Daniel O'Connell (I)

DESCRIPTION: Singer overhears an old woman and a tinker; he says Daniel O'Connell is now making children in Dublin by steam; those made the old way are too few. She berates O'Connell for removing the people's best diversion; he salutes her
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1871 (broadside, Bodleian 2806 b.10(26))
LONG DESCRIPTION: Singer overhears an old woman and a tinker talking; he says Daniel O'Connell is now making children in Dublin by steam, because those made the old way are too small and too few. She berates O'Connell for removing the people's best diversion; he salutes her, saying that if all women in Ireland were as plucky as she, the nation would have babies aplenty (for the Queen's army)
KEYWORDS: age disability sex army pregnancy Ireland political baby children tinker
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1775-1847 - Life of Daniel O'Connell
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf,Ont)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Fowke-TraditionalSingersAndSongsFromOntario 19, "Daniel O'Connell" (1 text, 1 tune)
Graham-Joe-Holmes-SongsMusicTraditionsOfAnUlsterman 16, "Daniel O'Connell and His Steam Engine" (1 text, 1 tune)
Guigné-ForgottenSongsOfTheNewfoundlandOutports, pp. 65-66, "The Bold Tinker (Daniel O'Connell)" (1 text, 1 tune)
Vikár/Panagapka-SongsNorthWoodsSungByOJAbbott 46, "Daniel O'Connell" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: _Sing Out_ magazine, Volume 22, #1 (1973), p, 18, "Daniel O'Connell" (1 text, 1 tune, apparently the O. J. Abbott version)
Roud #2313
RECORDINGS:
O. J. Abbott, "Daniel O'Connell" (on Abbott1)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, 2806 b.10(26), "Dan O'Connell or Morris O'Donnell. Hatching Chickens by Steam" ("Ye lovers of mirth, I pray give attention"), The Poet's Box (Glasgow), 1871
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Fergus O'Connor and Independence" (subject: Daniel O'Connell and the Tithe War)
cf. "Daniel O'Connell (II)" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "Erin's Green Shore [Laws Q27]" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "By Memory Inspired" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "Charlie Jack's Dream" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "Annie Moore" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "An Irish Girl's Opinion" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "Old Ireland I Adore" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "Granuaile" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "Gra-mo-chroi. I'd Like to See Old Ireland Free Once More" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "Come to the Bower" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "The Shan Van Voght (1828)," (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "Glorious Repeal Meeting Held at Tara Hill" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "The Meeting of Tara" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "Erin's King (Daniel Is No More)" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "Kerry Eagle" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "Grand Conversation on O'Connell Arose" (subject: Daniel O'Connell)
cf. "Not a Word of 'No Surrender'" (subject; Protestant opposition to Daniel O'Connell)
NOTES [296 words]: Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847) [was] leader of Catholic Association whose pressure led to the Catholic Emancipation Act, 1829.
"Tinker," in this context, means one of the travelling people, rather than a worker in tin. Fowke notes drily that this aspect of O'Connell's long career "seems to have been overlooked by his biographers." - PJS
I wonder if this might not be confused with the life of another Irish hero, Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891), whose career was blighted by sex scandals. Given that the only surviving version of this song seems to be O. J. Abbott's, such a thing is possible.
There is severe irony in O'Connell urging that Ireland breed up more people; his last major speech, in 1847, was on the disaster of the potato famine -- which of course was so deadly only because Ireland had more people than it could reasonably support.
There is another Canadian Daniel O'Connell song, a fragment collected by Creighton. It perhaps reveals how many Irish left Ireland after the famines that both songs are found only outside Ireland. - RBW
Broadside Bodleian 2806 b.10(26) refers to O'Connell only in the title, with Morris O'Donnell being the name in the text. - BS
This might explain why, as Fowke-TraditionalSingersAndSongsFromOntario comments on p. 171, "this particular phase of [O'Connell's] career seems to have been overlooked by his biographers": It was originally a tale of O'Donnell that was attracted to O'Connell by similarity of names. - RBW
Fowke-TraditionalSingersAndSongsFromOntario: "It is still [1965] in oral circulation in Ireland for Liam Clancy learned it from an Irish countryman and taught it to Luke Kelly who has popularized it in London's folk clubs. Kenneth Peacock tells me that he heard a fragmentary version in Newfoundland." - BS
Last updated in version 5.1
File: RcDanOco

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