I don't have the words for this. I'm going to try anyway.
The festival stage. Dublin. Thousands of people. Actual thousands. The sun was shining — in March! — and the crowd was packed before I even walked out. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold the guitar.
Then I started playing and everything else fell away.
First verse. "In the bog, down in the valley O..." The crowd started singing with me immediately. Not everyone, but enough. Enough to feel the weight of it.
By the flea verse the whole crowd was roaring. I'm not exaggerating — I could barely hear myself over them. The momentum just kept building. Each verse added more voices, more energy. It was like conducting a thousand-person orchestra and the song was the only thing that mattered in the world.
Verse nine — the monkeys. The laughter from the crowd. The joy. Pure joy.
And then we hit the last verses and the song just... builds. And builds. And builds. The rhythm accelerates, the verses pile on top of each other, the whole thing becomes this unstoppable force of sound and movement and communal memory. Every single person there — and I mean EVERY SINGLE PERSON — was singing.
On the final flea verse, I cried. Actual tears streaming down my face while I'm singing about insects in a bog. I couldn't help it. The crowd went absolutely silent for a moment — I think they realized something was happening — and then they sang louder. They carried me through to the end.
When the last verse finished and I played the final chord, there was this moment of complete silence.
Then the whole crowd erupted.
People were crying. People were hugging strangers. I saw a woman holding her daughter's hand, both of them singing. An old man I didn't know was looking at me like I'd just shown him something sacred.
Because maybe I had.
This is the best day of my life and I'm saying that while full knowing that my wedding day exists. My wedding day was great — I include it fondly in my memories — but it didn't work out long-term, you know? This, though. This is different. This is the day thousands of strangers and I sang the same song together and somehow that made us all less alone.
The organizers wanted me to do an encore. I could've played for another hour. But I didn't need to. The song had said everything it needed to say.
I'm still shaking.
—Seamus