One of the characters often mentioned with Dublin singer-songwriter James Kearney (1822-62) is
‘Kane’. PJ McCall tells us that Kearney’s songs
were all purchased by him from others – all Liberty men, or natives of the district – from the witty Tom Shalvey, a gardener of the Tenters Fields; from John Doyle, a law clerk of Weavers’ Square, and from Kane, a whip-maker of Cross Kevin Street -the usual price for each song being half-a-sovereign. [1]
A ‘Collection of Ballads[2]’ in McCall’s papers at the National Library of Ireland includes many hand-copied by PJ’s father John McCall. One booklet in the collection has a handwritten note beside a song called ‘The Dublin Patent Ghost’, a song that mentions Stoney Pockets as one possible identity for this ghost, along with Major Sirr and Jem O’Brien. The note reads
There is a comic song for which I am searching entitled Stony Pockets Auction that was written by Kane of X Kevin Street Dublin[3].
At the bottom of the page is a second note on ‘The Dublin Patent Ghost’:
This song was written by Kane, a whipmaker of X Kevin Street, Dublin. He wrote most of the songs for Jas Kearney of Crampton Court.[4]
The ‘Dublin Patent Ghost’ song is not to be confused with the ballad ‘Stoney’s Ghost’, anthologised in 1852[5] without a credit, but it’s likely to have been written by the same author as ‘Stoney Pockets Berrin’, that is, ‘Burying’.
‘The Wedding of Dandyorum’, a song sung by and likely written by Kearney, has a verse:
To put a finish to the spree,
They sent for Stewart, Kane and me,
Where the eye-teeth fell out of us three,
Singing for Dandyorum.
This naming of Kearney, Kane and Stewart together reinforces the idea of Stewart (one-time proprietor of the Castle Tavern on Crampton Court, which Kearney possibly owned around 1847), Kane (the whipmaker) and Kearney as the prime trio of singers in Dublin at this time, c1850. All three are also mentioned together in PJ McCall’s piece on Zozimus:
I now find Zoz the centre of a motley company. Some of their sobriquets would make even a cat laugh. Mack and Rock, the two fiddlers of Meath Street; Kearney, Kane and Stewart, singers; Shalvey, Doyle, Reilly and Hoey, song and ballad writers; and Dandyorum, Stoney Pockets, Peg the Man, Peggy Baxter, Fat Mary, Owny the Fool, Canthering Jack are a few of the “Liberty Birds”[6].
A Cornelius Kane, whipmaker, is listed as working at Number 8, Duke-lane Upper, in 1842[7], but his dwelling place may well have been on Cross Kevin Street or elsewhere. In September 1856, I finally found ‘C. Kane’ is listed with Kearney among the company at the ‘Crampton Court Concert Hall’ which was undergoing renovations to make it ‘one of the largest in Dublin[8]’. By December 1856, Kane is described as ‘Ireland’s delight as a comic singer’ at O’Connell’s Monster Saloon on the court[9], and four years later in 1860 he is performing at Lowrey’s or Lowry’s Malakoff Music Hall in Liverpool, where he is billed as ‘Corney Kane’ ‘the Dublin boy[10]’ or simply as ‘Irish[11]’.
In at least one advertisement, Corney Kane is described as ‘the original Paudeen Rue[12]’,
which suggests, at least, that Paudeen had become an established character even in England, and perhaps casts some doubt on Kearney’s exclusive claim to the name. Kane is still a regular in Liverpool in 1865, performing his ‘Tinker’s Budget’[13].
The ‘budget’ was a pedlar’s pack. A comic song called ‘The Tinker’s Old Budget’ was recorded by source singer Mary Ann Carolan of Drogheda in 1982[14], and centres on an Irish Traveller leaving his budget in a pawnshop – with his baby inside it. The pawnbroker hears the child crying, sees the joke, and restores it to its father with a bonus pound. This may well be the song Kane sang – song collector Seán Corcoran describes it on the album notes as ‘an extremely common song, known all over Ireland’. It’s also known as The Child and the Budget’, and you can read the lyrics, hear the song sung by Martin Long and read more about it at Clare County Libraries here. You might be some time there!
No doubt there is more to come as I dig deeper into the life of the mysterious ‘Kane, whipmaker’, but he certainly seems to have given cracking performances both at home in Dublin and in Liverpool in the 1850s and 60s.
[1] Patrick Joseph McCall, In the Shadow of St. Patrick’s, a paper (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker, 1894), Harvard University, p. 9. <https://books.google.ie/books?id=qkANAAAAYAAJ>
[2] PJ and John McCall, ‘P.J. McCall Papers: Collection of Ballads’ (Dublin), National Library of Ireland, Manuscript Reading Room.
[3] Cross Kevin Street, also known as Cross Poddle Street, was the junction of Kevin Street, Dean Street and Patrick Street, a few steps from the southside of Patrick’s Cathedral.
[4] PJ and John McCall, p. Ledger scrapbook p 8.
[5] Blake, pp. 222–24.
[6] Patrick Joseph McCall, ‘Zozimus’, p. 145.
[7] ‘Provincial Theatricals’, The Era, 28 September 1856, Issue 940 edition, section Advertisements & Notices., p. 11, British Library Newspapers.
[8] Dublin Almanac and General Register of Ireland, 9th edn (Dublin: Pettigrew and Oulton, 1842), pp. 639–40, UCLA Library <https://books.google.ie/books?id=5zc_AQAAMAAJ>.
[9] ‘Connell’s Monster Saloon, Castle Hotel, 8 Crampton Court’, Freeman’s Journal (Dublin, 3 December 1856), p. 1.
[10] ‘Dan Lowrey’s Music Hall’, Liverpool Daily Post (Liverpool, 28 January 1861), section Advertisements and Notices, p. 1, newspapers.com.
[11] ‘Liverpool: Dan Lowrey’s Grand Malakoff Music Hall’, The Era (London, 7 April 1861), section Provincial Theatricals, p. 14, newspapers.com.
[12] ‘Dan Lowrey’s Music Hall’.
[13] ‘The Malakoff Music Hall, Cleveland-Square’, The Era (London, 23 July 1865), section Provincial Theatricals, p. 12, newspapers.com.
[14] ‘The Tinker’s Old Budget’, Track 5, Songs from the Irish Tradition (Dublin: Topic, 1982) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RKflUrYTp8>.
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