P. J. McCall

Life
1861-1919 [Patrick Joseph McCall; Mac Cathmaioll; pseud. ”Cavellus”]; b. Dublin, 6 March 1861, son of John McCall, a publican and grocer and folklorist from Hackettstown, Co. Carlow; ed. CBs and St. Joseph’s Monastery, Harold’s Cross, a Catholic University school, Dublin; spent childhood summer at Rathangan, Co. Wexford, home of his mother and an aunt Ellen Newport who provide many of the songs he collected; edited the Feis Ceoil collections and became associated with Fr. Matthew Russell, ed. of The Irish Monthly, also publ. in Shamrock and Old Moore’s Almanac; m. Mary Furlong, sister of Alice Furlong (and said to be relation of the Wexford poet Thomas Furlong); freq. contrib. to Old Moore’s Almanac as “Cavellus” and took over the editorship from his father in 1902;

best known for the historical ballads “Boolavogue” on Fr. Murphy in 1798 (set to the air of “Eochaill” [Youghal]), and “Follow me up to Carlow” (set to the traditional air created by Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne in 1580); also “Kelly the Boy from Killane [Killann]” - all put to music by Arthur Warren Darley using traditional Irish airs; issued Songs of Erin (Dublin 1899); elected to Dublin City Corporation in 1902, defeating James Connolly, and retain the office of Councillor for three terms thereafter; issued Pulse of the Bards (Dublin 1904); his prose legends The Fenian Nights’ Entertainments first appearing in Shamrock; his manuscript Ballad Collection is in the National Library of Ireland; his “Féilire of Adamnan”, “The Dark Maid of the Valley” and “Oró Mhór, a Mhóirín” were included in Eleanor Hull’s Poembook of the Gael (1912). PI DBIV DIW DIL FDA OCIL

Note: Many of the P. J. McCall’s works can be found at Internet Archive [online] - both books and individual songs incl. “Father Murphy from Boolavogue”, sung by Mary Carton [on] Mickey and Mary Carton and Their Orchestra [21 March 1950] (Decca 12282) - play here. [02.04.2022 & 07.04.2023].

[ top ]

Bibliographical details
In the Shadow of St Patrick’s: Notes and Reminiscences (Sealy, Bryers & Walker, Mid. Abbey St. [1894]), vi, 48pp. - a paper read before the Irish National Literary Society, 27 April 1894 [Carraig Chapbooks No. 3] (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker, 1894) - on Mangan, Father Meehan, O’Connell, Emmet, Major Sirr, Zozimus [Michael Moran], &c., &c.; 6d. [See Ryan, op. cit. infra, p.130n.].

Songs and Ballads (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.; Dublin: M.H. Gill; O’Donoghue MDCCCXCIX [1899]),158pp. [notices from p.150; ded. to My Very Dead Friend Francis A. Fahy]; and Do. [rep. MH Gill 1904); incls. The Girl He Left Behind Him - A Brigade Ballad.]

Pulse of the Bards/Cuisle na h-Eigse (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1904), rep. in Irish Folklore and Mythology in the Nineteenth Century, ed. A. Gilbert [Irish history and culture, 6 vols] (Tokyo: Edition Synapse; London: Ganesha Pub. 2003- ), Vol. 5, being P. J. McCall, Pulse of the Bards (Cuisle na h-éigse).

Irish Fireside Songs (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1911), 155pp. [+endpapers 172pp.] - ded. ‘to Alice Furlong’ [available at Internet Archive - online; 07.04.2023].

[ top ]

Commentary

See Liam Gaul, Glory O! Glory O! - A Life of P. J. McCall (THP Ireland 2011), 224pp.

W. P. Ryan, The Irish Literary Revival, Its History, Pioneers and Possibilities [1894] (NY: Lemma Publishing Corp. 1970), gives this account: P. J. McCall, Catholic University man, intimate knowledge of Old Dublin, of Wexford and Wicklow [see his contributions to Dublin Historical Record], command over metres and versification almost equal to [43] Mangan’s; his mind stored with the drollest of old songs of the people, with their idioms, superstitions, and fancies ... it is no exaggeration to say that his sketches called Fenian Nights’ Entertainments, contributed in after years to the Shamrock, are amongst the happiest illustrations afford in our days of how the Irish peasant at his best can tell a story. He lives in a house in Old Dublin that teems with strange memories, and there has every-day opportunities of studying Celts both quaint and queer. No phase, flash, idiosyncrasy, or idiom escapes his observant Celtic nature [44].

Austin Clarke, Penny in the Clouds (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1968), Chap 2: ‘[W]e [Clarke and F. R. Higgins] made our way [...] to the public house in Patrick St., owned by P. J. McCall, who had written ‘Follow Me Up to Carlow’ and other rousing ballads [ed. best known for the song ‘Boulavogue’, from Irish Fireside Songs, 1911]. The literary pair broach literary topics, but are stone-walled by their interlocutor behind the bar. ‘After a while, he happened to remark that the Boss was at home in Clontarf with a bad cold. We realised that we were talking to the barman. / Hastily, we left that public-house.’ (Q.p.) Note that Clarke attributes the original of Yeats’s “Down by the Sally Gardens” to McCall - as infra.

[ top ]

References
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), / speaks of his as being descended from ‘old Tyrone family driven out at plantation’; gives extract from Fenian Nights’ Entertainments, being a series of Ossianic legends told at a Wexford fireside, 1st Series, Shamrock Lib., Vol. 2 (1897). See also Colm MacLochlainn, Anglo-Irish Song-writers (1950). selects “Fionn Maccumhail and the Princess”, from Fenian Nights’ Entertainment [‘Wance upon a time, when things was a great’le betther in Ireland than they are at present, when a rale king ruled over the counhtry wid four others undher him to look afther the craps an’ other industries, there lived a young chief called Fan MaCool’ ‘win he was on the shaughraun ... ‘“I’m Fan MaCool,”, sez the other, as impident as a cok sparra, “have you anything to say agen me?”, for his name wasn’t up, at that time, like afther’, Fionn MacCumhail [and note Hiberno-English glossary, ftn. - as infra]; ‘Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore’ [‘never the equal of Old Pedhar would you crack again / Never such another would delight another would delight your eye’ ... The Ryans and the Briens and their factions were afraid of him / For Pedhar’s [fighting] keppeen could command a ready score’]; ‘Light of the World’ [“Love, will you come with me into the tomb?”, spake from his coffin the dead young man / ”Yea, I will go with you” ... said the girl, with a loving sighing ..’]; ‘Herself and Myself’ [by turns, ‘Says Herself to Myself: “We’re as good as the best of them” / Says Myself to Herself: “Sure we’re better than gold” /.. ”We’re as young s the rest of them” [...] “Troth, we’ll never grow old”. [Note: this last poem is used by Sean O’Casey in ‘Nannie’s Night Out’, acc. Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature, 1979)].

Biog. note [as above]. An Anglo-Hibernian Glossary gives raumash [rameis]/nonsense; coatamore/coat; foosther/diversion; waum-asin/[?]; traumauns/eldertrees; deeshy/small; brushna/furze; faysh/festival; moryah/forsooth; geersha/girl; geoghagh/begger; ollaves/judges; lushmores/foxgloves; leanaun/fairy guardian; creepie/three-legged; bocagh/beggar; crooshenin and colloguin; acvochal; cruistin/throwing; clochaun/stone; also salachs/untidy people, tinkers.

John Cooke, ed., The Dublin Book of Irish Verse (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1909), gives “The Bonny Light Horseman, a Jacobite Ballad” [‘A poor lonely maiden, I am now going over / To Shemus, in Flanders, to look for my lover: / Oh. Mary, my pity! [?hows] shall I discover / My bonnie light horseman, away in the war ... My bonnie light horseman is slain in the war!’]; also “The Bouchaleen Bawn: A Spinning Duet”.

Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (1979) quotes a comic extract of 9 prose lines from Fenian Nights on the creation of Ireland’s Eye to illustrate a spirit opposite to Yeats.

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, 105-06, reprints the poem “Boulavogue”; founder member of Irish National Literary Society (London).; ‘Boulavogue’ first printed in Irish Weekly Independent (18 June 1898) as ‘Father Murphy of the County Wexford’, a contrib. to 1798 centenary; shown by Zimmerman (Songs of Rebellion) to be based on ’98 songs “Come all You Warriors [...]”, “Some Treat of David”, and “Fr. Murphy, or the Wexford Men of ’98”; set to the tune of another called “Father Murphy”, and now sung to “Youghal Harbour”, and known as “Boulavogue” since 1922, when a variant text appeared in P. Walsh’s Songs of the Gael, 4th ser. (1922). See also FDA3, 495: Deane notes that the substance of this text is produced in Austin Clarke, ‘Early Memories of F. R. Higgins’, in Dublin Magazine (Summer 1967), pp.68-73.]

Terry Moylan, The Age of Revolution in the Irish Song Tradition, 1776-1815 (Dublin: Lilliput Press 2000), rep. ‘‘The Boy from Killann’’ [as sic] and ‘‘Boolavogue’’.

Belfast Central Public Library holds Irish Fireside Songs; Irish Noinins; Pulse of the Bards; Songs of Erinn (1899).

[ top ]

Quotations
“Boolavogue”: ‘At Boolavogue the sun was setting / O’er the bright May meadows of Shelmalier, / A rebel set the heather blazing / And brought the neighbours from far and near [… &c.].’ The famous ballad, based on the first victory of Fr Murphy and his United Irish followers against British yoemenry in the ’98 Rebellion on 26 May 1798, was first published as “Fr Murphy and the County Wexford” in the Irish Independent (18 June 1898.) It is sung to the air of “Eochaill” [Gl. Youghal]. The defeat of Fr Murphy’s contingent at Vinegar Hill resulted in his hanging and the burning of his body.

[ top ]

[ top ]

[ top ]

—Irish Fireside Songs (1911), p.39-40 [as Kelly of Killann] - online.

[ top ]

Notes
Literary Soc.: P. J.McCall was a member of the group in Dublin which founded the [National] Literary Society there, meeting first in John O’Leary’s rooms on Mountjoy Square, and later formally at the Rotunda. Douglas Hyde’s diary records that Hyde spent the evening on which was founded the Gaelic League in July 1893 writing up an account in McCall’s rooms in Dublin, after drinks with others connected with the event. [See Douglas Hyde, q.v.]

James Joyce: The song ”Follow Me Up to Carlow” is given in a letter written by Jacques Marcanton on behalf of James Joyce to James Maurice Craig (9 Sept. 1938) having been received from Lord Carlow. (See Letters of James Joyce, Vol. III, 1966, pp.428-29.) Notes identify the sources of the song as McCall’s Songs of Erinn (1899) and Irish Fireside Songs (1911). The traditional air was first played by Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne marching to attack Carlow after his victory over the forces of the English Deputy Lord Grey de Wilton, at Glenmalure in 1580. Also noticed are MacCahir Oge, viz., Brian MacCahir Cavanagh whom Sir William Fitzwilliam had driven out of his possessions; the Firebrand - viz., Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne; Lord Kildare, viz., Henry, 12th Earl of Kildare, aka Henry na Tuagh or Henry of the Battleaxes; Glen Imaal, in West Wicklow, was a source of many fighting Irishmen in 1580 and 1798; other refs. are to Rory Ogue O’More; Nicholas White, Master of the Rolls, a rebel-hunter; Ralph Lane, also active against the rebels. (See Letters, III, p.428-29; footnotes.)

Sally Gardens: P. J. McCall claims he heard an ‘Old country love song’ called “Down by the Sally Gardens” in 1875; the first stanza transcribed resembles Yeats’s to the point of plagiarism, with additional words such as ‘own true love’, and just as the leaves’, &c. (Quoted in Colin Meir, Ballads and Songs of W. B. Yeats: The Anglo-Irish Heritage in Subject and Style, London: Macmillan 1974; rep. 1983, pp.16-17; cited in Daniel Albright, ed., Poems of W. B. Yeats, 1992, notes, p.424; see also A. N. Jeffares, A New Commentary, Macmillan 1984, p.13-14.)