Bells of Shandon

DESCRIPTION: "With deep affection and recollection I often think of those Shandon bells." Those bells are compared to those at the Vatican, Notre Dame, and Moscow, and the bells "in St Sophio the Turkman gets"
AUTHOR: Rev Francis Sylvester Mahony (1804-1866)
EARLIEST DATE: 1834 (_Fraser's Magazine_, according to Croker-PopularSongsOfIreland)
KEYWORDS: lyric nonballad religious music
FOUND IN: Ireland US(MW) Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (15 citations):
OCanainn-SongsOfCork, pp. 106-107, "The Bells of Shandon" (1 text, 1 tune)
O'Conor-OldTimeSongsAndBalladOfIreland, pp. 24,60, "Bells of Shandon" (1 text, 1 tune)
Croker-PopularSongsOfIreland, pp. 222-226, "The Bells of Shandon" (1 text)
Dean-FlyingCloud, pp. 65-66, "The Bells of Shandon" (1 text)
Hylands-Mammoth-Hibernian-Songster, pp. 50-51, "The Bells of Shandon" (1 text)
FriskyIrishSongster, pp. 53-54, "The Bells of Shandon" (1 text)
Mabel-Waltz-Songster, p. 14, "The Bells of Shandon" (1 text)
Cohans-Dublin-Jarvey-Songster, p. 39, "The Bells of Shandon" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Charles Gavan Duffy, editor, The Ballad Poetry of Ireland (1845), pp. 242-243, "The Bells of Shandon"
Edward Hayes, The Ballads of Ireland (Boston, 1859), Vol I, pp. 50-51, "The Bells of Shandon"
Oliver Yorke, The Reliques of Father Prout (London, 1873 ("Digitized by Google")), pp. 159-160, "The Shandon Bells" (1 text)
Kathleen Hoagland, editor, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry (New York, 1947), pp. Shandon"
Charles Sullivan, ed., Ireland in Poetry, p. 42, "The Bells of Shandon" (1 text)
437-438, "The Shandon Bells" (1 text)
H. Halliday Sparling, Irish Minstrelsy (London, 1888), pp. 431-432, "The Bells of Walter de la Mare, _Come Hither_, revised edition, 1928; #224, "The Bells of Shandon" (1 text)
ST OCon024 (Partial)
Roud #9562
RECORDINGS:
Ellen Emma Power, "Bells Of Shandon" (on ITMA/CapeShoreNL)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(235), "The Bells of Shandon", W.S. Fortey (London), 1858-1885; also Harding B 11(234), 2806 b.11(162), "The Bells of Shandon"
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Last Rose of Summer" (tune in Blackpool, OCanainn-SongsOfCork)
cf. "Slain le Maigh (Fairwell to the Maigue)" (tune, OCanainn-SongsOfCork)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Farewell to the Bay of Islands ("Sweet Bay of Islands! I love your highlands") (James Murphy, compiler, _Songs & Ballads of Terra Nova_, Evening Telegram publishing, 1903 (available from the Memorial University of Newfoundland web site), p. 44)
NOTES [283 words]: [See] The Ballad Poetry of Ireland by Charles Gavan Duffy (Dublin, 1845), pp. 242-243, "The Bells of Shandon." - BS
This is among the most popular of Irish poems; Granger's Index to Poetry lists fully a dozen anthologies containing the piece.
According to Henry Boylan, A Dictionary of Irish Biography, second edition, St. Martin's Press, 1988, pp. 238-239, Francis Sylvester Mahony (1804-1866) was a Jesuit priest born in Cork; he published much of his poetry under the name "Father Prout" (a name he took from an actual priest he had known). Having had a history of partying and of arguing with his bishop, he later left the church to work as a journalist and satirist. He was buried, appropriately enough, in Shandon church.
Other works from his pen in the Index include "The Town of Passage (IiI)."
This song has a curious political significance. Although sound recording had been invented before the turn of the twentieth century, it was not unti 1908 that it was used in a presidential campaign: The two contenders, William Howard Taft and William Jennings Bryan, both recorded excerpts of their speeches, and their supporters would take a phonograph player to campaign events and play the candidates' speeches. Most of the recordings the candidates made were, of course, about their platforms and positions, but Taft also released a recording recalling a trip to Ireland which quoted the opening of this song. There were plenty of campaign songs before that, of course, but this was the first one in the candidate's own voice. (See Jeffery Rosen, William Howard Taft [a volume in the American Presidents series edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.], Times Books, 2018, p. 48). - RBW
Last updated in version 7.2
File: OCon024

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