M. J. Barry

Life
1817-1889 [Michael Joseph Barry; pseuds. “MJB”, “Brutus”, and “Bouillon de Garcon” - viz., “Broth of a Boy“]; b. Cork, barrister and Young Irelander imprisoned in 1843, frequent contributor to the Nation, Dublin University Magazine and Punch; winner of ‘First Repeal Prize’ with an essay, ‘Ireland as She Was, as She Is, and as She Shall Be’ (Dublin 1845); contrib. “The Kishogue Papers” to Dublin University Magazine (9 iss.; Jan 1842-Dec. 1847), over pseud. ‘Bouillon de Garçon’, and later issued as a book in 1872; dissociated himself from Young Ireland after 1848; appt. editor of the Southern Reporter (Cork), and ultimately became a police-magistrate in Dublin;

poems include “The Green Flag” and “Step Together” and “The Massacre at Drogheda”; works include A Waterloo Commemoration for 1854 (1854); Lays of the War (1855) and Heinrich and Lenora (1886); ed., Songs of Ireland (1845), which he received as a commission from Thomas Davis, and to which a second volume was added by Hercules Ellis [var. Eyless] in 1849; d. 23 Jan. 1889; a notice by Frank MacDonagh in The Nation (16 Feb. 1889) characterises Barry as a ‘brilliant songwriter who helped build up a national literature for Ireland.’ PI JMC DIW DIH RAF MKA FDA OCIL DIL

“God Save Ireland”: M.J. Barry has been accredited with the original authorship of “God Save Ireland” (“Whether on the scaffold high [...] tis for Ireland”) in the shape of“The Place where Man should Die”, published in 1843 in The Nation. (See Wikipedia, “God Save Ireland” - online; accessed 25.05.2021.)

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Works

  • Ireland as She Was, As She Is, and As She Shall Be [containing 1st, 2nd and 3rd supplemental Repeal essay (Dublin: James Duffy 1845), [1] 122, [3] 152, [4] 43pp. [see infra].
  • ed., Songs of Ireland (Dublin: James Duffy 1845), xvi, 238pp. [see infra]; Do., rev. edn. (1846; 1869), ‘assisted by Eugene O’Curry’ [with Gaelic typography].
  • ed., Echos from Parnassus: Selected from the Original Poetry of the Southern Reporter (Cork: Southern Reporter 1849).
  • A Waterloo Commemoration for 1854 [ …] (London: W. S. Orr & Co.; Dublin: McGlashan 1854).
  • Lays of the War (Cork: Daily Reporter Office 1855).
  • Lays of the War and Miscellaneous Lyrics (London: Longman & Co. 1856).
  • The Pope and the Romagna (Dublin: Hodges & Smith 1860).
  • Irish Emigration Considered (Cork 1863); Poems Addressed to Minnie (Cork: Nash 1867).
As ‘Bouillon de Garcon’*
  • Six Songs of Bèranger (Dublin: priv. printed 1871).
  • [as 'Bouillon de Garcon'] Kishogue Papers (London: Chapman & Hall 1875) [formerly in Dublin University Magazine, 1842-47].
  • Heinrich and Leonore, an Alpine Story (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis 1886).
*pseud. - meaning “Broth of a Boy”

Bibliographical details
Songs of Ireland (Dublin: James Duffy 1845), xvi, 238pp. [incl. 38 anon. songs and pieces by John Banim; J. J. Callanan; J. P. Curran; H. G. Curran; Thomas Davis; Arthur Dawson; William Drennan; CG Duffy; James Furlong; Gerald Griffin; Samuel Lover; Edward Lysaght; DF McCarthy; Richard Milliken; Lady Morgan; Thomas Moore; George Ogle; James Orr; Maurice O’Connell; GN Reynolds; Charles Wolfe; RD Williams [“Adieu to Innisfail”]. The poem An t-sean Bhean bocht appears in Irish fonts [p.49]

Note: Barry has an appendic in Songs of Ireland (1845) in which cites a letter from Hercules Ellis supporting the claim of Gerald Nugent Reynolds [q.v.] to authorship of “Exile of Erin” which Campell claimed for himself. See further under RICORSO Anthologies - via index or as attached.

Note: There is a bibliography of his writings in Irish Book Lover, 9 (1917-18), 27f.

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Quotations
“The Witch of Kilkenny” [viz Dame Kyttler]: ‘Tis fearsome enough, one may fairly presume / To see an old lady/When skies have grown shady/Playing pranks in the air on a mettlesome broom [... ] / Gone off with the devil / Eloped with old Nick / Escaped her cell, though stones, mortar, and brick.’ (

“The Curse of Kishogue”: ‘[W]hipped and lashed, the unfortunate throng / By a legion of merciless devils along.’

“The Wexford Massacre”

They knelt around the cross divine —
The matron and the maid;
They bowed before redemption's sign
And fervently they prayed;
Three hundred fair and helpless ones,
Whose crime was this alone —
Their valiant husbands, sires and sons
Had battled for their own.

Had battled bravely, but in vain —
The Saxon won the fight;
The Irish corses strewed the plain
Where Valour slept with Right.
And now that man of demon guilt
To fated Wexford flew —
The red blood reeking on his hilt,
Of hearts to Erin true.

He found them there — the young, the old,
The maiden, and the wife:
Their guardians brave in death were cold
Who dared for them the strife.
They prayed for mercy — God on high!
Before Thy cross they prayed,
And ruthless Cromwell bade them die
To glut the Saxon blade!

Three hundred fell — the stifled prayer
Was quenched in woman's blood;
Nor youth nor age could move to spare
From slaughter's crimson flood.
But nations keep a stern account
Of deeds that tyrants do;
And guiltless blood to Heaven will mount,
And Heaven avenge it, too!
Rep. in Songs of the Gael: A Collection of Anglo-Irish Songs [... &c.], ed. Rev. Patrick Walsh (Dublin: Browne & Nolan 1922), pp.12-13 [available at Internet Archive - online].

Ireland As She Was, As She Is, and As She Shall Be (Dublin 1845): ‘Indeed, I am disposed to think, paradoxical as the position will appear to some, that an export of food to any great extent, from a long-peopled country, which is not a large exporter of manufactures, is, in itself, prima facie evidence of the poverty of that country’‘A country exporting agricultural produce largely, without any corresponding export of manufactured articles, must, if it be fully people, be a poor country; because this excludes export of food shows that manufactures have no existence in it - or that if they have existence, they must ... be rapidly tending to extinction. The country must therefore be in, or be quickly advancing towards, a purely agricultural condition.’ (pp.55-57; quoted in Liam Kennedy, Colonialism, Religion and Nationalism in Ireland, IIS/QUB 1996, p.41).

Songs of Ireland (Dublin: James Duffy [23 Anglesea St.] 1845), Editorial remarks: ‘[...] So large a portion of what Mr [Charles Gavan] Duffy has written in his Introduction to the Ballad Poetry of Ireland, published in the present series [Library of Ireland], is equally applicable to the Songs of the Country, as to limit to a narrow space the observations which, only for its priority of publication, I should be obliged to make.’ Barry further alludes to a paper on subject of Irish Songs in Blackwood’s Magazine, Vol. 17, p.318, by William Maginn in which the latter ‘exposes with his usual wit and ability, the spuriousness of a number of these stupid caricatures’. A sole appendix contains text of letter from Hercules Ellis [pp.229-38] dealing with the Campbell’s pretended authorship of “Exile of Erin”, which he ascribes to George Nugent Reynolds. The title page bears this dedication: ‘to the National Bard of Ireland, Thomas Moore, with feelings of the deepest respect and admiration this volume of the songs of Ireland is inscribed Michael Joseph Barry.’ (238pp.); note, the preface is subscribed 8 Lwr Dominick-Street. Nov. 28, 1845.

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References

Justin McCarthy, gen ed., Irish Literature (1904), gives ‘The Massacre at Drogheda’ et al.

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol 2, selects M. J. Barry’s version of “The Shan Van Vocht” from The Songs of Ireland (Dublin 1845), containing stanzas often incorporated in the most popular version (FDA2, p.109).

Belfast Public Library holds copies of Irish Emigration Considered (1863); A Waterloo Commemoration (1854) and A Treatise on the Practice of the High Court of Chancery of Ireland [n.d.].

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