Cruiskeen Lawn

DESCRIPTION: "Let the farmer praise his grounds, as the hunter does his hounds" and so on, but the singer prefers his full jug. He reviews the benefits and when death comes to take him he will have death wait while he has "another crooskeen lawn"
AUTHOR: Dion Boucicault (1820-1890)? (see NOTES)
EARLIEST DATE: 1858 (Lover)
LONG DESCRIPTION: Partly in Gaelic. Singer says farmers may praise their grounds, the huntsman his hounds, but he's happy with his cruiskeen lawn (little full jug). He toasts his companions, proposing not to go home although it's morning, and swears that when Death approaches, he will beg off to "have another cruiskeen lawn" Chorus: "Gramachree ma cruiskeen, slanthe gal mavourneen, Erin mavourneen lawn"
KEYWORDS: drink humorous nonballad death party foreignlanguage
FOUND IN: Canada(Ont) Ireland
REFERENCES (9 citations):
O'Conor-OldTimeSongsAndBalladOfIreland, p. 54, "Crooskeen Lawn" (1 text)
Fowke-TraditionalSingersAndSongsFromOntario 2, "The Cruiskeen Lawn" (1 text, 1 tune)
Vikár/Panagapka-SongsNorthWoodsSungByOJAbbott 63, "The Crúiscín lán" (1 text, 1 tune)
Huntington-TheGam-MoreSongsWhalemenSang, pp. 127-128, "Cruiskeen Lawn" (1 text, 2 tunes)
Dime-Song-Book #9, p. 26, "Cruiskeen Lawn" (1 text)
DT, CRUSKEEN*
ADDITIONAL: Samuel Lover, The Lyrics of Ireland (London, 1858 ("Digitized by Google")), pp. 131-132, "Cruiskin Lawn" (1 text)
Kathleen Hoagland, editor, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry (New York, 1947), pp. 259-260, "The Cruiskeen Lawn" (1 text)
H. Halliday Sparling, Irish Minstrelsy (London, 1888), pp. 485-486, 511, "An Cruiscin Lan"
Roud #2309
RECORDINGS:
O. J. Abbott, "The Cruiskeen Lawn" (on Abbott1)
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, "Cruiscin Lan" (on IRClancyMakem01)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 15(73b), "Crooskeen Lawn," Henry Disley (London), 1860-1883
LOCSinging, as102580, "Cruiskeen Lawn," George S. Harris (Philadelphia), 19C
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "John Anderson, My Jo, John" (tune)
cf. "John Anderson, My Jo (I)" (tune)
NOTES [722 words]: "Cruiskeen lawn" is, in Irish, a "full jug." (source: radiohaha: the online encyclopaedia of contemporary british radio comedy. [Also Hoagland, who renders the title "My full little jug"; Vikár/Panagapka-SongsNorthWoodsSungByOJAbbott say that the proper spelling is crúiscín lán - RBW]).
Lover: "The meaning of the chorus, in English, is something like the following -- 'My heart's love is my little jug, Bright health to my darling! My heart's love, her fair locks,' &c."
Sparling: "Originated among convivial circles of Dublin, but embodies fragments of a much older Celtic song. The tune is clearly not Irish; said to be of Danish origin, and a variant of that which has reached modern times as 'There was a little man and he had a little gun!'" It appears here that Sparling is referring to the melody of Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 325, "There was a little man, and he had a little gun." - BS
Although apparently the work of a known author, it has quickly been "anonymized"; the several popular books of poetry which include it (Stevenson's Home Book of Verse v. 2, Hoagland) list no author.
What's more, Finson, p. 275, writes that "Dublin-born immigrant [to America] Peter K. Moran relates the Irish love of whisky in his 'Croskeen Lawn' (ca. 1823) which speaks f the brew as it is distilled in the old country and features a refrain in Gaelic." Finson doesn't give any text of Moran's song, but presumably it played some role in the ancestry of this; Williams, p. 31, claims that Boucicault took it over for "The Colleen Bawn" (1860).
Dion Boucicault was born in Ireland but migrated to America in 1853 (Kahn, p. 66).
According to Morison, p. 780, "Of the 132 plays written my Dion Boucicault, only Rip Van Winkle (1865) in which Joseph Jefferson starred for over thirty years, and The Colleen Bawn, a romantic comedy of Ireland, are remembered." On the other hand, his daughter Nina Boucicault, when in her late thirties, would create the role of "Peter Pan" in the first theatrical production (Douglas-Fairhurst, p. 306). And Boucicault's "achievements in the United States included the first depiction [in a play] of Negroes as something other than buffoons, the founding of a school of Irish comedy, and the first use of carpets on stage (Kahn, p. 22). Less to his credit, perhaps, is his invention of the special effects extravaganza; in 1857, he had a play simulate a fire on stage (Kahn, p. 30). So even if his works are forgotten, the Boucicault family arguably still managed to leave a mark on the theater.
Williams, pp. 98-99, says, "Boucicault was born in Dublin around 1820. Destined to spend most of his life outside of Ireland, he nevertheless received the most indelible gift that city can bestow -- its accent. It remained with him all of his life, making it difficult for Boucicault, the actor, to play convincingly any but Irish roles.... Boucicault got his theatrical start in London as both actor and playwright (one of his first roles was that of [Samuel] Lover's Rory O'More). He came to America in 1853, but spent much of the sixties touring abroad with his Irish plays. In 1870 he returned more or less permanently to America, where he died in 1890." Williams says that he wrote largely with Irish-American audiences in mind, and also that he "provided a bridge that would lead from the stage Irishry of Lover to the sophisticated comic-dramas of John Millington Synge and George Bernard Shaw."
Boylan, p. 27, says that Dion Lardner Boucicault was born either Dec. 26, 1820 or Dec. 20, 1822, and was "probably the natural son of Dr. Dionysius Lardner, a boarder in his mother's house." Boylan lists his first successful play as being 1841's London Assurance. Boylan attributes much of the success of his dramas "to his wife's portrayal of the heroines." He also mentions the "sensation" caused by The Octaroon of 1859, "the first play to treat seriously of the American negro population." Late in his life, demand for his plays declined, leaving him to make a bare living as a teacher of actine. He died in New York on September 18, 1890."
Even so, Boucicault's plays presented only a "romanticized, sentimentalized, and largely falsified image of Ireland," according to Heinz Kosok (quoted by Williams, p. 100) -- and one that hoped for English and Irish reconciliation. - RBW
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