The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #19833   Message #3671552
Posted By: Jim Dixon
23-Oct-14 - 11:47 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Parody of 'Where the River Shannon Flows'
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Parody of 'Where the River Shannon Flows'
The following song appears at the head of Chapter 30: "Irish Jewry in the 17th and 18th Centuries" in From Strangers to Citizens: The Integration of Immigrant Communities in Britain, Ireland, and Colonial America, 1550-1750 by Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton (London: Huguenot Soc. of Great Britain and Ireland, 2001), page 276:

(To the tune of "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling")

Three Jews, they were a-talkin'
'Bout the day when they would die,
And where they would be buried
Beneath God's glorious sky.
Lewinsky said "Jerusalem",
"New York" said Rubinstein,
But, when it came to Cohen he said:
"The Irish isles are mine.

"Sure, I long to lay my weary head
Beneath those leafy boughs
In an Irish cemetery
Where the three-leafed shamrock grows,
For the devil he'll be lookin'
For to find me, I suppose,
And he'd never think to look for me
Where the River Shannon flows."

This ditty from the Lower East Side in New York City, composed in 1879*, when the Jews and the Irish were competing for who was at the bottom rung of the social ladder, is false. The first recorded mention of a Jewish presence in Ireland....

[* However, "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" is copyright 1912, and "Where the River Shannon Flows" in 1905, so there is something wrong here. Maybe it was at first sung to a different tune, or not sung at all; maybe it was just a printed poem.]