24 February 1968
Like ’80s ‘Mary’s Prayer’ hitmakers Danny Wilson, Emmet Spiceland is a band, not a person. Like ’80s ‘Paradise City’ hitmakers Guns N’ Roses, Emmet Spiceland got their name from the amalgamation of two earlier bands, in their case the Emmet Folk Group and the Spiceland Folk Group. Two of these Spice Boys, Brian and Michael Byrne from Dublin, are uncles to N-Dubz singer and X Factor judge Tulisa, who appears on a 2009 Tinchy Stryder Irish number one single called ‘Number 1’. And another member of Emmet Spiceland is none other than Dónal Lunny, who goes on to become Dónal Lunny. There’s your factoids!
Less of a factoid and more an accusation is that the 1968 chart-topping success of Emmet Spiceland’s ‘Mary From Dungloe’ is said to have inspired the festival of the same name. Now, as a Tralee person I can’t really go around dissing the comely-maiden pageants of others. I’ll just point out that ‘The Rose Of Tralee’ has been used as Ireland’s national anthem at a World Cup (rugby, men’s, 1987) and ‘Mary From Dungloe’ hasn’t. Also, Ireland has never progressed beyond the quarter-final of a men’s Rugby World Cup since ditching ‘The Rose Of Tralee’ as its rugby anthem – fact.
Emmet Spiceland’s corner of the ’60s Irish folk revival isn’t your raucous, Guinness-farting Dubliners iteration but an altogether more winsome and dewy-eyed sound. But then again, what else can you do with dreary, simpering ‘Mary From Dungloe’? It doesn’t have the stirring anthemic quality of—to take a random example—’The Rose Of Tralee’. Slather the polite vocal harmonies with saccharine strings, as happens here, and the outcome is less ‘Mary’s Prayer’ than Mary’s Novena.
