Christy Moore - Ruby Walsh - Galway Races

Christy Moore's tribute to Ruby Walsh who 'saved me life' at the Galway Races.

There's Bethlehem and Cheltenham and Lourdes and Limerick Junction,
The trip to Medjagoria, the rub of the Extreme Unction.
Good people climb Croagh Patrick with serenity on their faces,
But Ruby Walsh he saved me life below at the Galway Races.
Ruby hold her back, give her the crack and up she'll go.

They're under starters orders, Ted Walsh is commentating,
Ruby's up on the favourite, she'll take some 'batin'.
Necks are craned and eyes are strained, there's fear upon the faces.
There's agony and ecstasy below at the Galway Races.
Hey Ruby hold her back, give her the crack and up she'll go.

It's there you'll see gentility and sheep dressed up like mutton.
There's double barrelled names with more airs than old melodeons.
The talk is all of tillage, of silage and conacre.
I fancy Tracy Piggot in the saddling enclosure.
Hey Ruby hold her back, give her the crack and up she'll go.

Sir John Mucksavage-Smythe is there with Smurfits and O'Reillys,
The owners and the trainers, and the stable boys and jockeys
With silk around their arses getting up on rich men's horses
Not to mention wives and daughters and marriages and divorces.
Hey Ruby hold her back, give her the crack and up she'll go.

There's Celtic helicopters, land bank speculators,
Builders and developers, crocodiles and alligators.
Soldiers of Destiny, they're in a fevered frenzy.
Them boys would eat the Lamb Of God and come back for the gravy.
Hey Ruby hold her back, give her the crack and up she'll go.

Thursday is the Ladies' Day and the women all look smashing,
They're lashing on the lipstick, Philip Treacy's all the fashion.
You can see the liposuction, the botox and augmentation,
Brazilian haircuts, colonic irrigation.
Hey Ruby hold her back, give her the crack and up she'll go.

And everyone's out to Salthill for the crack and for the porter,
There's bookies making odds on two flies walking up the wall.
There's folk and trad and they're disco mad, karaoke and set dances,
While some of us who'd seen better days were looking to take our chances.
Hey Ruby hold her back, give her the crack and up she'll go.

They're galloping down the back straight, he has her in a canter,
Ah look at her lep the jumps, by God, she's like a ballet-dancer.
They're over the last, she hits the front, no other is going to pass her.
'Winner All Right', it's 'Up Kildare!', 'Follow me up to Carlow'.
Hey Ruby hold her back, give her the craic and up she'll go.
Hey Ruby hold her back, give her the crack and up she'll go.

The Galway Races

Galway Summer Race Festival

The Galway Races 2008
(Monday 28 July - Sunday 3 August)

Galway Races

© by Gerard McLoughlin

Throughout Ireland people of all ages and occupations prepare for the Galway Races with a fervour that is almost religious in its intensity. Budgets are planned, holidays are arranged and business is scheduled to conform with the sacrosanct dates of the annual week-long festival.

More significantly, perhaps, commemorative coups are prepared, often with horses that have abstained reverentially from victory for the obligatory twelve months. Horses will piously avail of the special dispensation permitting them to triumph twice in the one week at this exceptional venue.

On Monday, traditionally the opening evening, the turnstiles begin to rotate and the devotional crowds stream in regardless of prevailing economic or meteorological constraints. Mohair suits, elegant silks and clerical collars commingle spontaneously with cloth caps, braces (suspenders) and stout brown boots.

As the familiar strains of 'The Galway Races' resound from the loudspeakers, the emphasis is decidedly on camaraderie and merriment. Profit may be a significant motive; but the real profit is measured not in euros but in pints, not in coups but in craic.

Old friendships are renewed, gossip is exchanged and tips are divulged in penitential whispers. Men and women who would ordinarily spurn the racing pages are suddenly privy to 'inside information'; and the bookmakers are dutifully thankful.

The weather in the west of Ireland may be notoriously changeable, but Galway race-goers are oblivious of even the most torrential downpour. Disdaining rain coats or umbrellas, many of them seek casual shelter under the elfin awning of the peaked cap or the printed headscarf.

On my first visit to the Galway Race Festival, I watched incredulously as men in bespoke suits and women in designer dresses stood in pouring rain while calmly trying to separate the compacted pages of their sodden race-cards.

One worthy devotee, with the demeanour of a belted earl, strode contemptuously through the driving rain in a grey lightweight suit; his only concession to the weather - a pair of Roches Stores carrier bags pulled up over his shoes and secured at the ankles by two hastily tied knots.

'The apparel oft proclaims the man', wrote the Bard of Avon. Shakespeare would surely have loved the Galway Races where 'all the men and women are truly players'.

RTE's Jim Fahy at the Galway Races