Exhibits: Irish Themes in Sheet Music

Irish Themes

The Irish Place | The Irish Colleen | The Irish Name | St. Patrick's Day | Sweet Liberty

The Irish Place

Certain words convey “Irish” at a glance, among them Killarney, Tipperary and the River Shannon. Through a combination of travel writing and popular theatre, these real places had already transformed the local into the national, becoming an easy substitute for “Ireland” in the American imagination. The Tin Pan Alley composer who sprinkled his lyrics with such place names conjured an image of a mythical land of green fields and quaint villages that bore little relation to contemporary Ireland.

In far off sunny Ireland, where the sun kissed shamrocks grow It’s the land of love and fairy tales, Oh my heart there daily goes To the sweetest girl in “Erin’s” Isle whose sighs near broke my heart When I kissed her tears and said goodby to the dear old “Erins” Isle

Where the River Liffy Flows, In my dreams, in my dreams I am always going back to Molly where I left her on the shore Then our sad eyes dimmed with sadness, now my poor heart beats with gladness For I’m going back to Molly where the River Liffey flows

I’m leaving in the morning on the good ship “Erin’s Hope” To wed my loving Molly, sure she’ll meet me at the boat We’ll pluck the lucky Shamrock’s, and we’ll kiss the Blarney Stone Then we’ll sing love songs forever in sweet “Erin’s” lovely home

The nineteenth century stereotype of the Irish woman, typically a brutish domestic servant named Bridget, was considerably softened by the time Tin Pan Alley and the silent cinema got its hands on her. The “Colleen” became a handsome example of modern American beauty. Indeed her generically good looks were an advertisement for the assimilation potential of the Irish, with the only vestiges of ethnicity in lyrical names like Rosie, Kitty or Peggy.

One of the men defining the Irish colleen through music was Alfred Bryan (1871-1958), a native of Ontario who moved to New York in 1905. Among the thousand songs he composed were “My Irish Girl” and “Peg O’My Heart” as well as the old comic hit “The Irish Were Egyptians Long Ago.” His philosophy was simple: “the public wants something that sings well.”

Many songs contain the Irish words Mavourneen, Macushla, and Machree. These mean “My Dearest”, “My Love”, and “My Heart” respectively. Kathleen Mavourneen and Mother Machree are two of the most popular Irish ballads ever written.

The Irish Name

By the turn of the century, the ubiquitous “Paddy” had finally gained a surname – a surfeit of them, in fact. Tin Pan Alley had fun with as many Irish last names as it could possibly rhyme but “The Kellys” were king as the lyrics to this 1905 song satirized:

Three weeks ago last Tuesday I left me home in Cork To find me uncle Martin Kelly living in New York I landed in Hoboken and began without delay To find me uncle’s residence located on Broadway

I went to the directory me uncle for to find But I found so many Kellys there that I nearly lost me mind So I went to ask directions from a friendly German Jew But he says please excuse me but me name is Kelly too

And there’s Kelly the barman, Kelly the carman Kelly the sailor who came from Donegal Kelly from Derry, Kelly from Kerry But the Kelly I was looking for I could not find at all…

Dan Kelly runs the railroads, John Kelly runs the seas Kate Kelly runs the suffragettes and she looks right good to me Well I went and asked directions from a naturalized Chinese But he says please excuse me but me name it is Kell Lee

 

St. Patrick's Day

The minstrel boy to the war has gone,
And bold Jack Donoghue
Gram-a-chree, and the Cruiskeen Lawn,
The Bells of Shandon, and bold Phelan Brady too.
And if ever I return again,
A welcome home to Bantry Bay
The harp that once thro’ Tara’s Halls,
Are the tunes we love to hear on Paddy’s Day.

By 1930 St. Patrick's Day was universally observed in the United States. The transformation of March 17th from a small civic and religious celebration of ethnicity into a major secular and commercial holiday in the American calendar was aided by the widespread adoption of symbols like the shamrock as a visual cue for "Irish" in American popular culture. The packaging for Tin Pan Alley sheet music, 78 rpm records, films and other popular culture media reinforced these cues and, like holiday greeting cards, often aided the association of the specific tunes and the parading tradition with St. Patrick's Day.

 

Sweet Liberty

America’s entry into World War I on behalf of the rights of small nations coincided with Ireland’s fight for independence from Great Britain. Not only were Irish Americans in the ranks of the infantry fighting on European battlefields, leading charges with the Gaelic expression “Fág an Bealach (Get Out of the Way),” but they were vocal nationalists on the home front advocating Ireland’s cause with Washington, D.C.

One of the songs popular among soldiers was an adaptation of the 1883 Pat Rooney hit made famous by Harrigan & Hart, “Is that Mr. Reilly?” In 1915 “Are you the O’Reilly?” rivaled “It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary” as a marching song. It’s chorus line, “Blime Me, O’Reilly, You Are Lookin’ Well” resounded on both sides of the Atlantic. Capitalizing on this popularity, W.J. Reilly of the American Navy battleship USS Michigan made the rounds of the Keith vaudeville circuit with another patriotic song “Go Over the Top with Reilly.”

Another singing serviceman, Michael Fitzpatrick, part of a well-known New York City construction and musical family, fantasized in 1917 about an Irish end to the conflict: “Now that the war is over, as ev’rybody knows, We’ra going to sail thro’ Ireland where the river Shannon flows. With the Kaiser and the Sultan, We’ll take each one alone, And we’ll grab them by the heels and make them kiss the Blarney Stone.”

Meanwhile, the Statue of Liberty took her place alongside Robert Emmet, Daniel O’Connell, and Charles Stewart Parnell in Irish America’s pantheon of heroes.

 

 

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