The Unstoppable Irish: Songs and Integration of the New York Irish, 1783-1883
Interview by Elizabeth Stack
Today on the blog, Gotham editor Elizabeth Stack speaks with Dan Milner about his recent book, The Unstoppable Irish: Songs and Integration of the New York Irish, 1783-1883 and the importance of music to the Irish people both in Ireland and New York.
The Unstoppable Irish: Songs and Integration of the New York Irish, 1783-1883
By Dan Milner
University of Notre Dame Press, 2019
The Unstoppable Irish follows the changing fortunes of New York's Irish Catholics, commencing with the evacuation of British military forces in late 1783 and concluding one hundred years later with the completion of the initial term of the city's first Catholic mayor. During that century, Hibernians first coalesced and then rose in uneven progression from being a variously dismissed, despised, and feared foreign group to ultimately receiving de facto acceptance as constituent members of the city's population. Dan Milner presents evidence that the Catholic Irish of New York gradually integrated (came into common and equal membership) into the city populace rather than assimilated (adopted the culture of a larger host group). Assimilation had always been an option for Catholics, even in Ireland. In order to fit in, they needed only to adopt mainstream Anglo-Protestant identity. But the same virile strain within the Hibernian psyche that had overwhelmingly rejected the abandonment of Gaelic Catholic being in Ireland continued to hold forth in Manhattan and the community remained largely intact. A novel aspect of Milner's treatment is his use of song texts in combination with period news reports and existing scholarship to develop a fuller picture of the Catholic Irish struggle. Products of a highly verbal and passionately musical people, Irish folk and popular songs provide special insight into the popularly held attitudes and beliefs of the integration epoch.
How important was music in the lives of the Irish immigrants?
Music, both tunes and songs, was integral to the lives of Irish here as it was in Ireland. If they had no musical instruments, they lilted. If they couldn’t read, they composed their own songs. They sat by a fireside and listened to the singing of older people so intently that they learned every word and grace note. Their songs preserved the histories of their townlands, villages, counties and nation – from the micro to the macro. They sang not just of adventures and triumphs but also of heartbreak and crushing defeats. To most singers, they were truly personal pieces, part of their essential makeup and character. Evidence of the importance of songs is borne out by their huge number. There are thousands of songs in books, pamphlets and on song sheets – and far many more never saw the printed page.
In the earlier period that your book describes, was music produced informally by the immigrants in their homes, and was it the old Irish songs? Is it an oral tradition, passed down from generation to generation like at home?
Today, when we are being asked to “shelter in place,” it is interesting to reflect that in days of old the pub was not so much the center of social activity as the home, notably the local “ceili house,” where the owners had enough room and a fierce love of music, dancing, song and storytelling. The home was the ideal space to host these events because there was no degree of profit involved so it was affordable for all. In Manhattan, where space was hard to come by because of density constriction within the city, the Irish “grocery” became an external center for musical merrymaking. Groceries were small shops modeled after the shebeens (informal bars) of Ireland. Songs and instrumental music were both welcomed depending on who was in attendance. Songs that originated in Ireland were popular but so were songs made in America that rang true and were highly regarded.
When do they start writing about their experience in New York? How political were the Irish songs in each of the three categories you discuss?
I’m sure some potential emigrants started writing about New York while they were still in Ireland or on the boat coming over! One song from the Inishowen peninsula of Donegal has this as its last verse, “We safely reached the other side in three and twenty days / And drinking of our parting glass we went our several ways / We took each comrade by the hand in case we’d never meet more / And it’s deoch an dorais [the “drink for the door”] we will drink, here’s farewell to the Shamrock Shore.” In America there was no fear, of course, in composing songs about the colonial mistreatment that existed in Ireland, so songs about independence were a staple.
After the Civil War, does the subject matter change? And as the Irish became more confident of their place in New York, how does that affect the content, and the audience?
The Fenian movement was very strong throughout the war. You are quite correct that Irish people became more imbedded after the Civil War; whereas, before it, they were greatly endangered. But they still remained second class citizens. There were fewer laments and more songs contain demands. The postwar era also begins a period during which the persona of the Irish male in song and in society changes for the positive. He now becomes more a charming wit and far less a dangerous character. The chapter in The Unstoppable Irish that illustrates this is titled, not surprisingly, “The Road to Respectability.”
How much was music a commodity that they produced themselves, or was it provided to them by Vaudeville publishers? Were the Irish both producer and consumer I mean.
With Edward Harrigan’s tremendous, self-made success as a performer, playwright and song lyricist in the post-Civil War period, it became very clear that being Irish in the entertainment world was to be cool. Harrigan & Hart were not alone of course. They stood at the top of a huge mountain of Irish talent. Hundreds more Irish acts could be seen anywhere there were vaudeville theatres. Astoundingly, in 1858 a New York Times reporter wrote of being in a concert saloon on Grand Street, where he heard a man “of Jewish persuasion [sing] Irish songs with an accent intended to be Hibernian, but which was purely Polish.” So, the appropriation of Irish material and persona by others began while the Irish themselves were still attempting to rise! But the wholesale “borrowing” of Irishness did not come until after the Irish had established themselves. Now, to answer your question directly, the New York Irish provided their own music and lyrics.
Did the songs they sang cover their experience of Nativism and prejudice? Do they poke fun at themselves, or is there a concerted effort to demonstrate their victimhood? Do the songs become sentimental about home, or do they concentrate on their experience in New York?
There are some stunning anti-nativist song examples in The Unstoppable Irish. Yes, Hibernians poked fun not only at their tormenters but at themselves too – and, actually, that had a humanizing effect. In addition to the many songs portraying the Irish as victims, there were always sentimental songs about having left people and places behind in Ireland. Interestingly, as the American-born second generation grew in numbers, the vision of Ireland narrowed to a single place or, to put it another way, Kerry and Derry became interchangeable, both were Ireland.
Can you tell me a little about what you mean by integrating vs assimilating?
Integration means coming into “common and equal membership” within society. That means, as the Irish became New Yorkers, New York became more Irish; essentially a mingling, a two-way exchange. Assimilation implies that the immigrant Irish would have to adopt the ways of the American host group. This would entail casting off Catholicism for Protestantism.
How important was class in this musical expression of the Irish New York experience - do we see "lace curtain" vs shanty Irish? William R. Grace was not a typical immigrant for example - how did the New York Irish feel about him as against other politicians from Tammany Hall?
Class is always important. Almost every society shows efforts to preserve status and wealth. William R. Grace, Irish-born and who made much of his great fortune in South America, was shunned by wealthy Protestant New Yorkers entirely because of his religion. As you point out, he was atypical. He was actually hated by Tammany chieftain “Honest” John Kelly because he would not serve as a puppet mayor of the machine. But, when Grace left City Hall after his first 2-year term, the conservative New York Tribune spoke very highly of him and even the outright nativist Times had to admit that he had done a good job. The “shanty” vs. “lace curtain” Irish divide figures into many humorous songs, especially during and after the 1870s.
How much has your own background influenced your interest in this topic?
I grew up in a singing family in Ballybunion, Co. Kerry and in Brooklyn, NY where my family came to live. My father, half-Irish and born in England, was self-taught on the piano. The music in our home ranged widely from John McCormack through “Kevin Barry” and “I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen” to songs my father heard as a boy such as “Barbara Allen” and “The Wild Rover.” There were jigs, reels and hornpipes on the phonograph as well. My mother was crazy for set dancing and, as my brother Liam and I got older, would tell us about stealing off on her bicycle headed to a dance 10 miles from her home. Liam and I became very keenly interested in traditional Irish songs when I was in my teens. I was always interested in the most genuine song expressions, getting at the heart of great songs. Modern, so-called “folk songs” and pop music never interested me. I did realize, however, that the Irish song tradition was ongoing and that fine new songs were being made every day. I’ve always sung and continue to do so. In 2009, Smithsonian Folkways released my CD Irish Pirate Ballads and Other Songs of the Sea, which received two INDIE Award nominations.
Dan Milner is a writer and musician. His books include The Unstoppable Irish: Songs and Integration of the New York Irish, 1783-1883 was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2019 and his classic collection of 150 Irish and British folk songs, The Bonnie Bunch of Roses. He has also released three CDs for Folk-Legacy Records: Irish Ballads & Songs of the Sea (1998), Irish in America (2001), and Irish Songs from Old New England (2003).
Elizabeth Stack is an associate editor at Gotham.