will ye come will ye will ye will ye come to ye wot guv

 

The classroom is a bit stuffy and somewhat musty but rose tinted in my memory by the early Summer sun of 1977.

Mr Lox is telling the children: "We're going to learn Will You Come To The Bower."

Will You Come To The Bower is one of the catchier comawlyas in the Irish canon.

It's a supposedly traditional song going back into the dim distant past of Irish culture, with some scholars saying Thomas Moore wrote a version of it in the 1700s and others, namely the copywriters for the Dubliners Folk Group claiming the Dubliners wrote it in the 1960s.

Mr Lox sings for the children by way of demonstration:

"Will ye come to the Bower

O'er the free boundless ocean

Where the stupendous waves

Roll in thundering motion.

Where mermaids are seen,

And the wild tempest gathers,

To Erin the green

The dear land of our fathers.

Will ye come , will ye, will ye,

Will ye come to the Bower?

You can ride upon the waves

Of the broad majestic Shannon

Or sail around Lough Neagh

And see storied Dungannon.

Will ye come, will ye, will ye,

Will ye come to the Bower?

You can visit Benburb

And the storied Blackwater

Where Owen Roe met Munroe

And his Chieftains did slaughter.

Where the lambs skip and play

On the mossy hills all over,

Where Brian Boru chased the Dane

And Saint Patrick the vermin.

Will ye come will ye will ye

Will ye come to the Bower?

Will ye come and awake

Our dear land from its slumber?

Her fetters we will break

That long have encumbered.

And the air will resound

With hosannahs to greet you.

On the shore will be found

Gallant Irishmen to meet you.

Will ye come, will ye, will ye,

Will ye come to the Bower?"

Mr Lox rendition of this song did not go over well. There was a weary resignation to his audience which did not betoken pleasure.

Sensing we weren't really with him, he ceased singing.

"Well what song do you want to learn?" wonders Mr Lox, mildly offended at our lack of appreciation though not surprised for he knew us to be hopeless decultured West Britain philistines.

One of the kids says: "Teach us an Abba song."

The teacher boggled a bit.

West Brits was one thing.

But Swedes!

Abba were the biggest group in the world in the Summer of 1977 in terms of audience numbers and record sales.

Mr Lox smiles knowingly: "I'm telling you fifty years from now people will still be singing Will You Come To The Bower when the great Abba are long forgotten."

Forty four years later and counting.

I can't help thinking it would be a tremendous piece of synchronicity if the newly reformed Abba did a cover version of Will You Come To The Bower just ahead of the fiftieth anniversary of Mr Lox's fateful prediction of their imminent demise.

I wanna hear Agnetha say "Lough Neagh."

Dungannon too for that matter

You've got to hand it to Mr Lox. He was a paradoxically prescient fellow.

Of all the pop groups he could have plucked from the background noise of the charts and our lives to predict quick obscurity for in 1977, he honed in on probably the only one that actually would endure.