Dakota Beacon

I just read Mark Steyn’s “Song of the Week” feature on “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and enjoyed his informative and erudite discussion of the remarkable Chauncey Olcott and a few others – those much-maligned “fake” Irish American songwriters.  As an Irish musician, I had the good fortune to play a few gigs this St. Patrick’s Day and as always, I include, unapologetically, many Irish-American popular songs along with the more “traditional” folk pieces like “She Moved Through the Fair” or O’Carolan, as well as those close relatives to Irish American stage hits, the equally sentimental and lovely “parlor pieces” by Thomas Moore.

Unlike many uber-sophisticates I have heard – over and over, everywhere I go – who ridicule the so-called “Bing Crosby” genre of Irish music, I have found the history of Ireland itself completely fascinating.  I guess what I’d like to tell these jerks is that Americans of Irish descent and Irish immigrants to America had a lot - a LOT - to do with Irish independence.

The brutal potato crop failure and the attendant opportunity for England to help decimate the Irish population by either burying them or exporting them in coffin ships in the 1840’s and 1850’s, meant that Canada and the United States had a tremendous growth in Irish immigration.  As history attests, many of them were highly successful in a world which offered them a basic chance.  They were generally well-educated when they arrived (most Irish were literate and spoke English) and that, with a determination to succeed, brought these people wealth in America.  They also remembered the heartbreak they and their parents had experienced in Ireland at the hands of their British masters (and, of course, some local collaborators) and when their cousins back home put out the call for financial help (and even guns), it was largely answered generously. 

Political pressure was applied even in the halls of Congress and a lot of money was raised here.  It is worth noting that various revolutionaries of various political persuasions, including Thomas Clarke, Patrick Pearse, James Connolly and Eamon DeValera turned up over here seeking moral, political and financial support.  England’s first “lost” colony was America.  Its second was Ireland.  America provided an example.  The intrepid Michael Collins made the most of his opportunities, and after over 700 years of British domination, freedom was wrested from England.  Could it have been accomplished without the support of Irish Americans?  I don’t know.  It would have been difficult.  It was difficult as it was.

As a descendant of an Irishman who came to America from Cork in 1847 (the “Black ‘47”) I don’t buy into the idea that there is anything inherently “fake” about Irishness in Irish Americans.  Perhaps their view was altered by being seen through a different prism, but the music of people such as Chauncey Olcott and Ernest Ball, among others, helped these new Americans to remember their roots and the heritage that brought them together in their new world.  Whether you like it or hate it, it was not at all irrelevant to Irish history and quite possibly had more to do with that history than Synge or Yeats or O’Casey.  So, no apologies for Irish-American Tin Pan Alley songs from me.

And another little side note:  the neglected and oft-maligned schoolmaster, Patrick Pearse,  also wrote some fine patriotic lines which served to galvanize resistance to British overlords.  He and his compatriots and followers were not just men of words and sentiment (like Yeats), but men who would face a firing squad on a matter of principle.  While their stand, their beau geste, might look somewhat quixotic to us now, it was indispensible to the cause they embraced.  Do the intellectuals really mean to tell us that the poignancy of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes is more vital to Irish culture and history than Pearse’s The Fool,  or The Rebel? Clearly, both men had suffered.  Both made a great contribution.  But in Pearse’s case, that contribution was truly cathartic. 

And also cathartic was the participation and support of Americans of Irish descent, Americans whose lives had been impacted, even dictated, by England’s unspeakable cruelty in the Black ’47.  You might say that the seeds of the demise of their empire were sown in their treatment of those very Irishmen and Irishwomen who were forced to come to America . . . and who repaid their debt to their former masters thusly.  And wrote, sang and played these Irish American songs.

Now, if they could only break the bondage of Brussels.  After 700 years of slavery and nearly 100 of independence, the Irish have once more – and this time by their own hand – lost their sovereignty.

Anyway, thanks to Mark Steyn for honestly defending the Irish American music tradition!

Sally Morris is a member of Americans for Constitutional Government, professional musician and perennial student of Irish history and lore.