Percy at the Wake

Very important breakthrough 👇
Bob Dobbs

Dublin Review of Books

Sounds of Manymirth on The Night’s Ear Ringing: Percy French (1854-1920) His Jarvey Years and Joyce’s Haunted Inkbottle, by Bernadette Lowry, Carmen Eblana AE Productions, 223 pp, €45, ISBN:978-1914488412

On August 6th 1937, James Joyce wrote from Paris to his good friend Constantine Curran thanking him for a package which had arrived safely from Ireland, but was missing a copy of Percy French’s Andy McElroe (mentioned in FW 292 fn3, the subsequent reference being to Lord Wolsley). He asks Curran to bring the Percy French book of songs when he visits next, so that he can take a look at it. “I want the music more than the words (those I have already made large use of) as I want to bind the lot into a volume for Giorgio as a keepsake.” Curran recalls that on another occasion Paul Léon, on behalf of Joyce, asked him to send French’s Mulligan Masquerade. Curran states that many people were enlisted in the task of hunting down the texts of popular songs that would have been part of John Joyce’s background and character – voices from a Dublin that was slipping away and which James Joyce would blend with the waters of Anna Livia (James Joyce Remembered). To uncover the rhythms of these songs in Finnegans Wake, says Curran, is the task of thesis hounds.

Bernadette Lowry is one such Thesis Hound, joining the ranks of the many other Joyce scholars who have been teased and tested by the clues and puzzles in Joyce’s Wake. References to music is just one area of examination and Ruth Bauerle (James Joyce Songbook) estimates that there are more than a thousand songs incorporated in Finnegans Wake. Persse O’Reilly is one that comes under close scrutiny, and an astute letter writer to The Irish Times (August 8th, 2022) has recently pointed out the shared identity of Paddy Reilly, of Ballyjamesduff, and his alter ego Perce-Oreille, the earwig, translated as Percy-French-Ear. From this we can conclude that Joyce definitely knew about the “skerriless ballets in Parsee Franch” (FW 495.03).

We’ve all heard of Percy French haven’t we? An accomplished songwriter, painter, author, and entertainer, we have all come across him somewhere – for many it is his songs, from the nostalgic Mountains of Mourne to the humorous Are ye right there, Michael? about the West Clare Railway. For me it was his understated presence in Eugene McCabe’s Death and Nightingales, and my mother owned a watercolour painted by him. Continue reading Dublin Review of Books