Mulligan Guard, The

DESCRIPTION: "We crave your condescension, We'll tell you what we know, Of marching in the Mulligan Guard...." The members of the target company "shouldered guns, And marched and marched away From Baxter Street we marched to Avenue A." At home, they drink
AUTHOR: Words: Edward Harrigan / Music: David Braham
EARLIEST DATE: 1873 (sheet music published by Wm. A. Pond & Co, New York)
KEYWORDS: soldier humorous drink nonballad
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Finson-Edward-Harrigan-David-Braham, vol. I, #1, pp. 2-6, "The Mulligan Guards" (1 text. 1 tune)
Spaeth-ReadEmAndWeep, pp. 113-114, "The Mulligan Guard" (the chorus only)
ADDITIONAL: Richard Moody, editor, _Dramas from the American Theatre, 1762-1909_, World Publishing Company, 1966, insert after p. 544, "The Mulligan Guard" (1 text, 1 tune, a copy of the original sheet music); the play "The Mulligan Guard Ball" is on pp. 549-565 (this is the first printed edition, taken from the manuscript filed with the Library of Congress in 1879, and may not have matched the actual performances perfectly); this song is at the end of scene 2, on pp. 554-555, apparently sung by Dan Mulligan
Stanley Appelbaum, editor, _Show Songs: from The Black Crook to The Red Mill_, Dover Publications, 1974, pp. 13-17, "The Mulligan Guard" (1 text, 1 tune, a copy of the sheet music)
Richard Moody, _Ned Harrigan: From Corlear's Hook to Herald Square_, Nelson Hall, 1980, p. 49, "The Mulligan Guard"; photo inset following p. 54 has a copy of the sheet music
John Franceschina, _David Braham: The American Offenbach_, Routledge, 2003, pp. 57-58, "(The Mulligam Guard)" (1 text)
Edward Harrigan, _The Mulligans_, G. W. Dilingham, 1901, pp. 11, 86, 303, "(no title)" (1 fragment, of the chorus, slightly different from the published sheet music)
Roud #V7922
RECORDINGS:
Mick Moloney, "The Mulligan Guard" (on HarriganBrahamMaloney)
NOTES [1115 words]: For background on composers Harrigan and Braham, see the notes to "The Babies on Our Block." Of all their songs, this was the most popular; it was used as a march by the Coldstream Guards and is actually quoted in modified form in Kipling's Kim! (Kahn, pp. 3-4). Kahn, p. 4, says there was even a French version, from which which he quotes the chorus.
Appelbaum, p. xx, gives the history of the song as follows:
"The song 'The Mulligan Guard' was not originally part of a musical play. It was first performed by Harrigan and Hart in a sketch at the Academy of Music in Chicago on July 15, 1873. The sketch and song poked fun at the unofficial military organizations then rife among various minority groups in New York City. On certain days these groups would pay their compliments to their local ward politicians and would then partake in a rowdy picnic, combined with target practice.
"Harrigan worked up this sketch into a playlet, The Mulligan Guard Ball, which ran at the Theatre Comique from January 13 to May 24, 1879. In the playlet two guards organizations, one Irish and one Negro, hire the same dance hall for the same night, with seismic results. [Literally; in the play; the floor breaks down and the Blacks on the upper floor land among the Irish on the lower.]... In 1883, Harrigan and Hart presented an enlarged, full-evening of The Mulligan Guard at the Theatre Comique."
The Mulligan Guard, as originally presented, was a "target company" -- one of these militia groups that gathered to march, take shots at a target, and then get drunk. Kahn, p. 81, reports that "Target companies came into being in the eighteen-thirties mainly because immigrants were refused admission into the city's existing militia companies by their choosy officers. These companies were pseudo-military outfits, often named in honor of an alderman or other leader in ward politics -- the William A. Tweed Guards, for instance -- which every so often would assemble and march off for what was ostensibly a day's firing practice. Splendidly uniformed, a company would parade through the streets early in the morning, a brass band hired for the day leading the way, and the rear brought up by a colored boy carrying a large target, on which would be prominently lettered the name of the company's patron. The outfit's first stop would always be the home of this individual who was expected, in return for being serenaded there, to provide it with prizes to shoot for." Then the company would go on a party before they had their shooting contest, at which they would get so drunk that they were rarely able to hit the target.
Ned Harrigan reportedly wrote his original skit because he "considered the high-stepping target companies to be a nuisance" (Kahn, p. 84).
Part of the humor of the presentation was that the "company" -- which, to deserve that title, should have consisted of many dozens of men -- in fact consisted of just two soldiers, Captain Hussey, plus a private and the Black boy, Morgan Benson, who carried the target. (There is disagreement in the books I've read about whether Harrigan or Hart played Captain Hussey. Looking at a photo of the two in costume, I think Harrigan was Hussey, but I can't prove it.)
'Harrigan got the 'guard idea' in Boston n the winter of 1872, wrote the sketch and lyrics, and when Braham sent him a tune shaped to his lyrics, he tried to persuade William A. Pond to publish the sheet music, hoping to get the song in circulation before the act got on stage. It was a promotional stunt he was to use successfully in later years. Pond declined, then changed his mind when he heard Harrigan and Hart perform the number. He offered fifty dollars for the rights, and Harrigan accepted. For the rest of his life, Harrigan bemoaned his youthful indiscretion: 'I let him have it! I let him have it' Why couldn't he have learned his lesson just as well on a less popular song.
"The Mulligan act featured a marching troop of two, one modeled on a tailor on the Seventh Ward named Dan Mulligan and the other on Capt. Jack Hussey, a baggage master at Castle Garden who was said to have the 'awfulest gnarlest, dead-looking face Darwin ever saw,' but whose chest was decorated shoulder to shoulder with medals awarded for the rescues from drowning he had performed along the East RIver. (Hussey's wife Cordelia would later serve as the model for Dan's wife Cordelia in the Mulligan plays)" (Moody-Harrigan, p. 45).
Kahn, p. 86, says that Jack Hussey was "the idol of all the Seventh Ward target companies. Hussey, a longshoreman and for some years a gatekeeper at Castle Garden, was a native of County Cork who emigrated to New York in 1851 and, during an era when the city's citizens were continually falling or being pushed in the waters that bordered it, achieved a massive reputation as a life-saver. When he rescued his twenty-fifth individual from drowning, Congress had a special medal struck for him to commemorate the feat. Before he was shot and killed in a street brawl, Hussey had fished at least one drowning person out of a New York river annually for thirty-five years, not to mention seven horses that, at one time or another, he pulled from the East River."
"By the summer of 1875, indoors and outdoors, rare was the establishment that did not include at least 'The Mulligan Guard' [and often other Harrigan/Braham songs] in its concert programs" (Franceschina, p. 91).
Despite this widespread popularity, there is no evidence that the song went into tradition, even though some other Harrigan/Braham songs did. But, according to Kahn, p. 84, the success of this song "laughed [the target companies] right out of existence."
According to Franceschina, p. 58, "Braham's music begins with a side-drum roll and a single beat of the bass trum. This figure is played three times and followed by eight bars of a drum-and-fife duet. The fife tune is then repeated with full orchestra leading into a four-bar military fanfare. The voice follows in an idiomatic Braham melody outlining the harmony with almost no dissonant nonchordal tones. Following the indication 'Forward march' comes the chorus anticipating many of the trios in the marches of John Philip Sousa, with its easily memorable, constantly soaring melody. After the last verse and chorus are sung, the introductory fife tune reappears, followed by the opening side drum and bass drum duet (with the indication "Present arms"). The musical interlude is completed with an eight-bar Irish jig borrowed from the Irish ballad "St. Patrick's Day in the Morning" (with the indication "Target excursion band"), leading into a final reprise of the chorus (with the indication "Forward march"). - RBW
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