Shane McGowan recalled as a ‘modern day bard’ who alerted audiences to realities of the world

In his homily at St. Mary of the Rosary Church Fr. Pat Gilbert recalled the impact Shane had had on him when The Pogues emerged as a vibrant punk-traditional hybrid in the 1980s.

"I grew up listening to the music of Lizzy, the Horslips, the Rats, the Undertones and the Pogues. As teenagers the music and the lyrics alerted us to what was happening around us.

"There was also the pride of being Irish, what they could say, sing and share was right and reasoned as far as we were concerned. In fact, Shane and the Pogues made it international and cool to play the tin whistle, banjo or accordion,” he said.

Fr. Gilbert told mourners that what ‘Brendan Behan did in prose, Shane McGowan did in poetry’ and that his ‘raw vibrant energetic earthy soul-filled expression gave us hope and heart and hankering’.

"What Seán Ó Riada expressed in the life of liturgy, Shane McGowan expressed in the raw life of living. He connected the cultural, the sociological, the spiritual, the physical and the metaphysical into a coherent translation of what was happening all around us,” he said.

He mentioned Shane’s 2010 recording of The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth with ‘The Priests’ including Derry’s Fr. Eugene and Fr. Martin O'Hagan who said ‘Shane came across as a deeper, richer person who had a depth and a sincerity that wasn't often picked up by people’.

He was ‘our modern-day bard, the social commentator, the songsmith, the son, the brother, husband and friend.”

Addressing his wife Victoria, father Maurice, sister Siobhan and brother-in-law Anthony he acknowledged: “I know that you all will miss Shane terribly. A voice, a presence around you and with you, is suddenly silent - and coping with that loss is always difficult.

Fr. Gilbert observed how the punk-poet died on the same date as two of the greatest of Irish writers and how his funeral was taking place on what would have been the birthday of his friend Sinéad O’Connor.

"Born on the birthday of Jesus and passing on the same days as Oscar Wilde and Patrick Kavanagh, and his funeral celebration Mass today on this great Feast of Mary and Sinead’s birthday, all seems right,” he said.

Mourners were reminded how in ‘The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn’ Shane had paid homage to Cloughprior cemetery, a couple of miles north of Nenagh.

"In one of Shane’s best loved songs, ‘The Sick bed of Cúchulainn’, he interrupts his own funeral, snarling: ‘and they'll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground and you will stick your head back out and shout ‘We'll have another round’.”

He was, Fr. Gilbert noted, ‘a poet, lyricist, singer, trailblazer’ who ‘reflected life as lived in our time’ and in order ‘to have that revolutionary edge to life’ listened.

He ‘gave successive generations the benefit of his listening to the disquiet of life’ and ‘spoke and sang from the listened depths of his own journey and in doing so - as poets, lyricists and trailblazers do so well - he spoke to life’s realities for the many who are numbered as his fans.

Pogues singer-songwriter Shane MacGowan has died at the age of 65