James Magee (McKee)

DESCRIPTION: The singer, sentenced to New South Wales, gives his name as James Magee. An orphan brought up by his grandmother, his aunt brings charges against him to gain his inheritance. He laments for his wife and children, and curses the aunt
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1926 (Sam Henry collection)
KEYWORDS: crime accusation trial punishment transportation separation family
FOUND IN: Ireland Canada(Mar,Newf)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Henry/Huntingdon/Herrmann-SamHenrysSongsOfThePeople H136, p. 125, "James Magee" (1 text, 1 tune)
Morton-FolksongsSungInUlster 40, "James Magee" (1 text, 1 tune)
Morton/Maguire-ComeDayGoDayGodSendSunday 51, pp. 146-147,175, "James Magee" (1 text, 1 tune)
Guigné-ForgottenSongsOfTheNewfoundlandOutports, pp. 212-213, "James McGee (James MaGee)" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Roud #2492
NOTES [239 words]: [The] Morton-FolksongsSungInUlster text makes this a religious conflict. The aunt "married an Orangeman"; the last verse is
Once I had a well furnished house no room could it afford,
To enter in an Orangeman, when he'd be on record,
But if a Ribbonman would call that way, well treated he would be,
Ah but now there does not dwell a man where dwelt young James Magee.
Morton-FolksongsSungInUlster: "No doubt, especially since the famine, land and the possession of it has been to the Irish what cocaine must be to the drug-addict. The more he got the more he wanted. No doubt avarice got the better of many and they used the politico-religious situation for their own gain."
Zimmermann p. 19: "In some parts of Ulster, Protestant and Catholic tenants were mingled and contended for the land; the peasantry was thus divided into two camps, each having its oath-bound association. This led to a sort of religious war. At the end of the eighteenth century the Catholic "Defenders" were opposed to the Protestant "Peep o'Day Boys" or "Orangemen." The "Defenders" were succeeded by the "Ribbonmen," (song [Zimmermann] 39).
One of Guigné-ForgottenSongsOfTheNewfoundlandOutports's texts is a couple of verses from a Nova Scotia version collected by Grover. - BS
Sean O'Boyle lists this as the same tune as "Henry Joy (McCracken)." The two are indeed nearly identical in meter, but I would not call them the same, though they are close. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.2
File: HHH136

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