devastation of a person taking their own life.

‘Tonic for the Troops’ was my favourite LP at a time, we’re talking 1978. The track ‘Living on an Island’ was a strangely jaunty uplifting tune about suicide… ‘Oh ain’t you glad that we live on an island, You can choose your own way of being killed…’ Tunee!

A year later Bob Geldof was at it again with the classic ‘Diamond Smiles’. The song tells the story of a glamorous debutante (‘Diamond’) who suicided and was remembered only for her low-cut dress.

There was a petition to have it banned… it wasn’t. ‘Diamond seems so sure and so poised, she shimmers for the bright young boys and laugh’s ‘Love is for others, but me it destroys…’

Geldof’s 25-year-old daughter Peaches died of a heroin overdose in 2015 as did his former wife Paula Yates in 2000. He has spoken of how the song now seems to be about the tragedies in his own life and has continued to perform it, describing it as ‘entirely cathartic’ helping him manage his grief.

Such songs may be painful for some people, but with the greatest respect, do we ban them all?

I’m with American commentator, Al Franken who suggested, “It’s easier to put on slippers than to carpet the whole world.”

In the novel ‘Catcher in the Rye’, the protagonist Holden Caulfield wanted to protect kids from suffering. He tried to erase an obscenity that was scratched into a wall, however on being unable to remove it, soon realised you can’t rub them all out.

It’s a bottomless pit. Animal welfare folk will want to delete Ten Pole Tudor’s mad cap ‘Who Killed Bambi?’ complete with the cartoon of a bloodied baby deer in the movie ‘The Great Rock and Roll Swindle’ (1980).

The Art Garfunkel classic ‘Bright Eyes’, which held number one spot in the charts for six weeks in 1978, will also have to be put in the archive furnace. It was also accompanied by a video from the animated adventure film ‘Watership Down’, depicting a small group of rabbits had to flee their warren as houses were being built.

They were not happy bunnies and some were killed while crossing the motorway! However, there is hope as it also depicted their little spirits rising to Rabbit Heaven.

If we are going to delete the songs, we may tear pages out of books and ban undesirable old plays and movies as well.

To put it in perspective, also way back in 1979 there was a New York gang movie, ‘The Warriors’ which got us teens excited.

There were calls to have it banned with suggestions the depiction of street fights was leading to youth violence. I can vouch that there were lads wrecking about dances at the Gap Ballroom and The Golden Grill in Letterkenny long before that movie was released! I viewed it a few years ago and it is slapstick compared to some of today’s fare.

My, my my…