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Der Frohliche Wanderer
I love to go a-wandering
Along the mountain track
And as I go, I love to sing,
My knapsack on my back.
Val da ree, Val da rah
Val da ree, Val da rah ha ha ha ha ha
Val da ree, Val da rah ... I love to go a-wandering
Along the mountain track
And as I go, I love to sing,
My knapsack on my back.
Val da ree, Val da rah
Val da ree, Val da rah ha ha ha ha ha
Val da ree, Val da rah
My knapsack on my back.
I am not sure who wrote 'The Happy Wanderer' but it was in the English charts in June 1954 when I was about eighteen months old, so maybe I heard it when I was out back, feedin the chickens and choppin wood. I was so ragged the folks used to call me Patches. Papa used to tease me about it but deep down inside he was hurt because he done all he could.
Everyday I had to work the fields,
Cause that's the only way we got our meals.
Sometimes, as you've probably noticed, I wander in my thoughts and am subject to overwhelming bouts of nostalgia and melancholy - and the occasional piece of plagiarism. Sure, as the man said, doesn't it keep the ears waxed and the noses packed.
But where was I? Yes, 'The Happy Wanderer'. It was also probably the second song that we learnt at school, after 'Faith Of Our Fathers'. But the best version is 'Der frohliche Wanderer' by German or Austrian scouts that allows you to almost taste the alpine atmosphere, all that edelweiss and pine forests. Muesli for its fruit and fibre first thing in the morning round the old embers of last night's campfire, followed by lots of jumping up and down and regular nude bathing. In the evenings, a variety of alphorns calling to specific cows over the valley. Overjoyed cows ringing their bells back. Milkmaids going about their business.
Anyway, guess who's singing that song now. Yep, yours truly, all the way from a heather-camouflaged mountain top in Connemara. My brother, cousin and myself are at a highly secret training camp, whose whereabouts can only be exclusively pinpointed by the 'Sunday World'. To tell you the truth, we're not too happy with the way things in the peace process are going and we just want to make sure we're in tip-top shape.
To tell you the God's honest truth, we haven't actually arrived at the camp yet. We were supposed to rendezvous and have been picked up last Friday. But the long drive made us very thirsty and so we thought we'd stop for some buttermilk beginning in County Fermanagh. One soda farl led to another and we ended up staying in a B&B, just outside of Galway City and, would you believe it, on time for the Galway Races. Super!
I just love tramping and camping and not having to wash. I suppose it's being close to nature or back to nature. I've gone camping alone and have slept on a bench in Galway City, on a bog outside Oughterard, on a cliff above Bundoran, in a field at St John's Point in County Down. I've also slept with Richard McAuley. And his wife, Chrissie, long before she was a councillor. They and my partner and I got away from politics and Brits and went camping together many years ago in the West of Ireland, then over to the all-Ireland fleadh in Kilkenny. It was one of the funniest times I have had.
Camping in company is always more fun. I used to take my sons and all their mates away to Waterfoot. As soon as we got passed Ballymena the rebel singing would start. When we arrived at the campsite it was usually raining so I would sit in the car and shout instructions to the youngest two that had been bullied by the others into erecting the tent. They struggled through that monsoon as I encouraged them and told them the story of my life and how every morning before I went to school I fed the chickens and I chopped wood too.
All the kids loved camping. They gave the locals lots of cheek, broke into a few caravans, worried sheep, and possibly drank for all I know. My job was to drive and cook stew. It was great preparation for their adulthood. Back in Belfast we would do a headcount and were sometimes a geek short. Then they grew moustaches, had their minds twisted by girls and wanted to stay in Belfast at the weekends.
I've just said to the two lads here at the Races that missing our rendezvous might be God's way of telling us that the peace process is going to be okay and that maybe we should just go ahead and enjoy ourselves. What about your stew, they ask. That's for scout boys, I reply. All heads nod.
I love to go a-gorging
Amid great gobs of food
And as I do my abdomen
Continues to protrude.
Calorie, calorah,
Calorie, calorah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Calorie, calorah,
My body is obese.
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison