23 August 1973
Three Counties was an Irish brand of processed cheese in my childhood, named after the Golden Vale agricultural heartland in Munster that takes in parts of Cork, Tipperary and Limerick. I remember it came in a round cardboard box as a wheel of individual segments wrapped in tinfoil. Like most processed cheese of the time, or American cheese today, it didn’t really taste of anything, save the stray scrap of tinfoil that invariably ended up in your teeth. Today, thanks to my years of continental cultivation and pure notions, I have blocks of Comté, Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano in my fridge, but I know ’twas far from that I was raised. Still, do I pine nostalgically for a tinfoil-wrapped segment of the Three Counties processed cheese of my childhood? God, no.
The three counties of this Brendan Shine chart-topper aren’t in the Golden Vale of Munster but surround Lough Ree in the Midlands: Longford, Westmeath and Roscommon. ‘Where The 3 Counties Meet’ is a waltz-time accordion ditty about an emigrant longing for home. It namechecks the Three Jolly Pigeons public house in Athlone, still going, and the village of Glasson, which I recall has an excellent gastro-pub. (Again, me and my foodie notions.) Lough Ree is also reputed to have a Nessie-style monster, though that may just have been the time you were spotted skinny-dipping.
Unlike other well-known Brendan Shine songs, it doesn’t try to be comedic or stage-Irish, which is a relief. Today’s emigrants from the area, nostalgic for the lake where they swam in summer and dumped their dead pets, may still find much of it rings true. However, the second-verse chord change is an imposition on my patience. Waltz-time accordion ditties like this are the sort of bland, parochial Irish product best left in Ireland’s past along with tinfoil-wrapped processed cheese.
