Athy's Musical Heritage

The recent announcement that Johnny Marr, the musician and songwriter, will play a concert in the A.R.C.H. in Athy on 25 June next has generated great excitement in Athy. Having first found fame as a guitarist and co-songwriter of The Smiths, he has enjoyed a successful solo career over the last 35 years. I have written previously of the music tradition in Athy, and the songs and ballads associated with the town. Those that spring to mind include ‘Lanigan’s Ball’, ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew You’ and ‘Tuberara’. A song that had escaped my notice until now is ‘Kathleen O’Regan’. It was composed in or about 1815 by John Whitaker and was first sung by a Mr. Webb at provincial theatres throughout England. The words were written by a Mr. Donne and an early review described the song as follows:- ‘the air is flowing and connected, and bears a stamp of originality not common in the vocal trifles of the day. The words are not destitute of merit; though the less we say of their wit, humour and poetry, the more Mr. Donne ought to be obliged to us.’ And so wrote an anonymous correspondent in the Monthly magazine in 1815 where it also confirmed that the song sheet could be purchased for one shilling and six pence. By 1st June 1815 ‘The Vocal’ magazine (a monthly publication) was listing in its own words ‘Choice, favourite, popular and celebrated songs in the English language, with those in all the new pieces, now singing and lately sung at Theatres Royal and minor places of amusement.’ The first song listed was the newly composed ‘Kathleen O’Regan’. It wasn’t long before the song crossed the Irish Sea and as early as April 1816 it was being performed in Dublin by a Mr. Webb. He performed it in conjunction with a play called ‘Botheration or a Ten Years Blunder’ which was described as a two act farce which had first been performed in May 1798 in Dublin. Amongst the songs that Webb sang associated with the play were ‘Get a Gone, Sir, None of your Blarney’ and the now mentioned “Sweet Kathleen O’Regan, the pride of Athy.” The song clearly had some lasting popularity as it featured in a number of publications featuring songs and ballads over the next half century. Dick & Fitzgerald, publishers New York, released in 1864 ‘The Arkansas Traveller’ songbook which featured the song, as it did in the “Vocal Library” published in 1822 which at the time was described as the largest collection of English, Scottish and Irish songs published in a single volume. Its inspiration or link to Athy is unknown, although it does strike me that the reference in the third verse where the lovestruck young man described how ‘war drove me on to where the battle was raging’ might suggest some origins in or links to the Napoleonic wars which had concluded the same month as the publication of the song. On the 18th June 1815 the Irish born Duke of Wellington, at the Battle of Waterloo, led the British forces to victory over Napoleon’s French army on the Belgian battlefield. Unlike many songs composed over two centuries ago the words appeared to have remained unchanged through all the various publications in which it appeared, and I reproduce here a ballad sheet from the mid-19th century. I must confess a personal interest in the ballad as my own late mother was herself a ‘Kathleen O’Regan’ from Ballykilleen, Cloonfad, Co. Mayo, but not the ‘Sweet Kathleen O’Regan, the pride of Athy’.