Could this be the oldest Celtic song?
Writing in the Celtic Football Guide for season 1933/4, Willie Maley – involved with the club continuously from its formation in 1887 as player, match secretary and manager – talked of the club’s founding 45 years earlier and the many challenges it faced on the road to success subsequently.
Maley wrote: ‘The years have stretched out to forty five since the real inception of our club, and another five years will bring us to the Jubilee year of the Club which was early on spoken of as a mushroom growth, fated to rise and flourish for a short time and then fade into its previous nothingness. What an answer has the team and management of our great club given to the weak-kneed ones of the old days and much more important to the bigots of 1888 to 1890 when our very existence was threatened by the “unbiased” sports of these days.’
He then makes mention a song sung in the club’s earliest days:
‘An old song of 1889 used to say:
“Keep up the pressure, Good Old Celts, keep piling on the goals
You know exactly how to put the ball between the poles.
So let your foes do what they will and let them sneer and snub
They’ll do no harm, not even alarm, the Good Old Celtic Club.”
This may well be the oldest Celtic song recorded, with 1889 being the third year of the club’s existence and second year in which Celtic games were played. There is no evidence of these words having been sung on the terraces at the new Celtic Park (or any indication of the tune) but there was rarely detailed mention made in newspapers of that era of songs and chants from supporters.
Clearly the lyrics and song had stuck in the mind of Willie Maley many decades later and the sentiments of the song, referring to the sneers and snubs of Celtic foes and the desire to rise above the opposition faced by the new Glasgow Irish club, matches the recollections of the club’s founding fathers.
Talking of the controversial defeat to Cowlairs in the final of the Exhibition Cup at Kelvingrove in September 1888, Willie Maley later said that ‘when we were beaten by a team made up of Cowlairs, Queen’s Park, Renton etc by 2-0, our lot were jeered and insulted in disgraceful fashion. Our management received then the real stimulus to make the club, which was then so unjustly derided, a power in the land and one which would make the same class respect them as now scoffed at them.’
At the dinner held after the Exhibition Cup final, Celtic President John Glass told those assembled:
Celtic will weather this defeat like all good sportsmen and I prophesy that those who have come here today to jeer, will by the powers of the Celtic, come in time to cheer.
In other words, they’ll do no harm – or even alarm – the good old Celtic club!
To read about more Celtic songs, chants and poems from throughout the club’s history, click here.
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