Daniel Neely Curator Note
Upon my return, I showed the book to my colleague Scott Spencer, who was suitably impressed. A short while after that, Mick Moloney popped in and we showed him. He thumbed through with the perfunctory interest of an authority, but his demeanor changed when he saw the inscription and the four dollar price tag. With more than just a hint of jealousy, he explained who McManus was and why the inscription was interesting. It was a real score.
When Scott (to whom I eventually gave that copy of 400 Choice Selections) came up with the idea of a project contextualizing Francis O’Neill’s inscriptions, I thought it was brilliant. O’Neill is a somewhat enigmatic character. Although the work of folks like Nicholas Carolan, Michael O’Malley, and Paul De Grae, and collections like the Dunn Family Collection and the Henebry / O’Neill Wax Cylinder Collection have shed light on the facts of his life and the music he collected, there is still much more to learn, particularly about the Irish America in which O’Neill lived, how he articulated with it, and what it meant to his musical activities. Each inscription in these pages offers potential for a new and better understanding of O'Neill and his place in the history of Irish music, and an exploration of two inscribed volumes found here demonstrate what I mean.
In 1922, O’Neill gave the American polymath Henry C. Mercer an inscribed copy of his Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody, Sent as “a Tribute to his Kindly Cooperation,” it’s likely O’Neill intended it as a token of thanks following a correspondence about tunes the two shared in 1920, both sides of which are in the Collection of the Mercer Museum Library of the Bucks County Historical Society. They shed a unique light not only on O’Neill’s relationship to a fellow collector but provide insight into how O’Neill perceived “Irishness” in the tunes he was collecting.
Like O’Neill, Mercer had a longstanding interest in Irish music. It was the subject of an article he wrote for an 1896 issue of The Century Magazine, but his interest was evident even earlier, having ten years prior interviewed Boston fiddle players James Norton and Daniel Sullivan. While both were leading musicians in their day, Sullivan was an especially revered figure, particularly among a small coterie of younger players who would prove influential, including his son, Dan J. Sullivan, the brothers William and Michael Hanafin, and Patsy Touhey. When Sullivan died in 1912, he was known as “the foremost exponent of Irish music in America,” a man O’Neill himself described as the “most famous professional fiddler in the eastern states.”1
In a letter Mercer sent O’Neill dated August 27, 1920, Mercer asked about several tunes including one that Sullivan himself had given him, which he found particularly interesting:
[Uilleann pipe maker William] Taylor also told me that Larry Dunn of Rockaway Ave. East New York was then the best reel player on the violin in America, ‘The daddy of them all’ but though I unfortunately missed hearing the latter I heard Daniel Sullivan, whom you mention, in Boston in 1886 who played and wrote down for me the slightly plaintive ‘Kitty O'Neils Jig’ which I cannot find in your lists. At the same time in 1886 I heard the eccentric James Norton play Lady Blains Strathspey and a very stirring jig in splendid style on a very small violin which jig he refused to write down for me after a good deal of swearing and said he would not sell to Ryan for five dollars neither did he give me the name of the jig.2
In his response, O’Neill addressed each of the tunes Mercer asked about, including “Kitty O’Neil’s.” Despite not having the tune in hand, he replied to say that “Kitty O’Neill’s [sic] is an American composition and by no means Irish in tone.” Likening it to a tune that appeared in Ryan's Mammoth Collection (and by extension, a related tune that appeared in another period collection, Howe’s 1000 Fiddle Tunes) he continued, “it is not even in Irish rhythm, being of a class called ‘straight jig.’ It would be out of place in my collection if it is the tune I know.”3
Donald Meade [https://newyork.itma.ie/present-day/don-meade/] parsed the late nineteenth century term “jig” in his extensive work on Kitty O’Neil and the “champion jig” that O’Neill referenced (2014:10), explaining that it not only signified a range of steps danced to tunes in common “jig” times like 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8, but it also referred to dances for syncopated tunes in 2/4, 4/4 and 2/2 meters.4 These latter jigs, known as “straight jigs,” were indeed different from Irish jigs, typically American in origin, and, perhaps most importantly, came to prominence on the variety and vaudeville stage through minstrelsy and Irish caricature.
Mercer, sensitive to the almost clinical dispassion in O’Neill’s reply, softened his enthusiasm, telling him that Sullivan’s playing, “seemed to lack the fire and spirit of James Norton’s music, who raked off his jigs and strathspeys.”5 But in his reply he included the music manuscript Sullivan had written down for him anyway, if only to prove that “this Kitty O’Neil’s is entirely different from Howe’s version.”