This month’s treasure is a new song by tinsmith and entertainer James Kearney (1822-1862) or, perhaps I should say, an old song newly attributed to him.
I’ve been researching James Kearney for the past six months or more, along with the c50 songs attributed to him. Imagine my thrill at finding a new song, or at least a song that has not previously been credited to Kearney. Among the National Library of Ireland’s collection of theatre ephemera is a programme from Dan Lowrey’s Star of Erin Music Hall, now the Olympia Theatre, and previously O’Connell’s Monster Saloon where Kearney last performed a fortnight before his death. This document is currently inaccessible due to works at the Library, but I hope to view it in the coming year. However, there is a detailed description in the Library’s catalogue which tells us that this illustrated programme features a lithographic image of the Star of Erin Music Hall on the front, and has details inside of performances at the theatre for the week ending 24 September 1881[1]. Dan Lowrey (sometimes Lowry) had opened the doors of the theatre for the first time at Christmas 1879. His son, Dan Lowrey Junior, took over the business in 1881, re-branding the venue as ‘Dan Lowrey’s Music Hall’ and renaming it ‘Dan Lowrey’s Palace of Varieties’ in 1889[2].
On page 3 of this programme is printed the lyrics of a song with the title and credit, ‘The Riches of Ireland by J. Kearney’[3]. A song of the same name is available on an uncut broadsheet with two other songs in the P. W. Joyce Collection at the Irish Traditional Music Archive, and opens with the lines:
I often heard big Englishmen
Aye, and great Irish men will call it too;
While speaking of the Emerald Sod,
Say, “poor Ould Ireland”, wirra sthru.
But all we e’er could read about,
The Isle of Saints we’ve found it such;
Never to lack of wealth or lore,
For Ireland has been always rich,
More glory to you Paddy’s land,
Each blade of grass, round tower, and ditch,
The world may gosther as it may,
For Ireland has been always rich.[4]
The Irish Broadsides Collection at Notre Dame has what may be a bootleg version of this song[5] with more unreliable punctuation and a few typos, notably the repetition of ‘round tower’ instead of ‘ditch’ at the end of the second line of the second verse, which is called the ‘Chorus’ here. The woodcut is of a man with a stick walking on a country road.
Further investigation shows that the Bodleian Library has no less than six different broadsheets of this song, all six with the same errors as the Notre Dame version, and one of them bearing the same woodcut. The other five all have a woodcut of a man pursuing a youth into a forest, but all are distinct printings, paired on the sheets with five different songs. This indicates that the song was a popular one, printed many times in different editions. None of the broadsheets has an author credit, but the Bodleian copies all have a printer credit of P. Brereton under other songs on the uncut sheets[6].
The original was clearly the one in the PW Joyce scrapbooks, before the error was introduced, and may have been printed by Nugent or Birmingham of Dublin. It certainly qualifies as a ‘patriotic’ song, which begins with a gentle rather than a rebel tone, celebrating Ireland’s heritage of ‘round tower’ and legend. It goes on to point out that Erin’s wealth is mined by Irishmen who ‘can’t keep the produce themselves’, and celebrates orators such as Grattan, Curran and O’Connell. The publication of the song in a theatre programme by Kearney’s champion, Lowrey, over twenty years after the death of the tenement balladeer, suggests that Kearney was remembered by those who flocked to the new theatre, and that Lowrey was keen to keep the link between the poet’s one-time performance space and the new, modernised Star of Erin hall – even if in many other printed recollections, the details of Kearney’s life had been lost.
Lowrey was the organiser of a fundraising effort on the death of Kearney in 1862[7], and was clearly a supporter of his work. He notice of the death and fundraiser states that Kearney was well-known in England and Scotland as well as in Ireland. Perhaps he meant that Kearney’s songs were known, rather than Kearney himself. But it’s tantalising to imagine that Lowrey, who owned a theatre/music hall in Liverpool, might have employed Kearney there, or found him opportunities through contacts in Glasgow.
[1] anon, ‘Dan Lowrey’s [Star] Music Hall Illustrated Programme’ (Forster & Co., Lith., & Printers, Dublin, 1881), National Library of Ireland, Department of Ephemera <https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000774757>.
[2] anon, ‘Venue History’, 3 Olympia Theatre, n.d. <https://www.3olympia.ie/about-us/venue-history>.
[3] anon, ‘Dan Lowrey’s [Star] Music Hall Illustrated Programme’.
[4] anon, ‘The Riches of Ireland’, c1860, Irish Traditional Music Archive, P.W. Joyce Scrapbook I Part III p. 146 <https://www.itma.ie/texts/joyce-dcla-ms/>.
[5] James Kearney [attributed], ‘The Riches of Ireland’, n.d., University of Notre Dame, Irish Broadside Ballads <https://marble.nd.edu/item/aspace_e03f8227cd5bad8b91e9ffd88f799815>.
[6] See all six Brereton versions at http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/roud/V4351
[7] ‘Death of James Kearney’, The Era (London, 24 August 1862), section Advertisements and Notices, p. 16, British Library Newspapers, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BA3202435465/BNCN?u=dublin&sid=bookmark-BNCN&xid=2b7746f6