Na Píobairí Uilleann

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8 2 22 20120411 22 to be performed on the London stage and to be published in printed collections. Single sheet copies were published in London in the 1740s, however, and one is tentatively dated to c.1730. 6 Though lighthearted in tone, the lan- guage of the song is quite pointed. ‘Ally’ and her family take her naïve suitor for everything he had, and then, when he is broke, she rejects him. In the last verse, the author compares her to a ‘jilt’, a deeply pejorative term to use of a respectable woman in the 1720s. 7 In his 1831 review, Crofton Croker objected to the spelling of the title as ‘Ally Croaker’, and argued that the stage-Irish opening line, ‘There lived a man in Ballinacrazy,’ should read ‘There lived a young man in Ballinacasey …’. 8 Though he was possibly thinking of Ballincassa, parish of Grean, barony of Coonagh, Co. Limerick, ‘Ballinacasey’ is itself as much a stage-Irish place-name as ‘Ballinacrazy’. The tune itself, instrumental rather than vocal, seems to be distantly related to the Scottish ‘Maggie Lauder’ and various others. ‘Unfor- tunate Miss Bailey’ (1803) is sung to a vari- ant, as is the Irish song ‘Bainis Pheigí Ní Eadhra’, with its chorus ‘Foraeir-a- Neaintín’. Under the last title, misheard as ‘Frères Nantes’, the tune is used for the last (polka) figure of the Connemara Jig Set. 9 ‘The Dublin Jack of All Trades’ was set to this tune by Colm O Lochlainn in Irish street ballads (Dublin, 1939), p. 80. 10 Like Grogan and Lat- tin, ‘Ally Croker’ also went to the races. Among others, horses of that name ran at Pe- terborough, Yorkshire, in July 1811, 11 and at the Curragh in April 1839. 12 Allycroker, foaled in 1758, was a stud mare owned by the American statesman (and future president of the United States), Thomas Jefferson (1743– 1826), at Monticello, Virginia. The mother of Caractacus, his favourite riding horse, she bore two other foals with apparently Irish names ‘Cucullin’ (Cú Chulainn?), and Orra Moor (Irish?). 13 Crofton Croker attributed the song to Grogan in his introduction to the ‘Limerick Buck- Hunt’ in 1839 – though not in 1831: Mr. Grogan is traditionally said to have com- posed a song upon the vagaries of a disap- pointed suitor of Miss Alicia Croker, which became exceedingly popular; … she was the high sheriff’s second sister, … and is the Miss Croker mentioned in the fifth verse of the fol- lowing song … . 14 “Ally Croker” married Charles Langley, Esq., of Lisnarnock, county of Kilkenny, and died at an advanced age, without children to inherit their mother's charms, which only live in song. A sampler, worked by the hands of the fair Alice, was carefully preserved at Bally- david, a seat of the Baker family, in the county of Tipperary, and hung in an old oak frame, over the fireplace of the dining room – a ven- erated relic. 15 Apparently the first writer to identify Alice Langley in print as ‘Ally Croker’ was the Dublin madam Mrs Margaret Leeson (1727– 97). In her memoirs (1795–7) she recalled breakfasting in Cashel, co. Tipperary, with Alice and two other old ladies, respectably married, all great beauties in their youth and the subjects of songs. 16 Alice was again identi- fied as ‘Ally Croker’ in the 1831 edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson edited by the writer and politician John Wilson Croker (1780– 1857), Secretary of the Admiralty (in which Crofton Croker held a more junior position). He belonged to the co. Galway branch of the Irish Crokers, and apparently never lost his Irish brogue. In his 1817 poem ‘Talavera’, he stressed the word ‘ally’ [‘partner’, ‘collabora- tor’, ‘colleague’] on its first syllable, a Hiber- nicism to English ears, prompting Robert Southey, the poet laureate, to nickname him ‘Ally Croker’, a further attestation, inciden- tally, of how popular the song was. 17 Annotat- ing a line, Croker wrote that it came from the song

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[Periodical]

2012-04-21T00:00:00

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