From Boolavogue to Kelly the Boy From Killanne, Liberties’ songwriter P.J. McCall is remembered by Martin Gleeson

Patrick Joseph McCall was born in Dublin in 1861. His father, John McCall, had been born in Clonmore, Co. Carlow. John’s uncle had made pikes for the rebels in the 1798 Rebellion. When John was seventeen years old, he moved to Dublin. He worked with relatives in the grocery trade and later set up his own public house and grocery shop in Patrick Street, in the Liberties.

When John died, he left the public house to his son, Patrick (P.J.) who was only fourteen years old. Patrick’s mother was Eliza Mary (Neé Newport) and came from the village of Rathangan, in the south of Co. Wexford.

His mother’s and father’s counties, Carlow, and Wexford, featured greatly in his songwriting.
Patrick Joseph McCall was educated at the CBS, Synge Street, St. Joseph’s Monastery, Harold’s Cross and the Catholic University, Leeson Street. He spent many of his summer holidays in Rathangan, where he absorbed the history, stories, and traditions of Wexford.

He continued running his father’s public house, vintner and grocery business in Patrick Street. Poets and writers met in McCall’s bar, and on Wednesday nights they held “open nights” in a room upstairs. Gaelic

Leaguers like Douglas Hyde gathered there. Musicians were welcome and McCall himself played the violin and piano.
McCall was a serious scholar of Irish history and succeeded his father as editor of Old Moore’s Almanac.
He wrote extensively about the Dublin Liberties and about his mother’s County Wexford. He was elected to the Dublin City Council in 1896 as the representative of the Wood Quay Ward.

McCall’s rousing rebel marching song Follow Me Up to Carlow celebrates the defeat of an army of 3,000 English soldiers by Fiach MacAodh Ó Broin in the Battle of Glenmalure, in the Second Desmond rebellion of 1580. It has this very rousing chorus:
Curse and swear Lord Kildare
Fiach will do what Fiach will dare
Now Fitzwilliam, have a care
Fallen is your star, low
Up with halbert, out with sword
On we’ll go for by the Lord
Fiach MacHugh has given the word,
Follow me up to Carlow.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own