Introduction

The Anglo concertina, and its direct antecedents, the two-row German and Anglo-German concertinas, have long been popular in Irish traditional music circles. It has been said of County Clare in the early part of the 20th century that ‘almost every house … had a concertina, usually kept in the chimney corner nook.’1 This heyday of popularity, however, was followed by a steep decline that left relatively few players in Ireland by the 1960s, most of them located in County Clare. The past three decades have seen a great resurgence in its use, and much has been written about those surviving players and their histories.2 Most of what we know about the instrument in Ireland comes from these living sources, and yet there are gaps. Oral history only reaches back as far as living memory, so such accounts only extend with any real detail to perhaps eighty or more years. Beyond the memories of these sources, there are a few all-too-brief accounts, written posthumously, about the famous Clare player Mrs. Elizabeth Crotty (who herself learned to play in the late 1890s), and even-more-brief recollections from living sources that their ‘grandmother played one.’ The 19th century experienced the instrument’s formative period in Ireland, but there is very little published information about Irish concertina playing then, or about the concertina’s arrival and establishment in the country.

In addition, most of the twentieth century sources interviewed in published accounts have been from County Clare, leaving largely unrecorded the extent to which concertinas were played elsewhere in Ireland, and raising a question as to why surviving players of the mid-20th century were so highly concentrated in that County. Several existing histories of Clare playing include a hypothesis that seamen on ships that plied the Shannon estuary, or the chandleries that supplied them, may have been responsible for the arrival of concertinas in Clare, with the implication that the 20th century concentration of concertinas in Clare might have resulted, at least partly, from this seaborne link.3 But, as will be shown below, the instrument once had a much wider distribution in Ireland. For example, William Mullaly, a prominent Anglo player of the 1920s who was the first Irish concertina player to make commercial recordings, hailed from near Mullingar, County Westmeath in the eastern part of the Irish midlands. Neighbors around him played concertina as well, and taught him to play. How extensive was that playing population in greater Ireland? When did they start playing it in significant numbers? What types of people played it, and where? What sort of music did they play, and why did the vast majority of them give it up? And perhaps most importantly, why did only Clare concertina playing survive as a more or less unbroken tradition?

If these questions are difficult or impossible to answer from existing oral history accounts, there is even less in the way of documentation of Irish concertina playing in key studies of Irish traditional music that were written in the 19th century. The famous collector Francis O’Neill gives only a single mention to a concertina player in all his writing on Irish music, even though his collecting days and visits to Ireland overlapped with the playing days of prominent and respected early concertina players like Mullaly and Mrs. Crotty.

The digital age is making available vast amounts of information from Irish, British and American newspapers, periodicals and books of the 19th and early 20th century that was previously all but inaccessible. Mentions of this instrument in period literature are very sparse indeed, but by using modern digital search engines, needles may now be found in many 19th and early 20th century haystacks. The resulting images are fleeting: a prisoner had used one while perpetrating a crime; emigrants played them in steerage; a publican was fined for playing one too loudly late at night; a concertina contest was held; a patriot played one to rouse the spirits of his colleagues while under siege. Although merely anecdotes when considered singly, when gathered together, and assigned to place, time, and social context, a somewhat consistent picture begins to emerge.

This article focuses on (a) the concertina’s first century in Ireland , including the period of arrival of both the English system concertina and the much more popular German, Anglo-German, and finally ‘Anglo’ instruments, (b) the long heyday of the Anglo’s popularity, from about 1870 to about 1930, and (c) the first part of the period of its decline in use. That period of decline overlaps with the memory of living players, and some of the oldest of them remember the final years of its heyday as well. Events during much of the later part of its period of decline and the instrument’s dramatic resurgence in recent decades are left out of this study, as they are well covered elsewhere. Not all of the questions raised above are fully answered, but as in all journeys, one must begin with the first steps.

A Brief Review of Irish Cultural Geography at the Time of the Concertina’s Arrival

The concertina in its first century in Ireland was a bystander to three particularly important events in the country’s history: the Great Famine, the rapid shift to the English language in most areas following that famine, and the emergence of the independent Irish Republic. Of these, the first two are of particular importance in understanding the context of the concertina’s arrival and establishment.

During the peak years of the Great Famine (1845-1849), it is estimated that over a million Irish starved and another million or more emigrated; the overall population of Ireland declined by over 20% in those five years alone.4 Peasants living in western areas, where much of the land is of poor agricultural quality, were decidedly poorer as a group that their eastern countrymen before the Famine, and were much harder hit by it; in Clare, the population losses exceeded a horrific 25%. In the midlands and east, effects were also strongly felt, although the famine did not cause population decline in relatively more prosperous Dublin, the seat of British rule; in fact, the population of the city grew during those years as some refugees of outlying affected areas fled to the capital for relief. For this reason, it is not surprising that the earliest references to the concertina’s use in Ireland, both for the English system and the German concertina, come from Dublin.

In the years leading up to the famine, the country was predominantly Irish-speaking in all areas except the capital and its environs as well as the areas of Scottish-English plantation in Ulster, although the language was weakening its hold in many areas. Following the great human tragedy of the famine years, a desperately impoverished peasantry continued to emigrate, a process that went on for many decades. In the United States alone, roughly 1,500,000 Irish immigrants arrived from 1845 to 1854, an additional 1,000,000 from 1855-1870, and another 1,500,000 from 1870 to 1900.5 Among those who stayed, the great shift toward the use of the English language picked up pace, with attendant changes in folk traditions and the rhythm of everyday life. This dramatic shift in language and culture pressed westward from significantly Anglicized Dublin in a great wave; by 1871 (about the time that the Anglo-German concertina became widely popular) a very approximate dividing line reached about midway across the country.6

Figure 1 shows the distributions in 1871 of predominantly English-speaking areas (in white) and predominantly Irish-speaking areas (in dark red); the pink zones are transitional. A half century later, the wave had surged still farther westward to the Atlantic coast, leaving only small remnant areas of predominantly Irish speakers amongst the westernmost rocky landscapes of Kerry, Connaught and Donegal, as well as a few small pockets elsewhere; those areas more or less constitute the current Gaeltacht. This huge cultural shift affected much more than just language, and decimated much of traditional culture. Contemporary Irish writers in the late 19th century were consumed with a sense of loss by the decline in traditional poetry, music and dance. The great Chicago collector Francis O’Neill realized that his émigré musical sources from the streets of Chicago were the flotsam and jetsam of that wave’s destruction of a culture’s heritage:

Where a generation ago a wealth of folk music was the common possession of the peasantry, now scarcely a fraction of it is remembered. We are told by our optimistic orators and rhymers that Irish music will speedily resume its sway when Irishmen govern Ireland. Let us hope so—but how? When? Where? Who is to teach?7

As the Anglo-German concertina took root in the 1860s and 1870s—and that description will be attempted below—the country was comprised of at least two cultural groups, with a very fuzzy and locally convoluted boundary between them. People in English-speaking eastern areas were more prone to listen to new music from the English music halls and, increasingly, to the emerging pop culture from America (in the late 19th century, this included the minstrels craze, followed in the early 20th by ragtime, jazz, and ‘Tin-Pan Alley’). This relatively more ‘Anglicized’ (or perhaps, ‘globalized’) cultural group has continued to grow right down to modern times, as a spin of any Irish radio dial will demonstrate. Western areas, where people either were still Irish-speaking or had still vivid and living memories of the old ways, became the strongholds of what we now term ‘traditional’ Irish music, simply by not being changed (or not being changed as thoroughly) by the cultural wave of Anglicization. The chief reasons that that change was slowed in the west included continued poverty as well as overall remoteness from the main lanes of commerce that emanated from Dublin. Nonetheless, even there change would, eventually, not be denied. Layered on top of this in all areas in the 1870s were the still-ensconced English and Anglo-Irish landed gentry, who largely looked east to Dublin and London for their cultural signals. This situation was in rapid flux throughout the period of adoption and heyday of the concertina in Ireland.

Arrival and Use of the English Concertina

In a sense, the English concertina is a bit of a sideshow to the discussion at hand. Aligned at its beginning with the elite in a country then known for crushing poverty, the English concertina never developed a large following in Ireland, and it was the humble German concertina that eventually won over most of the populace. Nonetheless, the English concertina not only arrived first, but it was through the auspices of an English concertina maker in Dublin that the earliest German concertinas seem to have been imported to Ireland.

The English concertina came to Ireland within a very few years of its invention by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1829. In its first twenty years it was handmade by Wheatstone’s firm in England in very small numbers, and tended to be played by the wealthy gentry who could afford them. One of the concertina’s first public proponents was Italian-born Giulio Regondi (1822-1872), a classical guitarist and child prodigy who began performing on the English concertina in 1834. As reported by Lawrence,8 Regondi was a frequent visitor to Ireland over the period 1834 to 1861, and of a concert in Wexford on January 28 1835 it was reported that

This wonderful boy gave a musical entertainment on Wednesday evening to a fashionable audience who appeared to be quite enraptured with his unparalleled performance; he may truly be called a phenomenon in the musical world; the guitar in his hands becomes a different instrument from what even excellent judges can imagine and when we state that he is not apparently ten years old we do so merely to add interest to his performance …. Master Regondi also performs on a newly invented instrument called a concertina, which besides being of great power produces the sweetest and most varied tones. It is one of the most beautiful inventions our musical world can boast of.9

A later concert in Belfast, May 5 1835, resulted in this glowing review:

In his hands the instrument called the Concertina emitted a succession of sweet and silvery sounds, now and then resembling the tones of the Dulciana stop of a well tuned organ; and again the trembling modulations of the Eolian harp. They seemed to float in the air, as if they were the echo of some Seraph’s voice; and when the little Regondi, thus employed, stood before us; with his locks waving on his shoulders and glittering like sunbeams, sparklingly reflected from a surface of gold, our imagination converted him into a juvenile Apollo, charming his audience, at once, with the graces of his person and the harmony of his strains.10

A concert in Londonderry met with a prophetic comment on the concertina:

We need not notice in detail all the performances; but his Last Rose of Summer must not be wholly passed over. He played it with much taste on a new instrument called the concertina, which appears to us to be an improvement, and a very decided one, on the accordion. It is a pleasing instrument though of no great variety and is likely to come into very general use.11

During later visits, Regondi taught pupils in Dublin, and he and Joseph Scates prepared and published a tutor for the English concertina (Figure 2). 12

Another early visiting performer on this instrument was George Case of London, who performed at the Theatre Royal in Dublin on September 25, 1841.13 Case, a trained classical violinist, later wrote tutors for the English concertina, and manufactured them.

The first person to make and sell concertinas in Ireland was Joseph Scates. He was an employee of the Wheatstone firm in London who left to set up an independent and rival firm, also in London, when the original Wheatstone patent expired in 1844. Scates sold this business to George Case in 1850, and moved to Dublin, where he opened a shop at 28 Westmoreland Green. He sold musical instruments and published music, including the Regondi tutor mentioned above. At the Irish Industrial Exhibition of 1853, he exhibited three English system instruments of his own manufacture, as well as several made by Wheatstone.14

Figure 3 includes a price list of his English system instruments, from 1862. He was a skilled performer on the English concertina, and the following was said of an 1859 concert in Dublin’s Antient Room:

Mr. Joseph Scates gave his first grand vocal and instrumental concert yesterday evening, before a very numerous and fashionable audience. The programme selected was most judicious, and the artistes performing were warmly received …. Mr. Scates is a perfect master of the concertina, which beautiful instrument he handled with such refined taste and feeling as to enlist the full favour of his audience.15

Scates operated at a variety of addresses in Dublin before closing shop in December 1865; he taught lessons for a time at Cramer and Co’s Dublin establishment (they bought his former business), and at his private residence on 35 Upper Baggot Street.16 He later retired to Brighton England, where he died in 1899.17

Scates had a competitor in sales of English concertinas in Dublin during this period. John B. Bray sold Wheatstone-made English concertinas imported from London, along with other free reed instruments (of which more below), at a shop on 26 Westmoreland Street by 1861 and perhaps earlier; these were offered ‘at prices that will defy competition’. He advertised himself as a ‘Professor of the Instrument’ and a ‘pupil of Sig Giulio Regondi’.18 After some years of operating his musical instrument business, Bray gave it up in 1870, and began to teach on the ‘Regondi System’, at his office on 42 Great Brunswick Street.19 He sold one of his prized concertinas in 1877, after which he seems to have disappeared from the public record.20

Largely because of its expense and its manufacture in relatively small numbers during this period, the English concertina was initially an instrument of the moneyed elites, with all that that categorization brought in 19th century Ireland. Allan Atlas has indicated that members of the aristocratic Clare families of Vandeleur, Toler, and Abinger all purchased Wheatstone concertinas in the 1840s and 1850s. The Vandeleurs were infamous for mass evictions and house leveling in the Kilrush area, during an effort to eradicate rundale-system farms.21

By the 1860s, the elite in England, Scotland and elsewhere began to drop the English system instrument, perhaps because concertinas had by then been tainted by association with the cheap and decidedly working class German concertina, of which more below. The English system as well as various types of Duet systems then became staples of the middle class music halls and variety shows.22 By 1889, as written in a review that followed a highbrow concert for London and North-Western Railway officers, ‘this instrument unfortunately is now seldom heard on Dublin concert platforms’.23 As evidence of its now-reduced status, an 1872 Dublin variety show in the ‘Rotundo Gardens’ listed ‘Herr Christoff on the low rope’, ‘Professor Boyd and his Wonderful Troupe of Trained Dogs’, ‘double-voiced’ vocalist Charles Woodman, and ‘Campbell and Benzona’s Christy Minstrels,’ who performed ballads and comic songs taken from popular American minstrel shows. As part of the minstrel act, there was an English concertina solo by A. Campbell, followed by a ‘Walk-round Festival Dance’ and a ‘Grand Display of Fireworks’.24 Other appearances of the instrument include a mention in the account of the 1872 Dublin Exhibition, where a ‘Special Day’ of concerts included an organ recital, military band concerts, and a ‘Grand Vocal and Instrumental Concert’ that featured M.E. Walker on Concertina.25 The Abercorn Ladies’ College, Harcourt Street, Dublin, catered to women who aspired to improve their social and artistic skills, offering tutoring in ‘Organ, Piano, Harp, Guitar, and English Concertina’, in addition to singing and drawing classes, as well as training in English and other European languages.26

At the turn of the century, the English concertina as well as its cousin, the Duet, were commonly played in the music halls, such as the Tivoli Theatre in Dublin, where the ‘King of the Concertina’ and inventor of the Duet instrument that bears his name, Professor J. H. Maccann, performed in 1902,27 as did blind concertina soloist M. Henderson.28 At that same venue in 1908, duet player Alexander Prince was ‘loudly applauded,’29 and in 1921 ‘Jack Clevenor, described as the “wizard of the concertina” extracted some rare music from concertinas of various sizes, and was greatly appreciated’.30 A 1909 Tivoli variety act included ‘the feats capably accomplished by “Ernesto”, juggler and equilibrist, [including that of] climbing up and down a ladder, balancing a lighted lamp on his forehead and at the same time playing on two concertinas’.31

With a strong legacy of alignment with classical and music hall genres, as well as its double-action mechanics, the English system never made any appreciable inroads into Irish traditional music, although small numbers of current players in Ireland use it.

German and Anglo-German Concertinas: Arrival and Establishment in Ireland (1840s-1860s)

The German concertina is the direct ancestor of the present day ‘Anglo’, which has become the concertina of choice in Ireland’s current traditional music circles. It was invented by Carl Uhlig of Chemnitz, Saxony in 1834, who appears to have been unaware of Wheatstone’s invention of the English system concertina in London five years earlier. A simple four-sided instrument of one or two rows of single-action keys, it had fewer reeds than the English instrument, and was consequently less expensive to manufacture. Moreover, German makers quickly ramped up production in what became factories for accordion and concertina manufacture, in contrast to English makers who tended to treat their handmade instrument construction as an individual or family craft. German concertinas were soon being built for export in large numbers, and sold for low prices that were affordable by larger segments of society. They were available for sale in England as early as the mid 1840s,32 and were exported to the United States in large numbers by the 1850s. Although they were somewhat fragile, they were inexpensive enough that they could be used by poor street musicians, and easy to learn for a population that was largely illiterate and untrained in formal music notation. A young boy who busked regularly on the London steamboats in 1856 recalled the popularity of these German instruments three years earlier, in 1853:

I was about getting on for twelve when father first bought me a concertina. That instrument was very fashionable then, and everybody had it nearly. I had an accordion before; but … I didn’t take a fancy to it somehow, although I could play a few tunes on it …. I liked the concertina, because it’s like a full band. It’s like having the fiddle and the harp together …. The concertina I use now cost me 16s. It’s got twenty double keys—one when I pull the bellows out and one when I close it. I wear out an instrument in three months. The edges of the bellows get worn out: then I have to patch them up, till they get so weak that it mostly doubles over. It costs me about 1s a week to have them kept in order. They get out of tune very soon. … The old instruments I sell to the boys, for about as much as I give for a new one. They are very dear; but I get them so cheap when I buy them, I only give 16s for a 25s instrument. I’ve got a beautiful instrument at home, and I give a pound for it, and it’s worth two. Those I buy come from Germany, where they make them, and then they are took to this warehouse, where I buy them [as recorded by Henry Mayhew, 186133].

The capabilities of these earliest German instruments for playing rapid-fire dance tunes were somewhat limited, as the young musician indicated:

I don‘t know much operatic music, only one or two airs; but they’re easier to play on the concertina than lively music, because it’s difficult to move the fingers very quickly. You can’t hardly play a hornpipe. It makes the arm ache before you can play it all through, and it makes such a row with the valve working the bellows up and down, that it spoils the music.34

These square-ended German instruments were widely available in nearby Scotland, where Sir John Everett Millais (1829–1896) painted The Blind Girl in 1856; the blind girl is said to be begging with her German concertina, underscoring that its use had already extended to poorer parts of Scottish society at the time (like the boy on the London steamboats).35

Evidence for the adoption of these instruments in Ireland is scant for the decade of the 1850s. Joseph Scates published a tutor for the German concertina in Dublin in the early 1850s (Instruction Book for the Improved German Concertina) and is said to have sold the instruments as well, in his Dublin shop.36 The earliest known advertisement for ‘German’ concertinas in Scates’ shop is in the Irish Times of October 28, 1861. An advertisement of December 22, 1862 lists a variety of German models, priced from 5 shillings to over a pound (Figure 4). The variety included ‘Organ’ models (double-reeded, in octaves) and ‘Celestial’ ones (double-reeded, tremelo), in addition to ‘Plain’ single-reeded ones.

Scates’ competitor John Bray also sold German concertinas by the early 1860s, as shown in an advertisement from January 14, 1860, where they are listed for sale at 6 shillings (Figure 5). The contrast in price with his Wheatstone 48 key English concertinas is large; the Wheatstone is priced at 3 and a half guineas, roughly 12 times as much as the German instrument. In time, prices dropped for the least expensive of these German instruments, to 3 and a half shillings in 1863 (Scates37), and to 3 shillings by 1868.38 Such prices made them affordable to ever larger portions of the population, and the numbers of vendors grew with the popularity of the German concertina. By the late 1860s/early 1870s, there were at least four other sellers besides Scates and Bray of these instruments (David Baldwin, of Henry Street; Bussell’s on Westmoreland Street; O’Reilly’s at 31 Wellington Quay; Butler’s at 11 Ellis Quay). Baldwin was a general merchant, not a musical specialist, indicating that German instruments were becoming popular mass market items by the end of the 1860s, and were not just specialty items.

As usage of the German concertina expanded, not only in Ireland but in England, Scotland and the US, a number of tutors for this instrument appeared, starting in 1844 and continuing through the 1860s in London, Glasgow, New York and Boston.39 As Eydmann40 notes of the Scottish tutors,

The cover illustrations of many of these editions … show the concertina in “up-market” settings and, although this may have been in reflection of the reality of its use, it is more likely that they sought to sell the image of upper middle-class respectability. The output of the Glasgow companies can be read … as an indication of the popularity of the instrument in Scotland at the time …

Glasgow publishing firms of the Cameron brothers (later Cameron and Ferguson) published many of these tutors, and placed advertisements for them in the endpapers of their non-musical books. Some of these non-musical books were especially aimed at Irish readers, and those interested in Ireland. For example, the 1869 non-fiction volume, The History of Ireland: From the Treaty of Limerick to the Present Time contains advertisements for 24 German concertina tutors, including these four written with Irish tastes in mind:

Sixty Irish Songs for the Concertina, with the Words and Music

The Green Flag of Ireland National Songs for the Concertina, with the Words and Music

100 Irish Airs, marked and figured for the 10, 20, and 28 keyed Concertina. With complete instructions and scales

100 Moore’s Irish Melodies, marked and figured for 10, 20, 22, and 28 keyed concertina; containing the most popular of these exquisite National Airs

The cover of the first of these is shown in Figure 6. Each of these books carried the price of 6d, and shipping was available free by post for 7 stamps. It seems very likely that some of these tutors found homes in English-speaking parts of Ireland during the 1860s, and that the players of those tunes likely were members of the emerging English-speaking Irish middle class.

As was mentioned above, although there are abundant advertisements for German concertinas in Irish newspapers of the 1860s, those archives searched to date are curiously silent on the German concertina in Ireland in the 1850s; Scates’ German concertina tutor is the only document yet known showing use of the German concertina in that decade. There are several possible reasons for their apparent slow start in Ireland, including of course the lean nature of available references. Perhaps most importantly, Ireland in the 1850s was still reeling from the aftershocks of the Great Famine and the economic depression that followed, and this seems to have profoundly affected the general population’s appetite for both music and new musical instruments, even in relatively more prosperous Dublin.41

Another impediment to usage of the earliest, square-ended German concertinas of the 1850s in Irish circles may have been their poor performance when used in fast tempo dance music, as Mayhew’s young English source of 1856 indicated above. English concertina makers, obviously impressed by the sales potential of the cheap German instruments, began to improve upon them in order to capture a share of the market; English concertina maker and repairer George Jones (1832-1919) built his first concertina with the German fingering system in the early 1850s. Principal improvements of the English builders included applying the more responsive reeds and action of the English system concertinas to the German fingering system. Joseph Scates placed a sizeable order for these improved instruments with Jones, who began to produce them by 1862.42 The London-based Lachenal firm began construction as early as 1863,43 and Dublin merchant John Bray began selling ‘Anglo-German’ instruments that same year.44 By 1868, the Dublin firm O’Reilly’s was selling 20 keyed ‘Anglo-German’ models for 2 pounds sterling, a much higher price than the German made instruments that he sold.45

German makers, not unaware of this English challenge, and perhaps even in advance of it, adopted the English six-sided shape on most inexpensive two-row export models and improved their own instruments, although never reaching the quality (or high price) of those hand built by English craftsmen. C. F. Reichel’s Phisharmonica-Accordion-Fabrik in Chemnitz was advertising four-sided, six-sided, eight-sided, and even round-ended concertinas by 1855; the German-made ‘Organ’ and ‘Celestial’ models in Bray’s advertisement of 1862 (Figure 5) were almost certainly the newer six-sided type. The resulting two-row six-sided instruments from both countries are usually termed ‘Anglo-German’ concertinas today, although the term ‘German’ concertina was and is frequently used in Ireland and elsewhere for the German-made Anglo-German instruments. A further improvement was the addition of a third row of keys; this was the ‘Anglo-chromatic’ instrument (George Jones, 1851) that is the predominant variety played today. Most of the early images preserved of North American players show the German-built two-row Anglo-German version, underscoring the global reach of German mass production and marketing (Figure 7 shows some examples). The gentleman shown at the left of the cover page of the 1860s ‘Irish songs’ tutor (Figure 6) is holding an Anglo-German model, country of origin not known.

The earliest accounts yet known of the playing of the instrument in Ireland are from 1868, and show that the inexpensive German-made concertina was reaching a much broader audience than the English instrument had. In Dublin in the popular Rotundo Room, which catered to the city’s emerging middle class, a ‘Grand Musical Contest’ was held where

On the above night Professor Miller will give a Silver Cup to the Best Sentimental Singer. A Splendid Concertina to the Best Concertina Player. A Beautiful Silver Cake to the Best Comic Singer.46

A later contest at that same venue, described below, made it clear that the instruments played were very likely German concertinas. Another 1868 event shows that the instrument was also becoming popular with the rural folk of western Ireland:

At Nenagh (County Tipperary) Petty Sessions on Saturday two performers of street music, who came from the county of Clare, were severely dealt with by the magistrates for playing Fenian tunes on a concertina. It was proved that a crowd which followed them joined in chorus. They pleaded ignorance of the character of the tunes, but the Bench did not accept the excuse, and sent them to gaol for two months.47

It was not the last time the concertina was to be used in Ireland’s political and social struggles, as we shall see.

In summary, German and Anglo-German concertinas were increasingly popular in Dublin in the 1860s, following a fairly slow start in the 1850s. The increase in sales in the 1860s is perhaps due to three main factors: improving economic circumstances of the (Dublin) populace in the 1860s following the Great Famine and its aftermath, improvements in the design and construction of the German-made models (and the arrival of much improved English-built ones), and the continually dropping prices for the German-made models throughout the 1860s. Although most recorded information on German concertina occurrence in Ireland in the 1850s and 1860s is specific to Dublin, the Nenagh court case of 1868 is a harbinger of a a remarkable growth to a nationwide adoption across the social, political, and geographic landscape in the next few decades.

The Anglo-German Concertina’s Heyday in Ireland (1870-1930)

Distribution and Acceptance

Period documents show that the 1870s ushered in a golden era for Anglo-German concertinas in Ireland, in both English-speaking and still Irish-speaking parts of the country. Sales of the instruments broadened to all sorts of merchandisers, not just music shops, and expanded to other parts of the country. More importantly, references to concertina players themselves began to appear in newspapers, books, and journals of the time. From these various sources, a picture emerges of a popular boom in the German concertina in Ireland that is unrivaled by any other musical instrument of the era.

The advertisement shown in Figure 8 was taken from the Dublin Freeman’s Journal of December 5, 1872, and ran for several months. The ‘Old Established Pawnbroker’s Sale Shops’, run by Patrick Keogh, advertised a variety of goods, including ‘large assortment of Concertinas, and other Musical Instruments’. This pawnbroker was selling to a mass-market rather than luxury or specialist clientele, and the concertina was just one of a long list of everyday commodities that he sold to the growing middle class in Dublin. Not only pawnbrokers, but also hardware stores and even jewelry shops began to distribute the instruments.

Figure 9 shows an advertisement from a 1904 Cork jewelry shop that carried melodeons and concertinas alongside its pocketwatches.48 This tradition of variety store vendors carrying these inexpensive instruments carries down to the present day; for example, Comiskey’s hardware on Clonbrassil Street in Dundalk (Co. Meath) carries inexpensive concertinas in addition to hardware, baby carriages, and other home items. Also outside of Dublin, G. Morosini’s Pianoforte and Harmonium Warerooms carried them in Kilkenny, Co. Kilkenny by 1870.49

Prices for German instruments continued to fall. General merchandiser C. L. Reis & Co. of 5 Grafton Street in Dublin advertised concertinas for as low as 2s 6d in April 1878, as did May’s at 30 Stephen’s Green in 1876. By 1898, according to a Clare concertinist quoted by Harry Bradshaw, ‘Concertinas were cheap then, you could get the smaller one for half-a-crown (2s 6d) and the large one cost 6s 6d and if you minded it, it would last a few years anyway with constant playing.’50 Such prices allowed many working class and rural people in all parts of the country to afford one.

Distribution of these instruments occurred by other means as well, in venues across the country. In 1862 Dublin, a ‘Grand Bazaar for the Relief of the Poor in the West’ contained a large number of prizes, among which were ‘Celestial, Organ and other Concertinas’.51 In a ‘Grand Drawing of Prizes’ for the Ballinasloe, County Galway Convent of Mercy on October 4, 1872, the 8th prize was a concertina awarded to Dr. McMullen of Queensland, who just missed a fat sheep, a gentleman’s saddle, a game of lawn croquet, and several other higher-ranked prizes.52 Amongst a large assortment of prizes won at a raffle for the St. Joseph Convent in Longford, County Longford in 1877, a concertina was won by a Miss McDermott of that town.53 In the parish of Drimoleague, County Cork on St. Stephen’s Day of 1892, a concertina was awarded as second prize in a track and field competition. First prize was a pair of boots.54

There is some information that shows that concertina raffles were also carried out in the late 19th Century in the homes of farming folk of very limited means in rural villages—showing yet another way that the concertina reached people with low income, and also demonstrating that it was reaching people who were deeply involved with traditional music. In the following 1885 account of an American visitor who traveled to a small rural village in order to learn Irish step dancing, he discusses a visit of a traveling dancing master to that village. One of the ways these dancing masters were funded was a ‘benefit,’ which could take several forms:

There are many kinds of dancing “benefits.” Marvin (the traveling dancing master in this village) had two during the ten weeks he spent in our village—both for the fiddler. … On such a night, when all the company have been assembled, the fiddler or dancing-master, whichever one the benefit is for, goes round with a plate or, more generally, his hat; and each person present willingly gives a trifle ….

I have known several cases where poor people wanting to thatch their cabin, perhaps, or to buy a pig without any means to do so, will organize a benefit, and thus obtain the necessary money. For this purpose a written notice will be carried round to the neighbors. Sometimes they may just be told that Pat Murphy wants money to set the praties, and he will hold a benefit on Friday (or more generally, Sunday) night. Perhaps fifty neighbors will come. Of course, so many could not possibly come into a small cabin at once; but they always take it in turn to “fut the floor”—for in step dancing, only a certain number can dance at a time. These people will dance away all night, subscribe their mite, and never eat or drink anything, because, naturally, such poor people could not provide food for so many. It is not unusual for the neighbors each to bring some victuals with them, such as bread, tea, and sugar; and these will be divided and distributed as far as they will go.

Another kind of benefit for the same purpose is got by raffling—a goat, a turkey, or a concertina, perhaps a donkey, being the most general things to raffle. The winner will sometimes provide refreshments, often getting up a second raffle to do so.55

In an 1877 contest at the Dublin Rotundo (Figure 10), a ‘German Concertina’ was the prize for solo concertina playing at the ‘Great Band Contest and Concertina Contest’. The concertina competition was ‘confined to five paid-up competitors’ who paid an entrance fee of 3 shillings and were given ‘Ten minutes to play. Set of Waltzes and variations. Professionals excluded.’ The concertina competition judge was a Mr. Thomas McCarthy. ‘Owing to the great demand’, tickets were sold in advance, ‘to avoid any crushing at the doors’. Clearly, the concertina was by this time in Dublin an item of appreciable public interest and appeal, and had already begun to be accepted for playing dance music.56

An instrument with broad popular appeal

In Drogheda, Co. Louth in the winter of 1870, a frost of ‘unusual rigour’ set in, freezing the ponds and lakes of the surrounding district. A local gentleman threw open the gates of his ‘pleasure grounds, in the demesne of Beaulieu, for the exercise and amusement of the inhabitants’. Hundreds of townspeople turned out with ice skates, and

The surrounding banks were covered with spectators, who took a lively interest in the animated scene. Several ladies enjoyed themselves on the glassy surface in chairs propelled by gentlemen in skates, and children were wheeled to and fro in perambulators. A section of the assemblage, ensconced in a summer-house, improvised a lively dance during the day, to the music of concertinas.57

These relatively inexpensive Anglo-German instruments began to show up in all parts of middle and working class, urban and rural Ireland, both in English- and Irish-speaking enclaves. Because the concertina, like other musical instruments, is of course a minor player in the grand overall scheme of everyday life, it tends to be noticed by newspaper writers only when associated with something unusual, such as in a story of the above strong freeze, but more often in a crime story, a court case report, a charity case, or a complaint to the editor. For this reason, everyday ‘normal’ players tend to be under-reported. For example, in an 1873 report of ‘Street Rowdyism,’

John McDonnell, Newcome-court, labourer, was charged with having been one of a disorderly mob who assaulted a man named John Downey, Great Britain-street. The prosecutor deposed to the fact that he was passing along Great Britain-street when the prisoner, who was in company with a number of persons who were playing a concertina, tripped him. On asking what he did it for, he was set upon by the prisoner, and the others closed around him and assaulted him. His Worship observed that he was ashamed of his namesake, whom he sent to prison for one month, and ordered to be kept at hard labour.58

The concertina (undoubtedly an inexpensive German-made one) was also to be found even with Dublin’s poorest citizens, the children of the workhouses. An 1872 account of ‘an annual feast given to the children of the South Dublin Union Workhouse’ reported that

‘There can be no more touching or more agreeable sight than that of several hundred little boys and girls—waifs and strays of humanity—made happy by kindness, and giving way to unrestrained enjoyment, their every look expressive of delight and gratitude at this treat provided for their special pleasure.’

Charity workers provided the Christmas dinner and the decorations, and the ‘master of the workhouse’ organized the children into a program of entertainment, which included the concertina:

‘After tea a Christmas hymn composed by an inmate of the workhouse was sung by the children, and a selection of excellently-played tunes was then given by the well-trained band attached to the workhouse …. The ‘Leinster Lillies’, a clever troupe of amateur Christy Minstrels, … won much approval by their quaint gestures and admirable … vocal and instrumental selections. A Fantasia of airs played on the concertina well deserved the applause which it received, and indeed every item in the programme was … tastefully and cleverly given’.59

The association of concertinas with pubs was made early. An 1877 Dublin newspaper story entitled ‘Music and Refreshments’ recalls that:

Mary Brown was summoned by Inspector Darcy for keeping drink for sale on her unlicensed premises, at 51 Grattan-court. Inspector Darcy stated that about 1:30pm on Sunday, the 15th of last month, he entered Mrs. Brown’s house; he saw her throw something into a tub of water, and he saw a man, whom he believed to be her son, put a bottle of porter under his arm; there were seven bottles of porter behind a trunk, and two men were in the shop under the influence of drink.

The defendant said she had the porter in the house for her son. Her son was the proprietor of a concertina, and he was acquainted with a few boys who came to hear him play.

Fined 10s.60

Concertinas appeared in proper public houses, too, and were not always greeted with approval. In a public hearing discussing an application for a license for a Bantry, County Cork pub in 1896, an objection was raised by a Mr. Sheehan against the license sought by a client of Mr. Powell:

Mr. Powell asked what parishioner Mr. Sheehan represented.

Mr. Sheehan said he represented Mr. Jonas Wolfe, solicitor.

His Honor- Why is not Mr. Wolfe here?

Mr. Powell- I am sorry to say that he is indisposed. If he had stirred himself up with a little whiskey he might have been possibly here (laughter). I believe that Mr. Wolfe’s objection is to music of the concertina kind; it is not classical enough for him (laughter).

After more discussion, the judge granted this, a license for the fiftieth public house in the small town of Bantry.61

Not all such complaints involving concertinas involved public houses and alcohol, however. In Navan, County Meath in 1899, a complaint was lodged against Miss Julia Young, ‘who has James Reilly annoyed with a concertina …. He is a night man, two scores of years. He can’t sleep with the noise of Julia Young. Yours truly, Bridgit Reilly.’62

In 1893 Cork, a correspondent of the local Southern Star railed against growing numbers of street musicians there:

In writing this paper about street singers and musicians, I do not intend to class them with other itinerants … but at the same time I regret that so far as I am personally concerned I cannot express either satisfaction or pleasure at the ‘Sweet Sounds’ I have heard ….[Street musicians] are very numerous—in fact too much so; and there is a variety in the instrument they play (!) that is by far too great …. A melodeon finds much favour with many street musicians. I like the melodeon, but I certainly would issue a degree of separation, if I had the power, between the melodeon and the street performer on it. As for the concertina, that poor instrument has suffered fearfully at the hands—literally—of the street player. When a man thinks he can play no other instrument he purchases a concertina, in the fond belief that he can manage that. And he does, but very badly, but still he will persist in showing up before others.63

A similar complaint in the 1876 Irish Times concerns similar ‘street’ music played in the third class compartments of the railway line to the then-fashionable seaside resorts of Kingstown and Bray, near Dublin. The Irish Times, like other city newspapers of that era, favored the genteel and fashionable music of its upper and middle class customers, and gave short shrift to the ‘shrieking’ of what we now call traditional Irish music. The mix of instruments in the following article leaves little doubt as to which type of music was being played:

Sunday bands are a regular nuisance, but naught compared to the dulcet strains that one is forced to listen to on a journey to Kingstown or Bray on a Sunday. Why is it that passengers are forced to listen to such instruments as two-stringed fiddles, cracked concertinas, broken-winded bagpipes, and last, not least, coffee pots transformed into flageolets. Really the railway company should have more compassion and consideration for their third-class passengers ….

Dublin must have been a very quiet city yesterday, for there was a general meeting in Kingstown of all the squeaking pipes, hoarse fiddlers, derelict banjoes, and consumptive concertinas that daily soothe the savage temperament of the citizen. On the Carlisle Pier they created a noise—to put it mildly—more striking than effective, and it never lagged in power or continuance. The two yacht clubs were, of course, the centre of attention, and on their balconies were grouped hundreds of the handsomest and most fashionable ladies of Dublin and its environs.64

That general theme resonated with others; another Kingstown railway passenger complained of ‘a class of itinerant beggars, in the shape of concertina players and bone rappers’ on an 1878 trip.65

A correspondent to the Southern Star in 1911 opined that ‘In deft hands, the concertina is, I think, the most deadly instrument.’66 The same year, in Clonakilty, County Cork, a woman charged that ‘she has been continually annoyed, abused and insulted by T___ and family. They play an old concertina to annoy her, and call her … names.’67 That might seem amusing, except that a two way feud developed that ended up in the Plaintiff having her head smashed with a shovel, requiring a lengthy hospital stay; deadly, indeed. In another such domestic dispute, an Avondale (near Castleblaney in County Monaghan) butter merchant was sued in 1891 by another Avondale man for ‘alleged misconduct with the plaintiff’s wife’. Two men had been visiting at the plaintiff’s house one afternoon while said plaintiff was away in America; one man danced with the absent man’s wife while another played the concertina. A zealous neighbor had seen all of this through an open window, and the court case was a result.68

Other incidents reflect the popularity of the instrument with youth, sometimes causing mischief, such as this case from County Clare in 1928:

The potent attraction exercised by a pot of jam and a concertina resulted in three young boys being charged with housebreaking. The three boys are from the Lisheen district and they appeared before District Judge Gleeson in the Children’s Court at Ennis on Friday. The superintendent, who prosecuted, suggested that the most serious part of the charge was the language in which it was couched. He explained that the boys had been attracted by the jam and the concertina and had entered the house by a window to create great ‘ruck’ as they themselves admitted. They had eaten the jam, played the concertina, and then made their exit again through the window. The ‘ruckers’ were discharged with a caution after being reminded of the rights of property by the Justice.69

In an internationally reported incident of 1905, a woman in Ballinasloe, County Galway sought to have her husband committed to an asylum after he attempted to

… emulate the performance of Pan, the mythological god, with his flute. The attempts consisted of going out in the field with a concertina—which he had borrowed—and playing the dulcet tones to his bullocks, after inviting some neighbors to see them dance. The bullocks did not dance, and the assistant medical officer of Ballinasloe Asylum hinted that all (his) ‘goings on’ were actuated by the belief that the wife was engaged in a conspiracy against him, and had put him in an asylum in order to enjoy his property, which was considerable.70

In a boating disaster on the Shannon River near Ballybunion, County Kerry in 1893, a group of 17 pleasure boaters had been out in a hired boat for the afternoon to cross the Shannon estuary between Ballybunion and the Clare coastline a few miles south of Kilkee:

… the water being smooth, Murphy and his friends had no hesitation in starting for home across the river …. They had enjoyed themselves during the day, but were all sober, two of the party playing on violins and a third on a concertina. They were remonstrated with as to the risk they incurred, but made light of any danger, and so they rowed away on their fateful passage.

The boat drifted out to sea, and all were drowned, save Murphy, a local farmer who had hired out the boat.71

In the days of the Irish Free State, an official of the Waterguard (the Customs agents), discussing the wily smugglers they had been encountering, related that

An officer once told me that the most ingenious smuggler he had ever heard about was a tough old salt who always carried his concertina ashore after each voyage. One day an officer asked him to play a sailor’s hornpipe. He refused. The officer then said he would play it. But the concertina was unworkable because it was filled with choice cigars.72

In Kilmessan, County Meath, a constable standing guard at a local 1905 election ‘whiled away with concertina selections the long intervals of inactivity in the polling booth.’73 In a ghostly Snap-Apple (Hallowe’en) party in County Meath, ‘Katy Walsh could make a corpse dance with the concertina.’74

Concertina playing was not limited to the southern counties, but was found in the north as well. Many concertina ‘sightings’ of that area relate to political and social upheavals of the time (see below), but others show the same sort of broad popular support for the instrument as was found in the south. In a report on an early automobile event, the Ulster Tourist Trophy Race, it was noted that:

Belfast … is a city of mechanical men. She draws her sustenance from power-driven industries, and she has taken up the preparations for the great race … with wonderful zest. People have thronged to the vast course to witness even the early morning trial runs. Young men have watched all night, enlivening the long hours with the music of the concertina. When the race is run tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of manufacturers and merchants, artisans, factory workers and shipbuilding hands from all parts of the industrial North-East will crowd the track.75

It may seem difficult today to understand the Anglo-German concertina’s early broad-based popularity, not just in Ireland but in England, Scotland, the United States, and many other parts of the western world. Excepting mouth harmonicas and jews’ harps, these little boxes were (along with melodeons) the first inexpensive, mass-produced consumer musical items, pre-dating future public love affairs with guitars, ukeleles, and mass-produced pianos. In a world lacking electric lights, radios, televisions, and recorded music, the concertina gave people an additional way to entertain themselves during long, dark and quiet winter evenings, and was easy to learn for people who had no formal music training. It allowed persons with very modest means to make music, thus foregoing more expensive (and handmade) fiddles and bagpipes. It came in a neat bundle of shiny wood, painted cardboard and varnished buttons, and made reasonably nice noise; such shop-bought finery at a low price! It is no wonder that it became a global phenomenon. In a country where dance music was highly valued, and which was just emerging from a traumatic few decades of extreme poverty and despair, these instruments were just what the doctor ordered.

An instrument for all music

The Clonakilty, County Cork Football Club held a fund-raising concert at the town hall, to a large audience in 1892, in an area that was rapidly changing to English speech. Amongst songs, instrumental duets, and comic pieces, Kate Kearney played a ‘valse’ as a concertina solo. In that evenings entertainment there were many popular and sentimental songs and light classical pieces, but no mention of any reels, jigs, or traditional dance.76

It is well known that in even in more Gaelic western parts of Ireland in the late 19th Century, native Irish ‘traditional’ music was being eclipsed by English and American popular music, much to the disapproval of Irish nationalists. At that time, the Anglo-German concertina was not yet connected to either one or the other sides of this cultural and musical divide; both sides played it, as has been seen above. In more Anglicized eastern areas like Dublin, or increasingly, in ‘modern’ social venues farther west, both popular English music hall and the latest American minstrel tunes might be heard on the concertina. For example, in the Bijou Theatre of Dublin in 1885, the local ‘Star Minstrel Troupe’ performed a ‘good selection of comic and sentimental songs’ that included the usual stereotypical minstrel jokes about southern US blacks in a sketch entitled ‘The Black Servant’, songs by Stephen Foster, and banjo and concertina solos by Mr. Killie, which drew ‘unceasing applause’.77

Such nightly popular entertainment resulted in the following missive from the Gaelic League, delivered at a meeting in Dublin in 1908. Gaelic League organizer ‘Mr. McNestor’ lamented the disappearance of the Irish language and Irish ways. He recommended that

They should get back to their native music. They were at one time the most musical nation when a harp hung in every house, but now they had got down to the concertina and melodeon, and even to the mouth organ. They had thrown away the music of their great composers for the abortions and abominations of the English music halls, which if they had any sense at all had an immoral sense that any man would be ashamed of.78

A similar view, including another disparaging swipe at an insufficiently Irish concertina, was given by another observer in 1884:

Since the Union, Ireland has shuffled off her ancient language, with its thousand years of history and its striking imaginative literature, with almost indecent haste. She has neglected the priceless treasure of her ancient national music, and her western peasantry sing the music hall songs of London. The Irish harp and the Irish pipes have given way to the banjo and the concertina. The people have even in thousands of cases changed their names, lest any trace of their Celtic nationality should cling to them.79

The prominent collector Francis O’Neill seems also to have also been in this camp; he mentions the concertina but once in all his collections and writings (more on this below).

As has been shown in the ‘step-dancing’ story above, however, people in some rural areas in the west had already begun to use the new instrument for their own ‘traditional,’ native music. It is widely thought that the concertina served in such areas as a replacement for the pipes; the professional ranks of traveling pipers had been dramatically thinned by the Great Famine and its aftermath, when pipers immigrated in droves to American cities like New York and Chicago. These largely rural people started to see the new but quaint little box as something well suited to the tunes of olden times, as is made abundantly clear in this lovely poem from the 1893 Cork Southern Star:

O’B____’S CONCERTINA

With light caressing touch he lays
Upon the gleaming keys his fingers,
And there a moment ere he plays
With dreamy look he lingers;
Then plays the “coulin” sweet and low
With gladness as with sorrow ringing
And sweet sad mem’ries come and go—
A brief sweet spell upon us flinging.

And Paddy Mac draws up his chair;
With wond’ring eyes he listens to it
And says, when played the plaintive air,
“Molair! ‘Tis he knows how to do it!”
And when a merry strain he plays
Old Paddy then you should have seen—ah!
“God be wid the good ould days—
Me sowl!! ‘Tis grand—that concertina!

“An’ whist—no! Is it—tis! Hurroo”—
What’s up with Paddy now I wonder?
Across the house his caubeen80 flew,
Flung his coat the table under;
Forgotten now his years three score,
He only thinks of when an airy,
Jovial bouchal,81 off he bore
The crown for dancing in Iveleary.

“Ay! That’s the tune—‘tis Bonnie Kate!
“Poor Morty Oge! The pride did lave him
“Right quick that day when he was bate,82
“An’ here’s a taste of what I gave him.”
He danced—oh! Gracefully and light!
Surprised, delighted, we drew near him—
Ye gods! But ‘twas a gladsome sight;
We cheered while voice was left to cheer him.

I’ve read how Arion’s music saved
His life when ‘mongst the monsters finny,
And heard how kings the favour craved
A tune from peerless Paganini;
How maids in far Castile can thrill
With gay guitar or mandolins—ah!
These could not with rapture fill
Like you—oh! Magic concertina.

M. O’S.83

It seems quite remarkable that the concertina, which had been around in significant numbers for only three decades by this time, had been both accepted and honored with a poem for its ability to conjure up the “good auld days” in the eyes of “Old Paddy”. Clearly the instrument had carved a niche with traditional players, and was on its way to becoming an iconic part of Ireland’s musical heritage. In 1908, Ireland participated in the Franco-British Exhibition in west London. A laundry soap magnate provided funds to create the fictional and iconic village of Ballymaclinton (Figure 11) where there was “plenty of amusement to be had on the village green, where the colleens dance to the strains of a concertina played by one of their number, or else to the fiddle and the pipes.”84 When commercial interests take up an instrument to help create an iconic bit of ‘auld Ireland’, surely that instrument was riding the crest of a popularity wave.

A bystander to the larger events of the time

Concertinas, being commonplace and somewhat ubiquitous during this period, very much reflected the times in which they were played. Hence, they were sometimes, by happenstance, minor bystanders in some of the great issues of the day. Although the following ‘sightings’ are minor anecdotal references within larger stories, they tell us much about just how ubiquitous the instrument was in its heyday, and how quickly and thoroughly it was adopted as ‘their own’ by the various social groups that played it … not all of whom fit the current image of traditional players.

The widespread use of evictions by government bailiffs was one of these major issues, and it was not always as dramatic an affair as throwing a destitute widow out into the street. In Skibbereen, County Cork in 1896, an officer of the Sheriff’s department had evicted a Mr. Emerson from his home, presumably for non-payment of bills. Immediately afterwards, it was reported that that officer ‘and his assistant bailiffs had a gay time of it for five days in the house, and during that time a great deal of Mr. Emerson’s property was removed.’ In the court case that ensued, the Plaintiff, Mr. Emerson, laid out his evidence of damages to his personal possessions to a skeptical and somewhat hostile court, and described how the

… bailiffs kept an open house, being drinking, dancing, singing and having music the whole time (courtroom laughter). He believed the house was full of parties every night.

His Honor- Where were you all this time?

Plaintiff- I was after being evicted, and was walking about.

(Defendant’s attorney)- Who played the fiddle?

Plaintiff- I think it was a concertina they had (courtroom laughter).

(Defendant’s attorney)- I suppose there were a great many young ladies there (laughter)?

Plaintiff- I could not say; they would not allow me in at all.

After cross-examination, in which the Defendants sought to show that the Plaintiff could not have known who if anyone was playing the concertina, and then demonstrated that a ‘fair’ remuneration had already been paid for the alleged damages to household goods, the case was dismissed by the judge. Whether the unfortunate man was ever returned to his home was not reported.85

More serious evictions had been the order of the day elsewhere. Clare Island, County Mayo, as recently as 1890, had been the scene of many dramatic and tragic confrontations between bailiffs and police in service of the local landlord on the one hand, and an impoverished populace on the other. A Congested Districts Board was finally formed to alleviate the problem, resulting in the welcome removal of the landlord and bailiffs, and more equitable rents for the ‘tenants’:

The power of England, which for generations suggested nothing to the islanders except gunboats for their eviction and lawyer’s letters for their torment, is now represented by … the agent of the Congested Districts Board, and by the police who now have no more harmful duty than playing the concertina on summer evenings.’86

The image of these policemen transformed to gentle concertina players by local progressive legislation must have been comforting to period readers.

Evictions continued in other places, however, resulting among other things in a violent protest and riot in the streets of Loughrea, County Galway in 1905, following an attempted eviction by bailiffs on behalf of a particularly unpopular landlord. After the riot, many of the instigators were barricaded in a local house; this time the concertina was to be found on the other side of the barricades:

Early in the afternoon a great public demonstration was held in Church Street in front of Mr. Ward’s house, from which several green flags floated serenely on the breeze. The defenders were still there in full force, stripped to the waist, ready for action, and armed with such formidable weapons as reaping hooks and pitchforks, while one brawny fellow proudly brandished a sword stick. From inside came the melodious strains of a concertina, while the crowds all around made the welkin ring with lusty cheering.87

In a similar riot that occurred during an attempted 1886 eviction in Woodford, County Galway, the aftermath included negotiations for cessation of the disturbance, and the tenant’s family sensed victory:

Constable Denis deposed that while the negotiations for a settlement were proceeding between the sheriff and the tenant, the people inside the house were dancing. There was a concertina playing.88

Presumably the Gaelic League would have been more approving of these appearances by the concertina.

Still later, in the uncertain but hopeful days following the 1916 uprising, a young Clare man, Michael Brennan, and his two brothers were arrested in a cheeky and deliberate display of civil disobedience, by drilling and protesting directly in front of British authorities. They were arrested and packed off to Dublin Castle. With the devil-may-care attitude of the young, Brennan wrote home that ‘We are more or less all right now and although we still have a few grievances left on the whole we are having a good time …. We are all together … and can sing, whistle, talk, or do anything else we like. The food is good and we have plenty of smoking and reading.’ Deciding to push for even more, he requested a concertina to while away some of the hours. His request was indignantly refused (‘musical instruments are obviously out of place in prison’).89

Such martial drilling and marching was a not unusual protest. Also in County Clare, in 1917, John and Michael Brady were accused by the King’s Bench Division of ‘taking part in exercises or drill of a military nature in contravention of the Defense of the Realm Regulations’. In the village of Tuamgraney, about 20 men had marched in and out of the village; ‘One of the men was playing a concertina or a melodeon.’90 This event closely echoes the arrest of two other marching concertina players from Clare, and their sentencing at Nenagh, nearly fifty years earlier (see above).

Not all protest marching was political in nature. As a result of a lockout in the Wexford foundries, County Wexford, a violent protest ensued. At the start of the fray, ‘Led by a man playing a concertina, the men paraded the streets, cheering and boohing’. Later in the evening, windows were broken, and the foundry foreman was burned in effigy.91

The Belfast region had long been at the center of political and social unrest, and concertinas were to be found on both sides of the divide, as part of protests. In 1880 Belfast, on August 16 ‘the streets in the Roman Catholic district were unusually crowded … the streets were thronged with people at a very late—or rather, very early—hour, for about half-past twelve o’clock this morning a very noisy crowd of persons (headed by a person playing a concertina) passed up the Antrim road into the notorious locality o f New Lodge Road’; an additional 800 police were eventually called in to quell the disturbance.92 On the Unionist side, some years later in 1913, an Anti-Home Rule leader, Sir Edward Carson, railed in a political speech in Belfast about efforts of the colonial government to limit acts of Unionist protest:

Why, I read in the paper, with a good deal of disgust, yesterday, that a poor woman had been summoned before the magistrate for sitting at her own door-step, and playing on a concertina the tune, ‘Boyne Water’. Well, I don’t want to say anything about those who administer the laws, but I think if I and the rest of us are allowed to go about not only playing the ‘Boyne Water’ on a concertina, but holding great demonstrations of drilled men with banners that bring to mind the great victories of the past, it is a disgraceful administration of the law under those circumstances that forces that poor woman to pay a fine of 40s for playing what they are pleased to call a party tune, but which has brought back reminiscences of the days that have gone before us. For my own part I say this, if they are going to treat us as privileged persons, I say the more privileges they give me the more I despise them.93

Concertina music, for a time, even threatened to replace the booming drum and fife bands of the Orange Order of Belfast’s ‘Twelfth of July’ marches, as this 1927 report indicates:

In a few days the ‘Twelfth’ will be upon us, and the arrangements have been virtually completed for this year’s Orange demonstrations. The Belfast procession is expected to prove a record event …. Throughout the whole of the province the beating of the drum is heard accompanying the shrill music of the fife, but this instrument of torture is falling into disfavour, its place being taken by really first-rate bands of all descriptions, with the usual tympani. The musical youths of the city have introduced novel combinations, and now it is not unusual to see concertina, melodeon and even mouth-organ bands with all the assurance and dignity of regimental musicians. They have the charm of harmony, and are infinitely better than the deafening arrangement of a trio of big drums, with a solitary piper … but their disadvantage is that they lack the terror-inspiring effect of the drumming.94

That was a contest the concertina and melodeon were ultimately not to win.

Back in the south of Ireland, in 1922 Dublin during the civil war that accompanied the early days of the Irish Free State,

There was much disorder last night at the annual Irish gala at Durham in support of the Free State Government. Republicans set up an opposition flag, and men and women engaged in a free fight, in which the Republican banner was torn down. The speakers were interrupted by shouts of ‘Up De Valera!’ and the noise of a bugle blowing. Sticks, umbrellas, and a concertina were used as weapons, and a smoke bomb was thrown in the crowd.95

While these are all of course isolated and anecdotal incidents, they serve to show that the concertina was so completely commonplace and ubiquitous as to be ‘seen’ in all sorts of places where one would not usually encounter a concertina today, and among a much broader political and social spectrum than has been the case in later times; a search through Irish papers of the next few decades (1930-1970, prior to the recent resurgence of its use) has yielded no such similar sightings associated with major national or social causes.

These various sightings also make it clear that the German concertina in Ireland was throughout its heyday an instrument of the ‘common’ man, whether a farmer in the Gaelic west, or a shipbuilder in Ulster, or a foundry worker in the southeast. Each group who adopted it held it close, and used it unsparingly in occasions where sentiment and emotion were close to the surface, such as this New Year’s Eve gathering in Dublin on December 31, 1929:

From half-past eleven last night onwards, ever thickening streams of people converged on Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, to let the New Year in. They carried with them every concertina, banjo, and mouth organ in the city, and many of them were running, as though they feared to miss something.96

The concertina in the diaspora

Key sources of information on the extent of concertina playing in this period are reports of emigration and immigration. The emigration that had been so heavy during the famine years continued at a fast clip throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, when the concertina craze was at its peak. The local press in countries receiving these immigrants, such as the United States, Canada, Australia and England, were keen observers of this moving mass of humanity, yielding some fascinating accounts of early Irish concertina playing.

On the steamship Cedric in 1904, bound for New York’s Ellis Island, an English observer had this to say of the concertina playing amongst the Irish inhabitants of steerage, some of whom are pictured in Figure 12:

As I became better acquainted with my fellow voyagers I found that most of them were not stupid, ignorant, or unclean in their habits …. Very many of the Irish emigrants come well within this category …, though others from the poverty-stricken bogs of the west were ignorant of the most rudimentary elements of personal cleanliness and behavior. Yet even these certainly possessed youth and high spirits, good nature, warm affections and a concertina to every dozen or so. The deck spaces of the “Cedric” are so huge that even the 1,700 third-class passengers did not crowd them, and ample room was offered for dancing to the music of these concertinas, every one of which on a pleasant day was in pretty steady service. Young and old danced until tired.97

In a 1946 issue of the Irish Independent, an old woman recalled a journey in her youth on an emigrant ship to Australia:

Even now as I write, it takes but little mental effort to conjure up the scene on the afterdeck. A bearded man playing a wheezing, asthmatic concertina…a young tired-eye woman, her jet-black hair hanging down her back, … washing clothes in a bucket … children shrieking as they played about I the scuppers … old men and women gasping for breath beneath the canvas awnings protecting them from the merciless August sunshine of the Red Sea.98

Wherever they landed, the Irish took their concertinas and other musical instruments with them, beginning with their temporary lodging in places like New York City in 1891: ‘at the boarding houses there is considerable sociability, plenty of concertina and flute music.’99 Earlier-arriving Irish immigrants may have learned the concertina while in the United States; the instrument was used by soldiers in the American Civil War (1861–1865), where thousands of Irish immigrants were conscripted.100 An 1866 Ohio newspaper reported ‘The case of John Fitzgerald, charged with stealing a concertina from Mary Hawley, valued at $10’, which shows that Irish in America were playing the instrument by that time.101 The following somewhat lengthy story from the New York Times in 1888 is the earliest substantial account of such concertina playing in the US:

Where Ignorance is Bliss

Although it is nearly a century since the tune of ‘Croppies Lie Down’ was sung by Orangemen in Ireland while they massacred the Catholics, it still has the power to incite Irishmen to overt acts. Paddy Ryan plays the concertina. He was born in this city. He had somewhere heard the obnoxious tune but knew nothing of its historical significance. Paddy is a member of an East Side social club. The annual ball of his society occurred a few evenings since. The usual fiddle scrapers were on hand to provide the dance music but Paddy had brought his concertina along, being a little proud of his one accomplishment. During one of the lulls between the dances the president of the association went up to the boss musician and said: ‘Av ye plaze, sor, I wouldn’t be wantin’ t’ be interf’arin’ wid your music. Sure, we’re all highly plazed wid it, so we are, an’ more power t’ yer elbow when yer waggin’ yer fiddle bow. Faix, ye’ll get yer pay whether or no, so ye will, an’ its not wan o’ us ‘ud be takin wan cint off yer bill’.

There he stopped to take a breath and the German professor looked down at him from the platform in an enquiring way.
‘Vot you will haf, mine frent? Beer, ha?’
‘Go smother yersel’, ye cheese-headed Dutchman. I can buy me own beer, so I can, an small fear t’ me. I want ye t’ stop squ’akin’ th’ fiddles an’ rattlin’ th’ brass till Paddy Ryan plays an Irish chune on his concertina. Now, d’ye understand that, ye ould beer barrel’?
‘Yah, yah, das is all recht. Stop de moosic’.

The music was stopped and the president shouted: ‘Will Paddy Ryan come up [to] the platform an’ play an Irish chune fer the b’ys an’ gur-rls’?
Paddy came bashfully forth, his face suffused with blushes and his beloved concertina under his arm.
‘Play the ‘Rakes o’ Mallow’’, shouted a voice.
The rollicking air set everybody’s feet to itching. This was followed by ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’, ‘The Cat in the Corner’, and ‘The Limerick Races’. All these were rapturously received. Paddy was encouraged. He glowed with pride. Pulling his forelock apologetically, he stood up and said:
‘Av the ladies an’ gintlemin plaze, I’ll play a new chune I’m after larnin’ the other day’.

Of course the audience was pleased, and every ear was open to catch the air. Paddy pulled the lively measures out of his instrument with eagerness. He had hardly played two bars, however, when the listeners turned and looked at each other with surprise and indignation. Then twenty roysterers arose as one man and made a rush for the luckless player. They seized him from behind and before. They kicked his concertina into the middle of the floor, where the girls made a football of it. They tore his store clothes from his back and bruised his cheeks with their hard fists. Those who could not get at him shook their fists in his direction and swore terrible oaths. Impelled by a stogy boot, poor Paddy shot out the door, followed by the howling mob. As he rolled down the staircase and out on the sidewalk, a friend picked him up and hurried him around the corner into a saloon. Bleeding, bruised, and almost naked, Paddy stammered:
‘Shure, w-w-w-hats th’ matter, Jim’?
‘Ah, ye ould fule, weren’t ye playin’ ‘Croppies Lie Down’’?102

Regardless of the explosive reaction to poor Paddy’s tune, such performances of jigs and reels made stringent demands on the players of these inexpensive Anglo-German concertinas, and there is early evidence that Irish immigrants, as they became more prosperous, traded up to more expensive Lachenal, Jeffries and Wheatstone instruments. An 1880 crime report in a Philadelphia newspaper noted that ‘George Lieb stole a concertina worth $80 from a house in which John O’Neill resided; [Lieb, the burglar] sold it for $1.50.’103 A concertina of that value would clearly have been an English-made one. A century and more later, Irish players of today are still vying for the purchase of top-of-the-line vintage instruments.

In Brooklyn, New York in 1894, a Union of Irish Musicians was formed by recent immigrants which contained ‘pianists, violinists, flutists, and concertina players’. Its object was ‘to revive and preserve Irish music’, and its members banded together for appearances at local venues. Interestingly, ‘Mr. James Rochford reported that he found it difficult to secure bagpipers, unless they were assured of receiving payment for their services,’ whereupon the organization considered blackballing the pipers for performances in local picnics and balls. Several observers, notably Tony Engle and Gearóid O hAllmhuráin, have observed that the playing of concertina in Clare filled the gap left by the emigration of most of the old class of traveling professional pipers during the Famine and later years. It is consistent with such stories of the pipers’ departure that these immigrant pipers in Brooklyn considered themselves professionals, and above playing for free.

William Mullaly, a native of County Westmeath who emigrated to the United States in 1910, is perhaps the best known today of the immigrant concertina players. His Columbia and Victor phonograph recordings of 1926–27, made in Camden New Jersey, are the earliest known recordings of Irish music (and perhaps any type of music) on the Anglo concertina.104 Mullaly beat Dublin resident Billy Roberts for that title by only two years; concertina player Roberts recorded ‘Kerry and Clare Jigs and Reels’ for ‘Parlophone—the Record that Studies the Irish’ in 1929.105 Other immigrant concertina players joined vaudeville; J. D. Kelly ‘in his imitations of various familiar sounds from the farm yard and camp on concertina and violin, won deserved applause’ at the Park Theatre in New York City in 1876;106 a troupe visiting Omaha Nebraska in 1899 contained, in addition to the dancing Connolly sisters, the Reagan Trio: ‘They have secured many a hit and earned a great deal of applause during their stay here. Their musical comedy act, introducing singing and dancing with concertina, banjo, and guitar accompaniment, will be the feature of the program’ at Wirth’s vaudeville palace.107

In Australia, as in the United States, arriving immigrants joined a population that was already playing the concertina, and they soon joined in with local ‘bush music’. A 1911 poem by E.J. Brady (1869–1952) highlights a harvest dance at an Irishman’s farm; here are the first two verses:

Daly’s Threshing

It was ‘threshing’ down at Daly’s, and the bearded bushmen rode
Over mountain gorge and gully, where the creeks, clear-watered, flowed:
From the slopes, and through the ranges, past the broad’ning river beds,
Round the spurs and o’er the flat-lands came the host of Daly’s friends;
Came to reap the yellow harvest, waving in the summer sun;
Came to dance with Daly’s daughter ‘neath the moon when day was done.

As the long day’s labor ended, and the horses munched their feed,
Far was borne upon the breezes faint aroma of the ‘weed’,
Sounds of song and year-old waltzes, new enough for rustic feet,
When the honest hearts above them with the joy of living beat.
On the hard earth floor together, youth and maiden, flushed and gay,
To the gasping concertina danced those charméd hours away.108

England had a large number of 19th century Irish immigrants, some of whom played concertina. In the late twentieth century the late Tommy McCarthy played concertina in London in a circle of musical émigrés that included the legendary musicians Willie Clancy, Seamus Ennis, and Bobby Casey, among others. Nearly a century earlier, however, a once prominent Irish composer and concertina player named Tom Maguire was not so fortunate as to have such friends. During his prime he had written a large number of songs of the Irish, sentimental and comic varieties, predominantly for the music halls. The sad tale of his older years is told in this story from a 1907 newspaper’s London court cases column:

Composer’s Sad Plight

The spectacle of a popular song writer fallen upon evil days produced a pathetic impression at Bow street Police Court yesterday afternoon. A blind composer, Tom Maguire, was, with his wife Frances, charged with causing an obstruction. He was well known years ago, and he has written many songs which have secured a great deal of popularity, including these sentimental ballads, ‘Spare the old mud Cabin’, ‘Kathleen Asthore’, ‘Wait Till the Clouds Roll By’, and others with a humorous note, but poverty and affliction overtook him, and now, absolutely blind and nearly stone deaf, he lives in Clerkenwell, and goes into the streets trying to sell his melodies. Mrs. Maguire, a neatly-dressed little woman in black, had to lead her husband carefully into the dock. A zealous constable on the previous evening saw Maguire playing a concertina on the pavement in Russell street. He stopped this, but later Maguire and his wife were on the pavement again selling song books. They were arrested. A number of songs were handed to the magistrate, Sir Albert De Rutzen, which Maguire proudly acknowledged having written twenty years ago. ‘I was very famous then,’ he added, ‘but now I’m in the gutter.’ He further stated that if he only had a decent instrument he could probably get his living on the music halls. Maguire and his wife were discharged, and the old composer was led gently out of court.109

This story was carried in several American papers at that time, doubtlessly because of the popularity of his work, an example of which is shown in Figure 13, from a British broadside sheet of that period.110 Some of his songs have since been absorbed by the folk process and have turned up in collections, for example, of ‘traditional’ southern American song. A 1907 Salt Lake City Herald clarified his biography and his importance in the world of popular song. His appears to be a story like Stephen Foster’s, as he sold dozens of tunes that became hits on the London and worldwide stage—and, it is reported, that made the fortunes of many a music hall performer—while he received almost nothing for them. That 1907 article lists these songs in detail, and is to be found in its entirety in the Appendix. It is reported there that

His concertina is cracked and the music is wretched, but the devoted wife can see no blemish. “If he only had a new concertina,” she said in court, “Tom could get a ‘turn’ at one of the music halls. He plays just lovely.”111

It should be pointed out that the concertina in question is of unknown variety; it could easily be an English system instrument or even a duet, both of which were more common in the music halls.

A nationwide distribution in its heyday

Although the concertina is thought of as a predominantly Clare instrument in Ireland today, such was not the case during the instrument’s heyday, as has been shown above. At that time, its use was not restricted to traditional music, but played by other parts of the citizenry with tastes that stretched to Anglo-American and European popular songs. It is very likely that at this time there were concertinas in every county in the country. The dots shown on the map in Figure 14 show the positions of documented concertina use in Ireland, as researched for this study, in two eras, 1870–1900 and 1900–1930. It should be noted that this research was carried out using currently available digitally accessible archives, which are at present only available for newspapers in a relatively few areas, principally Dublin, Meath and Cork. For this reason, areas in the southeast and northeast, as well as parts of the west (Clare, Galway, Donegal) are decidedly under-represented. Inasmuch as some of the Dublin newspapers sought a national clientele, there are ‘sightings’ outside that city, but coverage is spotty. For all these failings, the map shows a broad distribution, and show that distribution of instruments during the concertina’s heyday was truly nationwide.

The vast majority of players who were active during the concertina’s heyday are long forgotten. They played the instrument, as do most of us today, as a pleasant pastime and lived lives that were perhaps unexceptional in most regards, and most of them successfully kept their lives out of the newspapers. Thus, no one but a family member might now remember that grandmother or grandfather played a concertina. On a nationwide level very few have descendents who play today, because of the decline of the instrument. Nonetheless, one way to roughly gauge the former extent of these former players is to assemble a list of people, both living or of the recent past, with ties of one sort or another with Irish music, and mark those who had an ancestor, family member or tutor who played the concertina during the heyday (1870–1930). The following list (Table 1) was obtained from a digital search of Fintan Vallely’s Companion to Irish Traditional Music (1999) as well as from other sources. Each entry shows a person, their birthplace or domicile, and then lists each known ancestor, family member or musical influence who played concertina during the ‘heyday.’ It is not intended to be exhaustive, scientific or encyclopedic. The results are intriguing, however; the reach of the players of the heyday is large. Because there are a great number of Clare musicians appearing in that Companion, the list is top-heavy towards Clare in its representation of former concertina players as well. Not surprisingly, however, there are a fair number of non-Clare concertina ancestors shown (from Counties Donegal, Leitrim, Tipperary, Westmeath, Cork, Limerick, Kerry, Louth, Galway, Sligo, and Dublin). In the map of Figure 14, counties with either a member from this ‘ancestors’ list or a documented ‘sighting’ are shaded. Only a few scattered counties are left without observed players in the heyday, but as discussed above, this is probably an artifact of the sources used.

Anecdotal information supports the finding that former players had a nationwide distribution. Noel Hill, the most prominent of modern players of the instrument, has said that throughout the years of his various concert appearances, various people from the audience or workshop will mention to him that a grandparent had played the concertina; he reports that these people came from locations throughout Ireland.112

 

Much has been written about the fact that women were frequent players of the instrument; some have said that women were in fact the predominant players in those past times.113 O hAllmhuráin reports that the concertina was often referred to as the bean chaírdín (female accordion), although a count he made of Clare concertina players in the early to middle twentieth century showed approximately equal numbers of men and women.114 It may be of interest to note that a count of male vs female players in Ireland as noted in the newspapers and other documents during the ‘heyday,’ as discussed above, yields a 4:1 frequency of males to female players and owners. Among the list of ‘precursor’ players in Table 1, however, the numbers are approximately even, at 34 to 32. The much larger ratio in the newspaper accou