The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #2636   Message #4035113
Posted By: Catamariner
19-Feb-20 - 08:19 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Tandragee + By the Hush
Subject: RE: tandaragee/by the hush
Tunney wrote in The Stone Fiddle that in Rollicking Boys Around Tandragee, ".. a good-humoured swipe is made at quite a few sacred cows.... 'That', he [the singer] maintained, 'is the satire to slay all stage-Irishmen!'" People frequently don't "get" why this is so satirical. Here's the story:

I met a teacher at the Sean-nós NW Traditional Irish Festival in April 2019, and wound up taking a class with him afterward. Tandragee is one of the song examples he gave of a modern (post 1800) ballad composed to annoy and satirize a particular group. Tandragee (formerly known as Tanderagee) was in the old days famous in Ireland for having very straight-laced attitudes toward things like singing and dancing, not to mention pubs (this was back in the mid-late 1800s). So the song was composed to annoy the heck out of the straight-laced citizenry of Tandragee; it's not just "stage Irishmen" who would be slain by the level of satire.