The Irish rent … and mended: transitional textual communities in nineteenth-century America

Abstract

In this paper, traditional folkloric forms that were ritualised and practised in pre-Famine Ireland are examined. So, too, are the strategies that storytellers employed in disseminating the imaginative aspects of the oral tradition to their audiences. Following the disruption of the storytelling tradition precipitated by the Great Famine and emigration, the fabric of Irish storytelling lay threadbare, both in Ireland and abroad. Of interest is the fact that in America the less “heroic” and more subtle strands of Irish folklore resurfaced in the theatrical venues that developed during the second half of the nineteenth century, namely, minstrelsy, Vaudeville, and Tin Pan Alley. By the turn of twentieth century, the Irish were responding to other “heroic” depictions of themselves, not only with protestation but also with “tongue-in-cheek” laughter. Their grounding in a variety of folkloric texts in Ireland enabled them to transition to multiple kinds of accommodation and expressive resistance.

Keywords::

• Irish storytelling tradition
• textual community
• imaginative resistance
• minstrelsy

Acknowledgements

Heartfelt acknowledgements for assistance on earlier drafts of this paper are owed to Mary Burke, Mary C. Kelly, Séamus Pender, Catherine B. Shannon, and several members of the audience at New England's Irish American Conference for Irish Studies conference, held at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT, 11–12 October 2012. A special word of gratitude is extended to Nicola Presley and the entire Irish Studies Review staff for their kind assistance and solicitation throughout the preparation process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1.Chadwick, “Story of Mac Datho's Pig.”

^2.Jackson, Oldest Irish Tradition, 19.

^3.von der Schulenberg, “Introduction,” 10.

^4. The Sir John Rhys Lecture is entitled, appropriately, “The Gaelic Storyteller.” It is considered to be “the most authoritative account of the subject” (Zimmerman, Irish Storyteller, 391) and “the best general account of the Irish storytelling tradition” (Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish Folklore, 139). Delargy also discusses some tradition bearers from whom he collected materials.

^5.O'Nolan, Eochair, Mac Rí in Éirinn, 17.

^6. An “exception to the rule” of the male storyteller was Peig Sayers, the “Queen of Gaelic Storytellers”, who married into life on the Great Blasket Island of Co. Kerry. Peig was born in 1873. She is perhaps the greatest representative of a woman storyteller in Ireland; from her were collected 375 tales, 40 of which were long folktales, all of which she learned from her father. She eventually moved back to Dunquin in Dingle, the place where she was born and where she was buried in 1958. Rodgers, in his introduction to Peig Sayers: An Old Woman's Reflections, describes Peig as a “great artist and a wise woman [who could] switch from gravity to gaiety, for she was a lighthearted woman, and her changes of mood and face were like the changes of running water” (xiii). For more on the gendered division of labour in the Irish storytelling tradition, see Harvey, “Some Irish Women Storytellers,” 111–13.

^7. Based on fifth-century ce battles between the warring factions of Ulster and Connacht, the hero tales of the Ulster Cycle emerged in the Middle Ages on the lips of bards eager to entertain patrons who displayed a penchant for the lore of adventure. The Cattle Raid of Cooley (Táin Bó Cuailnge) features the exploits of a main protagonist, Cú Chulainn, who defeats Queen Maeve (Medhbh) to retain “possession of the great brown bull of Cooley”. For more, see Brady, Encyclopedia of Ireland, 170.

^8.Ó Dónaill, Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, 540.

^9. The Fianna Cycle is an admixture of druidic lore and warrior-like feats of derring-do. It gained immense popularity in medieval times, and the tales were disseminated throughout the Celtic world. For more, see Brady, Encyclopedia of Ireland, 170.

^10. MacKillop, Finn Mac Cumhaill, 54–5.

^11.Delargy, “Gaelic Storyteller,” 6.

^12. Cultural models are the quotidian, day-in and day-out plots and understandings of the world that enable individuals as well as groups to come to an agreement as to what is normal and typical within a particular discursive structure. For more, see Young, “Cultural Models.”

^13.O'Neill, “Rural Life,” 52.

^14.Ó Madagáin, “Functions of Irish Song,” 193.

^15.Stock, “Reflections on Ancient Narrative and Ethics,” 771–9.

^16.Stock, Implications of Literacy, 382 (emphasis added).

^17.Mac Con Iomaire, Ireland of the Proverb, 124.

^18. Delargy, “Gaelic Storyteller,” 24, 26.

^19.Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory, 76 (emphasis in original).

^20.Markey, “Discovery of Irish Folklore.“

^21. The Fenians were members of the Fenian Brotherhood (FB) and/or the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), fraternal organisations formed in the nineteenth century with the expressed aim to bring about an independent Ireland. The name “Fenian” was assigned in reference to Finn Mac Cumhaill's Fianna.

^22.Madden, Tapestry of Irish Memories, 8.

^23.MacKillop, Finn Mac Cumhaill, 54.

^24. “Sacred” rituals like patterns (devotions to local saints) were equally unsustainable in Irish America and were subject to collapse. For more, see Meagher, Inventing Irish America, 29.

^25. Kenneth Nilsen, pers. comm.

^26.Rodgers, “Introduction,” viii.

^27. Kiberd argues that the Cú Chulainn story falls into the category of “super myth” in that it generates a force “so powerful as to obscure the individual writer and to unleash an almost superhuman force” (cited in Smyth, Cú Chulainn, 1).

^28. For more, see Canny, “Ideology of English Colonisation”; Curtis, Nothing but the Same Old Story, Curtis, Anglo-Saxons and Celts; Kinahan, “Douglas Hyde and the King of the Chimps,” 69.

^29.Cairns and Richards, Writing Ireland, 10.

^30.Ó Fiaich, “Language and Political History,” 104.

^31.Lebow, White Britain and Black Ireland, 22.

^32.Waters, Comic Irishman, 95. For more, see Ó Gráda, Great Irish Famine; Póirtéir, Famine Echoes; Póirtéir, “Introduction.”

^33. For more, see Leyburn, Scotch-Irish; Jackson, Social History; O'Connor, Boston Irish; Griffin, People with No Name; Quinn, “Toasters and Boasters.”

^34. For an overview of this period and these positions, see Quinn, “‘I have been trying very hard,’” 216.

^35.Scott, Domination, xiii.

^36. For a description of communal practices in Ireland during the time of the Penal Laws, see Songs in Irish, http://songsinirish.com/p/an-raibh-tu-ar-an-gcarraig-lyrics.html/ (accessed December 3, 2014).

^37.Quinn, Irish American Folklore, 328.

^38. Roisín Dubh, “little black rose” and Caitlín ní Houlihan, “Cathleen daughter of Houlahan”, respectively, are additional examples of “secret” names for Ireland. They were applied in order to obscure seditious elements in the songs’ lyrics and to exercise the Irish penchant for using allegory and symbolism. For more, see Colum, Anthology of Irish Verse, 43.

^39.O'Sullivan, Songs of the Irish, 6.

^40.Gilroy, “Roots and Routes,” 25.

^41. The aisling originated in the late seventeenth century. For more, see Williams, “Literature in Irish,” 323.

^42.Wilgus, “Aisling and the Cowboy,” 285.

^43. Ibid., 274.

^44.Wright, Irish Emigrant Ballads, 7.

^45. O'Sullivan, Songs of the Irish, 6, 5.

^46. Quinn, Irish American Folklore, 84, 87, 94. For more on the subject of coded language and Irish proverbial silence, see Quinn, “‘She Must Have Come Steerage,’” 172–3.

^47.Waters, “Great Famine,” 106–7.

^48. Gilroy, “Roots and Routes,” 25.

^49. Ibid.

^50. MacKillop, Finn Mac Cumhaill, 54–5.

^51.Smith, “Blacks and Irish,” 96.

^52. Ibid. 76. Nor were they the only ones up to such “borrowing” shenanigans. Edward “Ned” Harrington's Arrah na Brogue (1873) was derived from Dion Boucicault's earlier play Arraugh-na-Pogue. For more, see Murphy, “From Scapegrace to Grasta,” 29.

^53.Hamill, “Foreword.”

^54.Crawford, America's Musical Life, 198.

^55. Ibid.

^56. Ibid.

^57. Ibid., 197–8.

^58.Harrington, “Irish in Theater,” 899.

^59. Gilroy, “Roots and Routes,” 25.

^60.Richards, “Brogue Irish,” 47. For more on the Stage Irishman, see Bartley, Teague, Shenkin and Sawney; Duggan, Stage Irishman; Truniger, Paddy and the Paycock.

^61.McConachie, “Cultural Politics of ‘Paddy,’” 11.

^62. Waters, Comic Irishman, 54.

^63. Despite this fact, however, by the late 1700s green had become emblematic of the struggle for liberty in Ireland; when patriots wore green ribands on their shoulders as they proceeded to a convention in Dublin in 1783, green handkerchiefs and scarves were waved from windows as the marchers passed. By the end of the following decade, green had increased in status, being regarded as “a symbol of affection for Ireland” even though recriminations continued. For instance, were a man caught wearing the colour green, even by accident, he could expect “imprisonment, transportation, the rope, or the bayonet”. A woman adorned with green was subjected to “the brutal insults of the common soldiery” (cited in Gogan, Fifty Great, 54).

^64. During both the Penal Times and the era of the United Irishmen in the late 1700s, the British forbade the wearing of green in Ireland.

^65. The popular rendition of a 1798 street version resulted from Boucicault's play Arrah-na-Pogue, which was first performed in 1865. However, there were previous versions; for more, see Gogan, Fifty Great, 54; Williams, “Irish Song,” 474; Cole, Folksongs of England, 81. For the banning of Boucicault's “more revolutionary version” of “The Wearin' o' the Green”, see Cullingford, “National Identities,” 295.

^66. Cole, Folksongs of England, 81.

^67. O'Sullivan, Songs of the Irish, 6.

^68. A “caubeen” (cáibín) was “an old shabby hat or cap”. For more, see Joyce, English as it is Spoken, 233.

^69.Delaney, Of Irish Ways, 203–4. Gogan's lyrics present an example of the wide range of versions extant for this song. For instance, a final verse addresses Irish immigrants to America:

So Erin we must leave you now; cast out by tyrant's hand

We'll treasure mother's blessing from a strange and distant land

Where England's cruel and vicious hand is never to be seen

And where please God we'll plough the sod, a-wearing of the green.

For more, see Gogan, Fifty Great, 54–5.

^70. Scott, Domination and the Arts, xiii.

^71.Brophy, “‘What Nobody Does Now.’”

^72. For more on the way Boucicault handled the subject of Fenianism in his plays, see Cullingford, “National Identities,” 294ff.

^73.Póirtéir, “Introduction,” 13.

^74.Bell, “Performativity and Belonging,” 3.

^75.Whitcomb, After the Ball, 14.

^76. Ibid.

^77. For more on Boston's early Irish radio era, see Gedutis, See You at the Hall, 26–7; Nolan, Ourselves Alone, 86.

^78.Moloney, “Irish-American Popular Music”; Moloney, Far from the Shamrock Shore.

^79.Williams, ’Twas Only an Irishman's Dream.

^80. For more on Mulligan and his Mulligan Guards, see Williams, ’Twas Only an Irishman's Dream, 141–69.

^81. Moloney, “Irish-American Popular Music,” 391.

^82. Ibid.

^83. Ibid., 388.

^84. Whitcomb, After the Ball, 15.

^85.Schudson, “Preservation of the Past,” 5.

^86.Young, “Cultural Models,” 147.

^87. Cited in Ó'Madagáin, “Functions of Irish Song,” 215.

^88. This point is stressed in the liner notes to Moloney's album Far from the Shamrock Shore, http://www.connorsgenealogy.com/NYIrishList/IrishShore.htm (accessed December 10, 2014).

^89. For an analysis of some of this behaviour, see Kibler, “Pigs, Green Whiskers, and Drunken Widows.”

^90. Cited in Ó'Madagáin, “Functions of Irish Song,” 215.

^91.Marett, Psychology and Folk-lore, 1.

^92.Fentress and Wickham, Social Memory, 58–9.