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A HISTORY OF THE SONGS OF IRISH-AMERICA.
’Twas Only An Irishman’s Dream: The Image of Ireland and the Irish in American Popular Song Lyrics, 1800-1920 (University of Illinois, Music in American Life series, 1996)
This history of the songs of Irish-America focuses on commercial sheet music about the Irish and Ireland published in the United States between 1800 and 1920, the primary period of Irish emigration into the United States. The emphasis is on popular song rather than on folk music. Commercial sheet music, destined for both the parlor and the theater, constituted a cultural market place of ethnic images, verbal as well as visual. During the nineteenth century, the Irish in America moved from being the subject of songs to becoming part of the market for them. However, the Irish were not just in the audience. As song writers and performers, they helped produce and disseminate cultural products. This meant that the Irish became both consumers and producers of their own ethnic stereotype, helping to “negotiate” their place in American culture. It is in popular music, along with musical theater and the vaudeville stage, where we can see the images of the American Irish taking shape. Even when some of those images were based on unflattering ethnic stereotypes originating in Britain, they nonetheless had to be fitted within an American context and eventually given a positive caste.
The book traces the evolution of two forms of the Irish stereotype. There is Paddy, the Celtic berserker, fond of the drink and the shillelagh, but also the master of the brogue and comic blunders. But then there is also handsome, romantic Patrick, equally passionate about his colleen and his lost homeland. In fact, the melding of the Irishman’s love for Ireland with his patriotic dedication to America constitutes one of the more impressive slights of hand in American culture.
Although the Irish stereotype never quite lost its negative, dark edges, by the beginning of the twentieth century most American Irish were quite happy to accept their image of a merry, goodhearted, patriotic people, who, despite a penchant for the drink and the occasional Donnybrook, made good citizens. Unfortunately, for much of the twentieth century “the Irish” remained tinted with this sentimental emerald hue.
While the focus is on sheet music, I have tried to show the interaction between Irish emigrants and popular culture on a wider scale. I discuss the role of the Irish in the evolution of American musical theater, vaudeville, the comics, popular literature and the early cinema. The book is illustrated with period sheet music covers.
Hear some of the songs discussed in the book: click on Irish American songs.
BOOK CONTENTS: 1, “Dear Harp of My Country: Thomas More in America; 2, Romantic Irish Popular Songs in Antebellum America; 3, From Teague to Paddy: The Evolution of the Stage Irishman; 4, Ethnicity and Parlor Songs: Paddy Compared; 5, “To the Land We Left and the Land We Live in; 6, The Irish in Vaudeville; 7; The Irish-American in Post-Civil War Songs; 8, The Theater and Songs of Edward Harrigan; 9, Paddy on Tin Pan Alley; 10, Irish America in Search of an Image; 11, All That I Want is in Ireland.
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