Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 14 Nov 10 - 01:28 AM

The original verses I think are beautiful, especially with the story invovled. The additional verses I would never sing or even reread but to each his or her own...mg

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Nov 10 - 02:26 AM

>>>'The words of the song are credited to C. (or E.) Mordaunt Spencer and the music to Charles William Glover, but a story circulated in connection with the ['Rose of Tralee'] festival claims that the song was written by William Pembroke Mulchinock, a wealthy Protestant, out of love for Mary O'Connor, a poor Catholic maid in service to his parents.' Wikipedia<<<
{This latter attribution also recorded in post above of 27 Apr 99, 05.14 AM}

A mnemonic irrelevance, perhaps; but can't resist mentioning here the coincidence that I learnt this song in v early childhood [about 4] from an Irish maid we had in London [sorry, but people did in those days! cf last phrase of the Wiki entry!], whose name happened to be Mary O'Connor; & she came from Co Kerry, near Tralee! I loved her like a big sister, I recall. I don't think, tho, that she knew anything of the association of a namesake of hers to one of the traditional 'origins' of the song; if she did, she never mentioned it SFAIR.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 14 Nov 10 - 08:54 AM

Somebody commented upthread that it is "a bland, soupy song."

It is, in a way. It's Beethoven's 9th, of course. But I play it on the piano in the key of A, and it has the interesting feature that it uses every chord you can legitimately use.

A Bm, C#,D, E, F#m,

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: GUEST,JC
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 10:58 AM

Anyone know the present-day location of the Kings Head pub in Rock St??
My guess is it would have to be somewhere between the entrance to St. John's Park, and the corner of Pembroke St.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 17 Aug 11 - 10:37 PM

Why did I type "It's Beethoven's 9th?" I meant to say, "So is Beethoven's 9th." A song is only soupy if you play it that way.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: GUEST,LIghter
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 01:14 PM

Here's the original, as published in "The Heir of Abbotsville," by Edward Mordaunt Spencer (London, 1846), p. 83. In his Preface, dated "April, 1846," Spencer says nothing about the inspiration behind the poem. In fact, he doesn't even mention it:

                         THE ROSE OF TRALEE.
(Set to music by Stephen Glover, and published by C. Jeffrey, Soho-square.)

The pale moon was rising above the green mountain,
The sun was declining beneath the blue sea,
When I stray'd with my love to the pure crystal fountain
That stands in the green sylvan vale of Tralee.
She was lovely and fair as the fresh rose of morning,
Yet 'twas not her beauty alone that won me;
Oh no, 'twas the truth in her eye ever dawning
That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee.

The cool shades of ev'ning their mantle were spreading,
And Mary, all smiling, was listening to me;
The moon through the valley her pale rays was shedding,
When I won the heart of the Rose of Tralee.
Though lovely and fair as the fresh rose of morning,
Oh 'twas not her beauty alone that won me.
No, no, 'twas the truth in her eye ever dawning,
That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee.

To make it still more fascinating, John Brougham's completely different song of the same name appeared in the Columbian Ladies' and Gentlemen's Magazine (March, 1845), an American publication, as part of a short story called "The Blarney Stone."

I can't find any 19th century printings of the stanzas about India. FWIW, the line "I'm lonesome tonight" sounds pretty modern. I think the Victorians would have said "lonely" and something other than "tonight." After all, the point is that he's always lonely, not just tonight.

Just my impression after decades of reading that kind of thing.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: GUEST,SM
Date: 16 Feb 13 - 09:38 AM

As far I can see, nobody has mentioned that one of the earliest copies of this song is in the British Library, published circa 1850 and their CPM shows that it's a republication from 'The Book of Beauty for the Queen's Boudoir' (issued between 1843 and 1847) with music by Charles William Glover and words by Edward Mordaunt Spencer.

There's also, as the preceding post notes, the publication of the poem in Spencer's 1846 anthology (it can be viewed online thanks to the Hathi Trust Digital Library) which has two other odes to his Irish Mary (though it's odd that here the music for 'The Rose' is credited to Charles's brother, Stephen).

As already has also been noted, this song was featured in John McCormack's movie 'Song 'o the Heart'. I've a vague recollection that years ago McCormack's recording was introduced on BBC Radio 3 with a story that someone connected with the film (one of the cast?) knew an obscure Irish song from their mother, sung it to McCormack, he liked it and sung it in the film. This may be untrue but it chimes in with I and others here have found: some publications in Britain and the US in the mid-19th century, then nothing until 1930, the year the movie was released. The song would indeed seem to owe its current popularity to Count McCormack.

There seems little doubt that, based on the evidence, the poem is by E. M. Spencer. Where then does the attribution to W. P. Mulchinock and the story attached to him come from? A reference on ancestry.com admits that the poem is not in his only collection published in 1851. I suspect that when the song was becoming (newly?) popular in 1930s Ireland, its true provenance as a ballad written by two Englishmen (Spencer may have been Anglo-Irish) in a book for Queen Victoria was unacceptable so another origin was invented for it (We Irish love stories). Perhaps Mulchinock did write an ode for his Mary which is now forgotten and the story was transferred.

As for the third stanza, the India verse, if Vin Garbutt was the first to sing it, it probably comes from a London priest as he claims. It's rather reminiscent of Thomas Moore (e.g. Savourneen Deelish) so it could be a pastiche. Whether the author was deliberately trying to add credence to the Mulchinock myth is an interesting question. I hope someone will have more info on this.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Feb 13 - 11:37 AM

Lonesome - the Oxford Dictionary gives it's earliest appearance in print as 1647, and in Victorian times there's a citing from Dickens. Of course that in itself doesn't mean the verse isn't likely enough more recent, but sometimes we are too quick on the trigger about supposed anachronisms.

I incline towards the view that what matters in a song isn't whether it sticks to the original words or not, but how it works as a song. And I think the India verse especially does work well.

"Print the legend"

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Feb 13 - 02:01 PM

McGrath - not saying "lonesome" is an anachronism, just that "lonely" would be more likely.

If you;ll double-check, you'll see that what Dickens wrote was "You'll feel it lonesome to-night," not "*You'll* feel lonesome tonight."

In support of this, a search of Google Books, HathiTrust, and NewspaperArchive (millions and millions of words) reveals only *two* printed examples of the phrase "lonesome tonight" in the entire 19th century, the earliest only from 1878.

The more specific phrase, "I'm lonesome tonight for" seems to be untraceable before 1937! And all the examples are in popular songs!

I don't know what connection, if any, W. P. Mulchinock may have had with the "India" stanza of "The Rose of Tralee." All one can say is that, based on a vast amount of printed evidence (as well as the absence of evidence that, if it exists, should be there), the phrase "I'm lonesome tonight for the Rose of Tralee" looks like it belongs in a 20th or 21st century pop song far more than in a formal Anglo-Irish composition written before 1864.

Interestingly, there's one more text containing the "India" stanza in a somewhat different form. Unlike Vin Garbutt's version, it ends the song:

"In the far fields of India mid war's dreadful thunder,
Her voice was a solace and comfort to me.
But the chill hand of death has now rent us asunder;
I'm lonesome tonight for the Rose of Tralee."

This sounds quite Victorian. Except for "lonesome tonight." (I'm also made a little uncomfortable by the clumsiness of her "voice" being a solace, since she's 10,000 miles away; a Victorian versifier might be inept, but once again the oddity sounds more 20th century than 19th.)

The stanza appears in Kenneth W. Milano's _Hidden History of Kensington and Fishtown_ (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2010), p. 125. The only source he gives for his information about Mulchinock is the Rose of Tralee Festival. I'm not reassured by his statement that "the Irish have told [their own] story" about the song's authorship "for more than a century."

If they have, there should be some published record of it long before 1953. But I can't find any.

"The Irish Monthly" in 1889 mentioned Mulchinock as a writer of verse, but the song it mentioned was "Fill High To-night!" not "The Rose of Tralee."

The references I find to WMP's romance with "Mary O'Connor" seem to be entirely from popular tourism books - not the most reliable of historical sources. And for the mesmerizing power of local boosterism, consider the baseless, discredited, but nevertheless official claim, endorsed by a statue in Dublin, that "Cockles and Mussels" celebrates a genuine (and of course beautiful) 17th century fishmonger who died in 1699. Similarly, Mulchinock wrote verses and was born in Tralee. Voila!

(I will retract the "voila!" if persuasive evidence of Mulchinock's authorship ever appears.)

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Feb 13 - 02:25 PM

A look through my bookshelves reveals more information - though not to the advantage of the Mulchinock theory.


From James N. Healey's _The Second Book of Irish Ballads_ (Cork, Mercier, 1962), p. 76:

"The story of young William Pembroke Mulchinock and his unhappy romance with Mary O'Connor, the Rose of Tralee, has passed into the legendary of Kerry Town, where his song is so loved that a monument to him, and it, has been erected in the Town Park." Healey goes on to say that Mary "is said to have been a servant" in WPM's parents' house. They exiled him for loving her. He "wrote the song late in life when he was blind and lonely." (Of course, in 1845 or so he still had twenty more years to live, but never mind.)

Healey supposes that the "pure crystal fountain that stands in the beautiful vale of Tralee" is the River Lee, though a river is hardly a "fountain" and hardly describable as "standing," particularly when a local who knew what he was talking about could easily have written "flows" rather than "stands." It is even more euphonious.

Healey also credits WPM with the melody. He says that the familiar tune is "not the original," but he gives no presumed original.

Perhaps most fascinating is that after all that, the lyrics Healey gives are *precisely* those of E. Mordaunt Spencer, ending with the stanza about the truth in her eyes ever dawning.

Nothing about India, nobody lonesome tonight, no "chill hand of death."

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Feb 13 - 06:29 PM

The last few lines of the first verse always remind me of another song, the Tipperary Anthem,Slievenamon, with its verses

It was not the grace of her queenly aire
Nor her cheek of the rose's glow
Nor her soft black eyes, not her flowing hair
Nor was it her lily white brow,

Twas the soul of truth, and of melting ruth
And the smile like a summer dawn
That sold my heart away on a soft summer day
In the valley near Slievenamon.

I've never been sure which song came first, but I'm inclined to think that there's an echo of the first in the second.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Feb 13 - 08:50 PM

Thanks for the link, McGrath.

Kickham was born in 1828. That would make him only 17 or 18 when Spencer's song appeared. If there's any influence, it presumably began with "The Rose of Tralee."

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Feb 13 - 12:43 PM

That makes sense.

The mountain/ fountain rhyme occurs earlier than The Rose, in Tannahill's Braes of Balquihither, published 1812, where it's a 'siller fountan'. But then how many rhymes are there for mountain? No particular reason to think there's any borrowing here.

But there probably is in Francis McPeake's reworking, Wild Mountain Thyme, where is a 'crystal fountain'. Inevitably he'd have been familiar with the Rose of Tralee from childhood, like everyone else in Ireland.

I hasten to say I'm not in any way criticising the honourable tradition of borrowing and echoing earlier songs.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Feb 13 - 02:26 PM

I've found an "early" attribution of the song to WPM, though it is still 25 years after his death and 40 years after Spencer's copyright.

The two familiar stanzas of "The Rose of Tralee" are attributed to Mulchinock in John Boyle O'Reilly's "The Poetry and Song of Ireland" (N.Y.: Gay Bros., 1889), p. 860. This may have been the source of the influential 1953 attribution in another big anthology of Irish poetry.

The words are minutely different from what we're used to. It is a "cool" crystal fountain that "lies" in the vale. And "Mary all blushing" sat listening to me. No "India" stanza, however.

O'Reilly prints one other poem attributed to WPM called "Music Everywhere." It rhymes "fountain" and "mountain" in one place, but overall it clearly lacks the gracefulness of "The Rose of Tralee." What led O'Reilly to think WPM was the author is a good question.

Several more poems by WPM appear in "Holden's Dollar Magazine" for 1850. None is the "Rose" and, again, IMO, none is as smoothly written. The same goes for the two WPM poems in "Songs and Ballads by the Most Gifted Poets of the Emerald Isle"(N.Y.: F. Tomsey, 1880).

"The Ballads and Songs of William Pembroke Mulchinock" (N.Y.: T. W. Strong) appeared in 1851. I find no online image. A lengthy and negative review appeared in "The American Whig Review" of 1851; it quotes WMP's verses extensively, but there's not a mention of "The Rose." Nor is there one in a favorable review in the "Southern Literary Messenger" the same year.


FWIW, any "battle thunder" in India worth mentioning in a Victorian poem would presumably have occurred during the Indian Rebellion/ Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. That would have been a decade after Spencer's song appeared.

I can hardly believe that the Tralee tourism version of events, including WPM's burial next to the grave of "Mary O'Connor" is entirely bogus. My cynical guess is that someone noticed the graves in Tralee, knew WPM wrote verses, and BOIINNNG!!!! the whole sad story popped into his (or her) head. Folklore is born. Or so it would seem at the moment.

I would still like to know where the "India" stanza came from. What WPM would have been doing in India as a "war correspondent" when, as far as I can tell, there was no war, is another good question. The first "war correspondent" is usually said to be William Howard Russell, who covered the Crimean War in the 1850s.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Feb 13 - 05:09 PM

The first Anglo Afghan war was 1839 to 1842, and there were other military campaigns, including a war with the Sikhs in the '40s.

That proves nothing, but it does mean a verse about war in India is quite plausible at that time. And of course a term like 'war correspondent' could just mean someone in the area who wrote some kind of account in a letter to a paper.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Feb 13 - 06:29 PM

The Festival people seem to know about WPM and MO'C in great detail. They know, for example, that "Mary was very beautiful; she had long dark hair and soft, shining eyes." What's more, "It wasn't long before William met his sister's new nursemaid. As soon as he saw Mary he was transfixed by her eyes, her grace, her long dark hair and delicate skin."

But they don't seem to know (or perhaps care) that E. Mordaunt Spencer published the lyrics to the standard version of "The Rose of Tralee" in April, 1846, and there seems to be not the slightest available evidence that Mulchinock could have written exactly the same words, plus a few more, before that date.

Nor is there anythig in the standard text of the song to suggest that the love affair described did *not* end with "Mary" accepting the speaker's proposal of marriage. He says right out, "*I won the heart of* the Rose of Tralee!" Allegedly, that's not quite what happened to WPM.

Until somebody can show a version of "The Rose of Tralee" printed before April, 1846, with WPM's name on it as the lyricist, or some comparable evidence in manuscript, there is absolutely no credible basis for suggesting that he wrote it, with or without reference to India and the chill hand of death. If a local historian in Tralee knows of such evidence, there's no reason to keep it secret. Why not knock C. Mordaunt Spencer out of contention once and for all?

Conceivably Mulchinock wrote a different song with the same title, much like Brougham & Maeder, but so far there's no evidence even of that.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: Lighter
Date: 18 Feb 13 - 09:43 AM

The songs of Spencer and/or Brougham appear to have been very popular, with new musical arrangements published in the U.S. around 1850. The Library of Congress holds a NY broadside of Brougham's lyrics.

Newspapers show the name "Rose of Tralee" being given to dogs and racehorses right through the 1880s in both Britain and America.

Mention of concert singers performing it can be found from the 1890s on, but they pick up noticeably after 1908, possibly owing to better coverage of social events.

Subject: RE: Origins: Rose of Tralee - anything to add ...?
From: GUEST,Mark Phipson
Date: 01 Jul 18 - 05:46 AM

We have a handwritten doc by my great grandfather born at Glendine near Tralee, a James George Fleming (b.1857), writing that his mother, Mary Wharton (b.1837) was the inspiration behind the Rose of Tralee poem by Mordaunt Spencer "her beau at that time." However, the dates don't lend credulity to his belief since Mordaunt Spencer published a book containing The Rose of Tralee in 1846. Mary Wharton was 18 when she married James' father William Fleming (b. 1819) in 1855 after Mordaunt Spencer's believed love affair with her. So we don't know how or why he believed this and are intrigued by the Mulchinock love story of a generation earlier with Mary O'Connor, both of whom were b. in 1820, as the story goes, which is a perfectly believable story in my view. We are nonetheless of Irish AND English decent with my Gran's hubby's family hailing from Birmingham.