Rebel Songs and Hero Pawns: Music in A Star Called Henry

Folk songs, street ballads, and other forms of popular music have come to be regarded as cornerstones of Irish identity. The "rebel song" tradition in particular trades in themes of bold heroes, martyrdom induced by the British, and further expressions of patriotic fervor. Music exerts a powerful ability to instigate and to document social change; songs are a significant means of communicating historical events and political sentiments. Roddy Doyle's 1999 novel A Star Called Henry forcefully interrogates the tenets of traditional Irish history and identity. Throughout the novel, Doyle's systematic use of Irish folk song, street ballads, and other music serves to demonstrate the ambiguous and potentially negative force of a mythologized past and identity.

A Star Called Henry chronicles the childhood of a young man named Henry Smart in the Dublin slums; his indifferent, yet intense, involvement with the Easter Rising and Irish rebellion; and his personal quest for identity. Doyle skillfully interweaves his revisionist tale of Irish history with archetypal Irish folk songs that present a particular view of Ireland. In key parts of the novel, there are specific references to Irish folk songs, ballads, and "rebel songs."¹ In the Dublin of Henry's youth, historical events are expressed by folk songs, such as in the quoted lines "Forget not the boys of Kilmichael, those gallant lads stalwart and true" and by storytelling.² Current events, too, found embodiment in song. Peadar Kearney's popular "A Soldier's Song," to which the Easter rebels march in A Star Called Henry, has since become the Irish national anthem. Henry's initial, and continued, involvement with the IRA is largely due to his having heard a flattering song about "the bold Henry Smart" (ASCH 175). At times, Doyle presents the songs in A Star Called Henry as a positive force that can rally people together and make life in the slums more bearable. Yet Doyle also presents music as a negative force that blatantly—and very effectively—simplifies reality and glorifies violence.

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To varying degrees, all of Roddy Doyle's fiction displays deliberate and thoughtful references to song, and an awareness of both the inspirational and the manipulative influence of music.³ Doyle's first novel, The Commitments (1987), about a North Dublin soul band, repeatedly shows the author's conscious connection of music to the themes of the novel. For example, one of the performances by the band features the lyrics:

It's a man's—man's world—
But it would be nothin'—
Nothing'—
Fuck all—
Withou' a woman or a gurrel—⁴

These lyrics are quickly followed by a fight over the attention of the band's attractive backup singer Imelda. Our understanding of the impact that Imelda has on the band—both positive, as she keeps the band together, and negative, as the band members resent each other—is echoed in these lyrics.

Similarly, in The Snapper (1990), the second book of Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy, such rock lyrics as the Platters' "I'm the great pre-ten-der" coincide with Sharon's invention of a passionate fling with a Spanish sailor to avoid disclosing the reality of her baby's conception.⁵ In Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993), Paddy's father tries to teach his son folksongs but quickly loses his patience and hits his son.⁶ In The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996), the fateful encounter between Paula and Charlo is accompanied by "the perfect song"⁷ and troubled protagonist Paula declares that at least her life has "a great soundtrack."⁸ In Doyle's novels, music often creates a brief moment of harmony but eventually leads to violence—a pattern that he develops in A Star Called Henry.

Doyle's use of music is thus two-sided, and particularly so in The Commitments. Caramine White notes that song lyrics—through both historical reference and structural reflection—connect...