John Reilly (II)

DESCRIPTION: "John Reilly's always dry." His mother warned him that "all the other Reilly boys Had died of whisky drouth" so now he spends his money on Bass's ale "by the pail" and Dublin stout, whisky, gin and wine. As soon as he wakes "he slips out for a bucket."
AUTHOR: (based on a song by Edward Harrigan, but heavily rewritten)
EARLIEST DATE: 1881 (The Mulligan Guards' Nominee)
KEYWORDS: warning drink wine humorous
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Bord))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
McMorland/Scott-HerdLaddieOTheGlen, pp. 102-103, 153, "John Reilly" (1 text, 1 tune)
Compare: Finson-Edward-Harrigan-David-Braham, vol. I, #55, pp. 205-207, "John Riley's Always Dry" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #21750
NOTES [285 words]: For background on Harrigan and Braham, see the notes to "The Babies on Our Block."
According to Franceschina, p. 134, "The Mulligan Guards' SIlver Wedding" opened on February 21, 1881. It was the eighth and last in the saga of Mulligan Guard plays. Cordelia Mulligan, wife of series hero Dan Mulligan, rents out apartments to a wide, and wild, variety of tenants. I don't really understand Franceschina's plot summaries, but it features one of the most beloved of the Mulligan scenes, in which Cordelia Mulligan, about to celebrate twenty-five years of marriage to Dan, instead discovers what she thinks is a love letter to him, and prepares a melodramatic suicide by drinking rat poison. Or, at least, she thinks it's rat poison, but is actually strong brandy that Dan has relabeled to keep people from drinking it. So Cordelia sobs out her will while getting drunker. It was a favorite scene of all Harrigan's dramas -- although Harrigan got the bones of it from Annie Yeamans, who played Cordelia (Moody, pp. 104-106).
The gimmick also occurs in "Cordelia's Aspirations"; see the notes to "My Dad's Dinner Pail."
The song "John Riley's Always Dry" is sung by Dan Mulligan, and is "a bright drinking song -- part stately gavotte, part Irish jig -- trading on easily digestible ascending scales" (Franceschina, p. 135).
Harrigan was fond of the stereotype of the heavy-drinking Irishman; in the play "Reilly and the Four Hundred," a character named McGuinness drinks so much that, "when he turns on the gas, he is blown back out of town" (Williams, p. 150). This might be based on Harrigan's own experience; in his early years, he had toured with several performers who were excessively fond of the bottle. - 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
Williams: William H. A. Williams, 'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream, University of Illinois Press, 1996

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File: McSc102

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