Beyond the event itself, there was added poignancy in the place and timing of Percy French’s death, 100 years ago next week.
He expired quietly while staying in the house of a cousin near Liverpool, and so is buried in the churchyard there, rather than in one of the many parts ofAs for the date of his demise, January 24th, 1920, that was a relatively quiet one back home.
It seems telling that the years of his greatest success in Ireland were between the end of one war – the Land War – and before the start of the other, in an era when a constitutional settlement still seemed likely. Some of the composer’s best friends were RIC men. On his tours of Ireland, they even sometimes put him up for the night. This helps explain their affectionate treatment in, for example, Tullinahaw, a ballad about cattle-rustling and insurance fraud in darkest Cavan.
In any case, it’s likely the verse was inspired by one of his police friends/hosts: a District Inspector Hall, who was stationed in Roscommon, but came from Monaghan. Ballybay, by the way, is not far from Ballytrain, where as mentioned here last week, the first IRA capture of an RIC barracks north of Dublin would occur in April 1920.He was also a performance artist. During one-man shows, he would often do sketches on an easel while talking over his shoulder to the audience.
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