Mister Dooley's Geese

DESCRIPTION: "I've a very noisy neighbor, Mister Dooley is his name, He's fond of ructions, likewise of raising game; With his turkeys and his chickens... For it's all day long they're marching, WIth their quack, quack...." The singer is always fighting Dooley's birds
AUTHOR: Words: Edward Harrigan / Music: David Braham
EARLIEST DATE: 1884 (sheet music published by William A. Pond & Co.)
KEYWORDS: humorous bird fight clothes
FOUND IN: Canada(Que)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Finson-Edward-Harrigan-David-Braham, vol. II, #109, pp. 99-100, "Mister Dooley's Geese" (1 text, 1 tune)
BROADSIDES:
LOCSheet, M 3500 M2.3.U6A44,, "Mister Dooley's Geese," Firth, Pond & Co. (New York), 1884
NOTES [320 words]: For background on Harrigan and Braham, see the notes to "The Babies on Our Block."
Franceschina, p. 171, reports this as one of five songs for the play McAllister's Legacy: "'Mister Dooley's Geese,' a narrative patter song complaining about a noisy neighbor, has an attractive march chorus evoking the quacking sounds of geese, the gobbling noises of turkeys, and the rooster's cock-a-doodle-doo."
The play "McAllister's Legacy," according to Franceschina, p. 170, starts with a typical Edward Harrigan absurdity: old Morgan McAllister, from Ireland but living in Australia, leaves most of his relatives worthless legacies such as a pair of pants or a wooden leg, but one is given a plot of land and another the building on the land. The two then fight over how to dispose of the property. It eventually turns out that the lawyer who read the will is actually McAllister, disguised, attempting to find out which of his relatives is worthy of the property. Molly McGouldrick (played by Tony Hart), who had been granted the building, had been kind to all, ends up with the entire inheritance.
Moody, p. 146, mentions a few other features: a communist planting bombs in clocks, a veterinarian who treats humans "while off duty," a wild parody of the stock market.
The play sounds interesting, but it was to have sad side effects: On the night of November 22, 1884, after the Harrigan and Hart company rehearsed the play (which was supposed to premier in two weeks), the theater burned down (Moody, p. 143). The play managed to find a new stage fairly quickly, but did not last long (Moody, pp. 146-147), and no doubt that contributed to the eventual split between Harrigan and Hart.
Although I have not been able to hear it, Edith Fowke collected a song by this title, with the correct first line, in Quebec; hence the "Found In" entry. As of this writing, despite the collection from tradition, it has no Roud number.- RBW
Bibliography

Franceschina: John Franceschina, David Braham: The American Offenbach, Routledge, 2003
Moody: Richard Moody, Ned Harrigan: From Corlear's Hook to Herald Square, Nelson Hall, 1980

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