Irish Diaspora Studies and...
Versions of this message have appeared on various platforms, in connection with other parts of my lives...
This version is a compact tidy - I hope it is coherent...
One starting point might be an aside at the end of my Introduction to Volume 4 of The Irish World Wide, p15...
O’Sullivan, P. (1995) ‘Introduction: Irish Women and Irish Migration’, in O’Sullivan, P. (ed.) Irish Women and Irish Migration. London & Washington: Leicester University Press (The Irish World Wide), pp. 1–22.
'Yet you cannot deconstruct only one
half of the dyad, woman/man. If I
can imagine a volume on Irish Women and
Irish Migration quite other than
the one you have in your hands, I can
equally well imagine a volume on
Irish Men and Irish Migration which
would be the companion to this one.
That volume would bring into Irish
Studies and Irish Migration Studies the
critical study of men and masculinities.
Certainly we now need studies of
Irish migration which give the variable
of gender its proper due.'
So...
That thought has been in the back of my everchanging mind, as we have
tracked Irish Diaspora Studies throughout the intervening years...
We can begin with two songs. A drinking song. And a temperance song.
As a little music project, before Christmas 2022, we did two Stephen Foster songs: one a drinking song, and the other a temperance song...
There are notes here and here...
http://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/2022/12/autoharp-advent-calendar-foster-cooper.html
http://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/2022/12/comrades-fill-no-glass-for-me-stephen.html
And little videos here and here...
Video link
Video link
Yes, I am not in good voice... It is winter.
The drinking song, 'When the bowl goes round...', music by Stephen Foster, lyric by George Cooper, uses a strange phrase in the chorus, 'jolly fellows'.
'We'll all be jolly fellows'. It felt like there was more to know...
I have now found a book by Richard Stott...
Stott, R. (2009) Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America. Johns Hopkins University Press (Gender Relations in the America).
...which is a study, page 1, of
'a
distinctive male comportment that consisted of not just fighting but also heavy
drinking, gambling and playing pranks. Men who engaged in such behavior were
called “jolly fellows.” Although the jolly fellows were a subset of the male
population, whenever men, especially young men, gathered in milieus that were
all male or where women were rare, such conduct could occur. Such behavior was
tolerated, even condoned, by men who were not themselves drinkers, fighters, or
gamblers...'
Richard Stott does not seem to have been aware of this particular Stephen Foster song when he wrote his book, and picked its title. It seems that Stephen Foster and George Cooper, writing in the 1860s, found that phrase, 'jolly fellows', still there in the ether. And maybe by then - Richard Stott, the cultural historian, suggests - the age of the 'jolly fellows' was over... He maps the development of a 'civilizing process' (Norbert Elias) that will, eventually, lead to Prohibition. A drinking song, followed by a temperance song.
I find myself putting the, 'jolly fellows', from this Foster drinking song, alongside the 'boon companions' of 'Comrades, fill no glass...', the second Foster song I prepared for Christmas 2022.
The point for Irish Diaspora Studies is that Richard Stott has absorbed, seamlessly, the research and comment on Irish male violence into his study of nineteenth century American male violence - male violence, accepted, useful, controlled, directed? There they are, the references we would expect, Carolyn Conley, “The Agreeable Recreation of Fighting,”, Patrick O’Donnell, Irish Faction Fighters of the Nineteenth Century, William Carleton, Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry. Edward “Ned” Harrigan and Mulligan's Guards. And so on...
In turn, Richard Stott's book should take its place alongside all those other studies of the Irish male, and the Irish-American...
It is worth searching for Richard Stott's book - because I found it Open Access. It is readily available.
Patrick O'Sullivan
Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University
January 2022
