by Eamon Fogarty
-----
Studying the transmission of culture, and of song in particular, prior to the advent of widely available recording and playback technology is a notoriously slippery fish. When attempting to trace the entwined lyrical and musical genealogy of a particular folk tune, one is often faced with unsolvable riddles and pushed towards speculative leaps of faith. Art is an inexact science and the factors which lead to this or that version of a particular song proliferating in a given territory or time period are even less easily indexed and measured than their analogues in the plastic arts. Archives containing the “material” of song (both sonic and textual) can serve as powerful tools in these efforts–even if only as timestamps and geotags for a given work’s circulation–but their limitations often end up raising further, more intriguing questions rather than yielding definitive, satisfying answers.
Between 1937 and 1939 the newly established Irish Folklore Commission initiated an unusual project which made use of an as-yet untapped (at least in the field of citizen ethnography) demographic resource: children. The resulting archive, consisting of 1,128 notebooks full of folklore gathered by schoolchildren from their families, friends, and neighbors, is known as The Schools’ Collection (Bailiúchán na Scol) and can be accessed online in its entirety, including high definition scans and transcripts. It is an extraordinarily rich and early example of a community-engaged archive, and one whose “community” was essentially the entire republic.
Although I am a musician, and primarily interested in song, I should emphasize that the Schools’ Collection is not a collection of music–far from it. It consists only of transcribed interviews and there is no audio element or musical notation. Songs appear as texts, with the occasional footnote indicating the tune or air to which the words should be sung. Denuded of their musical content, they are thus reduced to poetry, sometimes crude, sometimes sophisticated.
Most of the notebooks are filled up by descriptions of regional folkways. Some examples of generic headings that appear across many of the volumes include marriage customs, festival customs, famine times, old sayings, landlords, local place names, faction fighting, cures, weather signs. Many headings are more specific, including a great number which refer to tales recounting fantastic local legends (telling of buried treasures or strange animals e.g. “The Boy and the Eel” “The Enchanted Cat.”) A more thorough investigation would be needed to trace the roots (shallow? deep?) of these various myths and legends. What is certain, however, is that there is a strange temporal flattening effect at work when arranging verifiable descriptions of concrete local history and geography alongside imaginative works whose origins (both in time and in terms of authorship) are less clear.
I first learned about the collection on April 17th 2022, when I received an unusual email from the website academia.edu asking me to add an “academic paper” from “2017” titled The Derrinlaur Boy to my profile on their site. I have never used academia.edu before or since, but my understanding is that it scrapes the internet and tries to match extant academic papers to individuals with corresponding ‘.edu’ email addresses (I work for a university in California) in the hopes that the “profile” they’ve autogenerated can serve as a personal website for any academic who can’t be bothered to create one from whole cloth.
Obviously, the author of this “paper” was not me. I do, however, have a rather unusual name, and the coincidence of a song, specifically, being attributed to me by an automated academic publication aggregator was intriguing enough that I decided to look into it with a quick google search. The text I found is reproduced below:
Eamon Fogarty. Derrinlaur Clonmel. I heard this song at home.
The Derrinlaur boys went out one day. Along the road a strolling O,
They met a Tin Lizzie1 on the road forsaken and forlorn O,
One proposed as the day was fine they'ed have drive by pillage O,
They took the Tin Liz by the wiz and drove her towards the village O.
With Micky Fogarty at the wheel a mechanic bold and daring O.
The Lizzie sped as ne'er before down towards the village of Kilsheelan O.
With Johnny Cooney from Lisheen better known as "Murphy" O,
and Dinny Shanahan from Kilganey a drapers clerk a while ago,
and Jinny Walsh from Lisheen was captured by Guard2 Malloy O,
But one was missing from the crowd and that was famous "Scurty" O.
Air of The Bansha Peelers
The song in question was in fact not even authored by “Eamon Fogarty” but was collected by him in the late 1930’s (2017 was probably the date of its transcription.) On its surface, it is about a group of men or boys finding an abandoned car and going for a joyride. It is full of proper names and geographical references that break the rhyme scheme and disrupt the meter. It is, objectively speaking, not a particularly good song or poem. It seems to be some sort of private parody of the more well-known song whose tune it borrows, probably written by a relative of my nominative doppelganger, the boy who collected it. And yet, I remained fascinated by it for reasons beyond the fact that it may or may not be about my great-grandfather getting arrested for stealing a car (more on this later.) I resolved to try to find a way to perform it–but first I wanted to try to understand what exactly was going on. Why was this song written, and why was it deemed worthy of collecting and preserving?
The text relies heavily on references to real places and presumably real people, and one can’t help but get the feeling that there is something missing from the story. Among the questions raised: Was only one of their party captured or were they all arrested? If so, why? Who is this famous “Scurty” who wasn’t around for the day’s shenanigans, but whose conspicuous absence was deemed notable? Could he be an informer of some kind, responsible for the arrests of the others?
To try to answer some of these questions I turned to the “air” on which it’s based: The Bansha Peeler, also known as The Peeler and the Goat. The “Peeler” in the title is another word for guard or policeman, and is a mocking reference to Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister of the UK whose enforcers were the forerunners to the Royal Irish Constabulary. A masterclass in absurdist political satire, the song tells the story of a talking goat who is arrested by a peeler on charges of loitering and (implied) prostitution and threatened with transportation3. The goat argues her case and accuses the peeler of corruption and extortion. According to some sources the song is based on an incident in the town of Bansha in 1830 when a goat was arrested for headbutting an officer, but it is also probably a reference to the practice among peelers of arresting farm animals for loitering or blocking traffic as a means to harass and extort fines from their owners.
In the same way that you can learn a lot about a culture from its graffiti, I believe that a great deal can be learned about a people by listening to their parody songs, their schoolyard rhymes, and other popular bastardizations of culture in circulation. Unfortunately, I was unable to arrive at any concrete answers by comparing the text of The Derrinlaur Boy to The Bansha Peeler and its variants. One can detect thematic resonances–a healthy soupçon of contempt for policing, for example–but that is hardly a unique characteristic in the repertoire of traditional Irish music. While this version may be haunted by the satirical anti-establishment spirit of the song on which it is based, it is also worth noting that most of the lines end with “O” which probably made it easier to parody.
Even if my examination of the Bansha Peeler didn’t answer my questions, it did confirm one thing: my suspicion that somethingwas indeed missing from the song as transcribed. The verses of the Bansha Peeler are organized in four line groups, with the melodic material following a strict ABCB pattern. The Derrinlaur Boy is a mere ten lines. Perhaps some material was intended to be repeated, but no indication is given to this effect. Rather, it is my suspicion that part of the text may have been omitted. A failure of memory seems the most likely reason, but it also seems possible that the informant was self-censoring for the sake of one Eamon Fogarty’s innocent ears, at the expense of another’s.
Why was this text written, and why did both informant and interviewer deem it worth preserving? There is a long tradition in Ireland and elsewhere of composing songs in memory of people who are no longer around for reasons of untimely death (in factional conflict or at the hands of an unjust legal system) or emigration. I suspect the reason why people in Clonmel sang about “The Derrinlaur Boys” in the 30’s is that the boys were gone, never to be back in town again. I know for a fact that at least one of them left in 1910, because I have his immigration papers.
Or at least that’s what I’d like to think. There are some details that don’t quite add up. The Micky in the song is a mechanic. On my great-grandfather Michael’s petition for naturalization, his occupation is given as “laborer.” Of course this could be an example of the classic problem where an immigrant’s credentials aren’t valid in his new home, but I doubt it. More damning: the Ford Model T (Tin Lizzie) debuted in 1908, but would not have been widely available in Ireland until 1917 when Ford opened a factory in Cork. It’s not impossible that the incident in the song, if it occurred at all, could have happened between 1908 and 1910, but the window is narrow. Of course, this is all happening under the big assumption that there is any semblance of documentary objectivity in the text of a song collected by a child from one of his relatives approximately 100 years ago. It could very well be a case of real people being inserted into fictionalized events.
As far as I know, my great-grandfather, who was by all accounts a thoroughly bitter and unpleasant man, left for “Amerikay”4 not because he was running from the law on charges of grand theft auto, but for normal, boring socio-economic reasons: namely his oldest brother inherited the family farm, and he had no income of his own. The “Micky” in the song may be my great-grandfather, (perhaps emigration hardened the heart of that happy-go-lucky prankster) or he may be some other more distant relation. Someone probably wrote him into this song because they missed him. Contemporary listeners would have understood this odd scrap of hyperlocal cultural ephemera as a tribute to departed loved ones whether dead, “transported,” or merely emigrated. I hoped to restore some of that lost subtext in my reworked version of the song, which swaps the Tin Lizzie out for a stagecoach and transposes the day of the automotive joyride back to the era of the penal laws.
It has been difficult for me to disentangle my fascination with decoding and rehabilitating this text from my own tenuous biographical links to it. I am generally suspicious of Americans who feel anything more than a fleeting connection to their white European “roots,” or anything deeper than a vague affinity for that proverbial “old country” they’ve never visited and whose language and culture they barely understand. It was only in high school when I began studying the use of language as a tool of empire and discovered the anti-imperialist writings of the Irish socialist James Connolly that I began to feel any kind of robust connection to the history of “my people” and to the dwindling ranks of those who are carrying on their revolutionary struggle into the present. I should clarify here that I do not mean the remaining handful of adherents to armed “physical force republicanism,” but rather a broader, more loosely defined Irish left that holds firmly onto that legacy of social democracy and anti-colonialism but is itself being increasingly sidelined as Ireland emerges as a Big Tech powerhouse (and tax shelter.) Back then, I desperately wanted to learn the Irish language for the sake of learning some rebel songs, but in those days Duolingo was a mere twinkle in some start-up founder’s eye, and the robust internet resources of today simply weren’t in place yet.
My first encounter with Irish revolutionary history probably came from a dog-eared copy of Trinity by the literary propagandist Leon Uris which I found on the shelves of my childhood home and definitely read much too young–though it is also possible I watched “If It's Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast," the 1992 episode of Captain Planet wherein they attempt to tackle the Troubles, South African Apartheid, and the Israel-Palestine conflict in 23 minutes. In any case, echoes of the conflict were around when I was growing up, and it was merely up to me to glom onto them.
In spite of my name, I didn’t grow up with strong social rituals around traditional music or storytelling. In fact, I didn’t even know the names of any of my great-grandparents until my uncle unearthed his immigration documents just a few months before I received the email from academia.edu that kicked off this whole “adventure.” I wonder how much of my obsession with this bizarre and generally uncompelling textual fragment stems from genuine interest in microhistorical research, and how much is a sort of genealogical narcissism fueled by (a) coincidence and (b) the very real cultural lacuna I feel with regard to the precipitous loss of artistic traditions thanks to several generations of enthusiastic assimilation.
I have since recognized something about the longing I felt for a kind of identifiable Irishness that was different from (and more authentic than) the Bostonian mutation I grew up with. This urge to de-assimilate from the host and re-immerse myself in something that was “mine” by default (e.g. a cultural or political tradition that resonated with me) is as commonplace among later generations of diasporic populations as it is vulnerable to propaganda from nation states and other organizations. When I think of the recruitment of young muslims in France by ISIS, or the American Jews who head off to become settlers in the West Bank, I wonder if, had I been born a century earlier, I would have found myself running guns for the freedom fighters, or at the very least organizing loosely disguised fundraising benefits in the greater Boston area.
Let me be very clear that I am well aware that the three quite distinct political projects I’ve cited above have vanishingly little to do with one another apart from their embrace of political violence. After all, the stated cause of the various earlier, pre-Troubles, pre-Republic, even pre-Free State strains of republicanism as I understood them was to establish a united, socialist Ireland free of religious discrimination–as opposed to a religiously homogenous caliphate or a nominally secular apartheid ethnostate–which to me seemed like something worth fighting for. Even still, the version of that history as I received it was simultaneously dated, biased, sanitized, and simplified, and it’s frankly ridiculous to talk about having “sympathies” with any movement that has been subject to so many ideological and tactical splinterings throughout its long tortuous history. If nothing else, the various fusions and fissions of -isms (nationalism, republicanism, socialism, secularism and their inverses) among the factions at various points along the timeline meant I learned something early on about what it means to be in a coalition with people you don’t fully agree with.
When I was writing my history papers in high school about the Irish civil war I was essentially an armchair partisan struggling to see a clear path to a better world in my own time, and grasping for fragments of the past to justify my present day political leanings, which constituted a fairly bog-standard (pun entirely intended) yearning for social democracy that would be much more at home in almost any country except the United States. Modern Ireland is a far cry from what various idealists and revolutionaries envisioned over the years, but it does have a decent track record when it comes to being on the side of anti-colonial struggles. No country is perfect, and Ireland is not without its own homegrown fascists (the “Blue Shirts” of yore, and the anti-immigration and anti-asylum rioters of recent years) but no one remembers the songs of the Irishmen who fought for Franco’s Spain. The Irish have a knack for weaponizing their cultural resources, and so far history has seen these proverbial guns pointed squarely at the oppressor and colonizer. Though the repertoire and its interpretation may appear to be fixed by concrete historical facts, I have lived long enough to know that collective memory is its own sort of battlefield, and all of these meanings are subject to change.
There is a line in the old rebel song “Oró, Sé Do Bheatha 'Bhaile” that popped into my mind in light of recent events: “Ag fógairt fáin ar Ghallaibh,” the last line of the song calls for “banishing [of] all the foreigners.” At the time the song was written, “Ghallaibh” which shares a root with the “Gaul” would have been understood to refer rather ironically to the British. Given the slippery nature of language, one could easily imagine (as I did) that the aggrieved “Ireland for the Irish” contingent might be heard singing the song today. But, as far as I can tell, the tune is so thoroughly associated with the liberatory legacy of the republican movement that it was in fact exclusively the counter protestors from left-wing parties like Sinn Fein and People Before Profit who could be heard singing it at recent rallies and marches. Once again I have to ask myself: is my interest in this song, its history, and this line in particular a result of the fact that “fógairt” (banish, disperse, cast out) happens to be the verb form of my own surname? Would my ears still have been so drawn to it that I felt compelled to look up the translation had I not heard those shared phonemes whose meaning inspired in me so much speculation about my own family history in the days before internet research? Does any of this actually have anything to do with me?
In a recent SNL sketch, Irish actor Paul Mescal exclaims, “there’s only a few million people with that last name!!” in exaggerated astonishment at learning that an American tourist’s grandmother’s maiden name was O’Connor. That sketch, which is titled “What Irish-Americans Think Will Happen When They Visit Ireland” ably skewers an unfortunate side-effect of Ireland’s increasing reliance on foreign tourism to fuel its economy: a steady influx of clueless Americans eagerly searching for a pastoral wonderland onto which they can project their fantasies of an idyllic rural past. Thanks to centuries of emigration, the countryside they encounter is perhaps better suited to this end than most modern, industrial European nations. I myself held off on visiting my so-called “homeland” until I’d accumulated enough Irish friends and acquaintances through music-making that I was able to book myself a short tour, as if to say “Look at me! I’m different! I’m finding my roots in a genuine, non-problematic way!”
As it happened, I wasn’t really that much different. I played some great shows with some lovely people. I went on some very pretty hikes. Though I stopped short of actually dropping in on the old family farm unannounced, I did meet with some distant relatives in Kilkenny who all looked eerily like my paternal grandfather. We had plenty to talk about too, because one of them happens to book a big annual roots music festival in town, and has very hip taste in spite of his age. I don’t think I would have been comfortable with any of this had it not been for the fact that months before when I’d first posted on Instagram about my discovery of and investigations into the “Derrinlaur Boy,” my friend Brigid Power in Galway commented saying she was delighted and surprised to see an American who was aware of and engaging with the Schools’ Collection. Her approval was validating. It may be cartoonishly optimistic to think that encouraging amateur archival research could put a dent in the scourge of ignorant tourists, but if nothing else, it could serve as a resource for those curious and self-aware enough to feel compelled to substantiate their tenuous claims of ancestral connection to place.
To my mind, the beauty of the Schools’ Collection is that there are so many ways in. All you need is the name of a relative or a village and you’re off to the races. It’s easily searchable and thoroughly geotagged, and the material is just far enough away in time that even the most mundane details have a whiff of the antique, of a world lost to time. The very ancient exists alongside the relatively new, all transcribed in the same hand. At the time, there were parallel efforts at cultural preservation underway whose researchers were equipped with recording equipment, professional discernment, as well as prejudices about what deserved to be recorded and what counted as folk music. These are the sorts of cracks that parodies and minor texts tend to slip through. But isn’t the world more wonderful and enchanted when we recognize that we are the authors of our own mythology and that mythology is in a perpetual state of remaking?
Such an extraordinarily dense and baffling artifact could only be the result of the immediate aftermath of a revolutionary moment. From the perspective of a researcher working several decades or centuries hence, the simple fact of a story or song having been recorded gives it weight. A local variant of a Child ballad with roots in the 15th century might sit on the page facing a ditty written by someone’s uncle to commemorate the opening of a tavern. There’s no gatekeeping, no scholarly insistence on any kind of methodological rigor: only the act of recording a cross-section of a culture at a particular moment in all its anarchic detail. It’s up to us what utility, political or purely recreational, we draw from it.
Below is the full text of my reworking of “The Derrinlaur Boy”:
The Derrinlaur boys went out one day
Along the road a riding O
They found an old wagon left on the verge
Forsaken and forlorn O
One proposed as the day was fine
They’d have a drive by pillage O
They placed their ponies under yoke
And drove them towards the village O
With Mickey Fogarty at the reins
A horseman brave and daring O
The boys sped on as ne’er before
To the village of Kilsheelan O
With Johnny Clooney from Lisheen
And Danny from Kilganey O
But the wagon’s spokes were splintered clean
By the carbine of guard Malloy O
“Your recklessness, I will chastise
And thieving brash behaviour, O!
Well bound to Queenstown you shall go
Where you shall gain no favour, O!
The magistrates will all consent
To sign your condemnation, O!
From thence to Cork you’ll all be sent
For speedy transportation, O!”
“Derrinlaur’s our dwelling place
Where we were bred and born you know
Though we never would thrash an honest face
For defamers we’re obliging, O!
No penal laws have we transgressed
By deed or combination, O!
You cannot steal what isn’t owned
Or what has been abandoned, O!”
“The consequence be what it will
A peeler's power I'll let you know
I'll handcuff you in all events
And march you off to Bridewell, O!
And Sure you rogues, you can't deny
Before the judge or jury, O!
Intimidation with your fists
And threat’ning me with fury, O!”
“I'll make no doubt but that you're drunk
With whiskey, rum or brandy, O!
Or you wouldn't have such gallant spunk
To be so bold and manly, O!
For you readily would let us pass
If we had money handy, O!
To treat you to a poteen glass
'Tis then we’d all be dandies, O!”
May 2025
Special thanks to Thomas FitzGerald for his help with various factual and historical points in this essay, and for making sure I didn’t make a total fool of myself with my broad generalizations about Irish history and culture.
1Ford Model T. And yes, the band is so named because “Thin Lizzy” when pronounced with an Irish accent sounds like “Tin Lizzie.”
2Policeman.
3Deportation to the penal colony of Australia, a fate common among Catholics accused of relatively minor crimes under the discriminatory Penal Laws.
4This is not a typo, but rather a common transliteration of the old Hiberno-English pronunciation of America which appears in many songs in the Irish tradition, often ones which deal with themes of emigration and homesickness.
-----
Eamon Fogarty is a New York-based composer, vocalist, and audio archivist originally from the state of New Hampshire. His work with the Discography of American Historical Recordings focuses on popular music from the 30's and 40's. He performs his songs regularly with his band around the New York area and beyond.