{"id":579,"date":"2015-10-06T14:06:18","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T13:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/morrissey-and-the-russian-sailor\/"},"modified":"2016-01-25T13:15:06","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T13:15:06","slug":"morrissey-and-the-russian-sailor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/morrissey-and-the-russian-sailor\/","title":{"rendered":"Morrissey and the Russian Sailor"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 id=\"t:seinnteoirin1\">Play recording: Morrissey and the Russian Sailor<\/h2>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-579-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/00-micil\/me\u00e1in\/morrissey-and-the-russian-sailor.mp3?_=1\" \/><source type=\"audio\/ogg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/00-micil\/me\u00e1in\/morrissey-and-the-russian-sailor.ogg?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/00-micil\/me\u00e1in\/morrissey-and-the-russian-sailor.mp3\">https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/00-micil\/me\u00e1in\/morrissey-and-the-russian-sailor.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<div class=\"dmeite\">\n<p><span id=\"neasc-nocht-ceilth\" class=\"nmeite\">view \/ hide recording details [+\/-]<\/span><\/p>\n<ul id=\"clarMeiteashonrai\" class=\"meiteashonrai\">\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Teideal <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Title)<\/span>:<\/span> Morrissey and the Russian Sailor.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Uimhir Chatal\u00f3ige Ollscoil Washington <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(University of Washington Catalogue Number)<\/span>:<\/span> 831301.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Uimhir Chnuasach Bh\u00e9aloideas \u00c9ireann <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(National Folklore of Ireland Number)<\/span>:<\/span> none.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Uimhir Roud <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Roud Number)<\/span>:<\/span> 2159.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Uimhir Laws <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Laws Number)<\/span>:<\/span> H18.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Uimhir Child <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Child Number)<\/span>:<\/span> none.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Cnuasach <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Collection)<\/span>:<\/span> Joe Heaney Collection, University of Washington, Seattle.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Teanga na Cro\u00edmh\u00edre <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Core-Item Language)<\/span>:<\/span> English.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Catag\u00f3ir <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Category)<\/span>:<\/span> song.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Ainm an t\u00e9 a thug <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Name of Informant)<\/span>:<\/span> Joe Heaney.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Ainm an t\u00e9 a th\u00f3g <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Name of Collector)<\/span>:<\/span> unavailable.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">D\u00e1ta an taifeadta <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Recording Date)<\/span>:<\/span> 08\/04\/1983.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Su\u00edomh an taifeadta <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Recording Location)<\/span>:<\/span> University of Washington, United States of America.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Oc\u00e1id an taifeadta <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Recording Occasion)<\/span>:<\/span> afternoon tea.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">Daoine eile a bh\u00ed i l\u00e1thair <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Others present)<\/span>:<\/span> unavailable.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai\">St\u00e1das ch\u00f3ipcheart an taifeadta <span class=\"lipead-meiteashonrai-bearla\">(Recording copyright status)<\/span>:<\/span> unavailable.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>What I&#8217;ll do tonight, I&#8217;ll start off with this great, renowned boxing match. It&#8217;s a boxing match that took place in Tierra del Fuego long, long ago &#8211; maybe 1863 or something &#8211; between a fellow from Tipperary called Johnny Morrissey and a &#8216;Roosian&#8217; sailor. Now the people said &#8216;Roosian&#8217; &#8211; they never said &#8216;Russian.&#8217; &#8216;Roosian.&#8217; Now, there&#8217;s a story told about Morrissey and his father when they were leaving Ireland. They went in for a drink &#8211; Johnny Morrissey was only twelve years of age &#8211; and his father went in for a drink in Queenstown &#8211; that&#8217;s what the Cobh of Cork was called that time. And he met a couple from Kerry, north Kerry, who was going to America. Morrissey was going to Canada. And they vowed they&#8217;d meet again some day. The couple from Kerry were the James family, who went out to Missouri, who was the father and mother of Jesse and Frank James. That is true! Morrissey went to Canada with his son, and Johnny Morrissey &#8216;eloped&#8217; or &#8211; that&#8217;s the way they used to call it that time, when you came in someplace without being asked to come in &#8211; he &#8216;eloped&#8217; into America, and he became champion boxer of New York, and he fought the Buffalo Boy, the Shepherd Boy, and Morrissey (sic) and the Roosian. And he ended up in Congress. Whether that was a good or a bad ending, nobody knows! Well, this is the song, round by round:<\/p>\n<p>Come all you gallant Irishmen, wherever you may be<br \/>\nAnd I hope you&#8217;ll pay attention and listen unto me<br \/>\nWhile I sing about a battle that took place the other day<br \/>\nBetween a Russian sailor and Johnny Morrissey.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Twas in Tierra Del Fuego in South Americay<br \/>\nThe Russian challenged Morrissey, those words to him did say<br \/>\n&#8216;I hear you are a fighting man, and you wear a belt, I see;<br \/>\nOh, indeed I wish you would consent to have a round with me.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>And out spoke brave Morrissey with a heart both brave and true<br \/>\n&#8216;I am a gallant Irishman that never was subdued<br \/>\nFor I can whale the Yankee, the Saxon bull and bear,<br \/>\nIn honour of old Paddy&#8217;s land the laurel I&#8217;ll maintain.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>And those words enraged the Russian all on the Yankee land<br \/>\nTo think that he&#8217;d be beaten by any Irish man<br \/>\nHe said, &#8216;You are too light of frame &#8211; and this without mistake:<br \/>\nI&#8217;ll have you to resign the belt, or else your life I&#8217;ll take!&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>To fight upon the tenth of March those heroes did agree<br \/>\nAnd thousands came from every place this battle for to see<br \/>\nOh, sixty thousand dollars as you may plainly see<br \/>\nWas to be the champion&#8217;s prize who&#8217;d gain the victory.<\/p>\n<p>[And those heroes stepped into the ring most glorious to be seen<br \/>\nAnd Morrissey in his dressing gown bound round with shamrock green<br \/>\nThe Saxons and the Russians, their hearts were filled with glee<br \/>\nFor they swore the Russian Sailor would kill brave Morrissey.]<sup class=\"tagairt-n\u00f3ta-bun-leathanaigh\">1<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>They shook hands and walked around the ring, commencing then to fight<br \/>\nAnd it filled each Irish heart with pride for to behold the sight<br \/>\nThe Russian he floored Morrissey, and to the eleventh round<br \/>\nWith the Yankee, Saxon, Russian cheers the valley did resound.<\/p>\n<p>And the Irish offered four-to-one that day upon the grass<br \/>\nNo sooner done than taken up, and it&#8217;s down they brought the cash<br \/>\nThey parried away without delay to the twenty-second round<br \/>\nWhen Morrissey received a blow that brought him to the ground.<\/p>\n<p>For a minute-and-a-half our hero lay before that he could rise<br \/>\nThe word went right around the ring: &#8216;He&#8217;s dead!&#8217; were all their cries<br \/>\nBut Morrissey proved manfully, and rising from the ground<br \/>\nFrom then unto the thirtieth round the Russian he put down.<\/p>\n<p>Up to the thirty-seventh round &#8217;twas fall and fall about<br \/>\nAnd it made the foreign tyrants to keep a sharp lookout<br \/>\nWhen the Russian called his second to have a glass of wine,<br \/>\nOur Irish hero smiled and said, &#8216;This battle is surely mine!&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>The thirty-eighth round decided on, the Russian felt a smart<br \/>\nAnd Morrissey with a terrible blow struck the Russian on the heart<br \/>\nThe doctor he was called upon to open up a vein<br \/>\nHe said, &#8216;It is quite useless &#8211; she&#8217;ll never fight again!&#8217;<sup class=\"tagairt-n\u00f3ta-bun-leathanaigh\">2<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>And our hero conquered Thompson, and the Yankee Clipper, too;<br \/>\nThe Buffalo Boy and Shepherd he nobly did subdue;<br \/>\nSo raise you up a flowing glass, and here is health go leor<br \/>\nTo noble Johnny Morrissey who came from Templemore.<sup class=\"tagairt-n\u00f3ta-bun-leathanaigh\">3<\/sup><\/p>\n<div class=\"n\u00f3ta\u00ed-bun-leathanaigh\">\n<h2 id=\"t:notai\">Notes<\/h2>\n<p class=\"n\u00f3ta-bun-leathanaigh\">1. This additional verse occurs in a performance recorded from Joe in Ireland by Liam Clancy; date unknown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"n\u00f3ta-bun-leathanaigh\">2. The question of who first used the pronoun &#8216;she&#8217; in this line, obviously for comic effect, cannot be answered. Johnny Joe Phaits\u00edn &#8216;ac Dhonncha uses it in an uproarious performance he recorded for Alan Lomax in 1951 &#8211; but notably on that occasion, when the line would surely have provoked a lively response if it were new to the audience, it is greeted with no catcalls or whoops at all. It seems that the attribution of female gender to the Russian pugilist had become a standing joke even by that time. Joe confirms this when he tells Ken Goldstein on one occasion, &#8216;That was no mistake &#8211; &#8216;she&#8217;ll never fight again&#8217; &#8211; that&#8217;s how the old people used to do it&hellip; They compared the Roosian to somebody who was easy to get rid of. Something like that. I&#8217;ve never found out the reason. But that was the emphasis they put on that. No disrespect to women, now!&#8217; (UW90-39.01).<\/p>\n<p class=\"n\u00f3ta-bun-leathanaigh\">3. In about half of his performances, Joe&#8217;s last line in this song goes, &#8216;To noble Johnny Morrissey and Paddy evermore&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>John Morissey (1831-1878) was an Irish bare-knuckle prizefighter, about whom there are a number of stories told about his prowess in the ring. This song was first printed as a broadside by P. Brereton (Dublin) in around 1860. Joe told Ewan Mac Coll in 1963 that he learned this song and another, &#8216;Captain Coulston,&#8217; from an old man in Carna called Peadar Pheaits (Joe did not give his surname).<\/p>\n<p>This is one of the songs for which Joe Heaney became most famous, and it appears on four commercial recordings, Come all you Gallant Irish Men (Philo PH 2004), Irish Music in London Pubs (Folkways FG 3575), Morrissey and the Russian Sailor and Other Irish Songs (Collector Records JEI 5), and Topic&#8217;s The Voice of the People, vol. 8 (TSCD 658).<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"templates\/template-full-width.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amhrain","category-amhrain-i-mbearla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1554,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions\/1554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}