No one ever accused Shane McGowan of being sugary in his music. His funeral at St. Mary of The Rosary in Nenagh, County Tipperary was attended by Irish President Higgins, Johnny Depp, The Pogues, Glen Hansard and many other Irish music luminaries. During the procession in Dublin on the way to Tipperary the crowds lined the streets and sang “Dirty Ol Town.”
Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein’s former President, did the first reading and spoke in tribute to McGowan: “My words are words of gratitude for Shane’s genius, his creativity, his attitude, grateful for his humor, his intelligence, his compassion, Grateful for his vulnerabilities, his knowledge and his modesty. Grateful for his celebration of the marginalized, of the poor, of our Exiles and the under dogs.
Grateful for The Pogues and for all our music makers and all our dreams and dreamers. And thankful for Shane’s Powers.
Proud of how Shane deepened our sense of Irishness and our humanity. Grateful for his rejection of revisionism of time serving and the fumblers in greasy tills. Glad he stood by the people of the North in war and in peace. And grateful that he was proud of Tipperary’s fight for Irish Freedom and his family’s role in this fight. Thankful for his poets eyes, for the words of love and betrayal, justice and injustice, rejection and redemption.
Grateful that Shane lifted us out of ourselves and that he never gave up. The Light he empowered in us to dance and to sing and to make fun and to shout, and to yell and to laugh and to cry and to love and to be free. Your music will live forever, you are the measure of our dreams.” Adams concluded his tribute in Irish.
There was dancing in the aisles of the beautiful, 127-year-old Gothic Revival Church, as The Fairytales of New York played, and there was not a dry eye when members of the Pogues concluded the almost three-hour Funeral Mass with the heartfelt “The Parting Glass.”