I get a particular kind of email every August, just as the new term's coming round, and it's always some version of the same panic. "Seamus, I've been handed the music slot and I cannot read a note and I have twenty-eight nine-year-olds, please help." And I love these emails. I love them because nobody ever believes me when I say the same thing back: you do not need to be a musician to do this. You need a few good songs and the nerve to look daft first so the kids feel safe looking daft too. That's the whole job. The rest is just words.
So here's the list I send. It's not the official curriculum list — there's a fine one of those if you've a teacher down the corridor who knows what they're at — it's MY list, the one that's been stress-tested in actual rooms by actual teachers who write back and tell me what worked and what got fifteen children crying or shouting "BUM" at the worst possible moment. I've sorted it rough by age. Take it with salt. You know your room. I don't.
For the littlest ones, the infants and first-class crowd, you want songs that are basically a game with a tune on it. The Rattlin' Bog is the obvious one and I'm not even being a one-trick pony about it (well, mostly). It builds one word at a time — tree, branch, twig, nest, egg, bird, feather, and the flea, the flea is the CLIMAX — and small children adore a thing that builds because they get to feel themselves getting cleverer in real time. You don't make them memorise eight verses. You make them remember eight words and the song carries the rest. Do it with the actions and they'll be wrecked and beaming by the flea. The full set of words is on the lyrics page if you want to print it for the back wall. I've a whole separate ramble on the practical end of getting the Rattlin' Bog into a school day if you want the war stories.
Also savage for the small ones: There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly (same cumulative trick, a bit gruesome, kids find that GAS not upsetting), and Weile Weile Waile — except, right, here's your first honest flag. Weile Weile Waile is a beautiful old Dublin street song and it is also, lyrically, about a woman who murders her baby with a penknife. I am not joking. Half of Ireland learned it at five without anyone telling them what the words meant, which says something about all of us, but if you'd rather not, you can sing it as a melody with "la la" or lean on the nonsense chorus and skip the verses. I'd not put the full story in front of a class of five-year-olds without a thought first. There's the full thing in the songbook and you can decide. Forewarned.
Middle of the school — third, fourth, fifth class — is the sweet spot honestly. They can hold a tune, they're not yet too cool to sing, and they will commit like little animals if you give them something with a job in it. I'll Tell Me Ma is made for this age. Short bouncy chorus, the belle of Belfast city, half the room knows it from a yard already, and it loops so they can mumble the verses and still nail the bit that matters. The Wild Rover gives them the four claps and there is nothing — NOTHING — like twenty-eight kids landing "and it's no, nay, never" together for the first time. The roof comes off. Just maybe don't dwell too hard on the fact that it's a song about a fella spending all his money on drink. They won't notice. The claps are the point.
A word on the ones to watch as they get older. Whiskey in the Jar is deadly and they'll request it because of the chorus, but it's a highwayman robbing a man and there's a pistol and a betrayal in it, so it's a chat-first song, not a no-look one. Same with a lot of the rebel songs and the emigration songs — gorgeous, but they carry weight, and a song like The Foggy Dew or Carrickfergus deserves you actually telling them what it's about rather than just drilling the tune. Older kids respect that, mad as it sounds. Tell a twelve-year-old a song is about leaving home and never coming back and watch them go quiet. That's the good stuff.
For the very oldest, the ones leaving you, there's only one ending and it's The Parting Glass. I'd not waste it earlier. Hold it back for a leavers' assembly or the last day and let it do what it does, which is make a room full of people who pretend not to care about each other suddenly care very obviously. It asks for quiet and meaning, which younger ones can't always give it, but a class on their way out the door can. It's in the songbook here. Don't be surprised if a teacher's the first to go.
A last bit of nuts and bolts, since I've teachers reading. Pick three songs a term, not thirty. Better one song a class owns in the dark than a sampler they half-know. Sing it wrong yourself, loud and wrong, on purpose. Print the words big. And when in doubt about a verse — Weile Weile Waile, I'm looking at you — read it through cold before you teach it. The old songs are old. They didn't write them for a classroom. That's most of what makes them worth the bother.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — A teacher in Limerick sent me a video of her second class doing the flea verse and one boy at the back is doing it with his EYES CLOSED, full method, like he's at the Albert Hall. I've watched it eleven times. That child is going to be grand.
P.P.S. — Rattlin the cat sat through the whole video on my lap and only left at the murder verse of Weile Weile Waile, which I'm choosing not to think too hard about.