Irish Eyes Are Smiling At NYU Library

By Nancy Mattoon

Nothing Says "Ireland,"
Like This 1912 Sheet Music Cover.
(All Images Courtesy of Archives of Irish America.)

For over 400 years, the United States has been a second home for thousands of immigrants from Ireland. As early as the 1600's, nearly 100,000 citizens had left the Emerald Isle for America, and by the early 19th century that number had increased at least tenfold. The Irish, like all immigrants, brought with them the culture of their native land. Irish immigrants had an especially strong influence on American popular music.

Nostalgia Reigns Supreme In This 1912 Tune.

Themes of Irish interest played a major role in the development of the sheet music industry in the United States, with hundreds of tunes aimed at the immigrant market written in New York City's Tin Pan Alley. New York University's Tamiment Library, home to The Archives of Irish America, has recently digitized part of its collection of thirteen hundred pieces of sheet music published between the Civil War and World War I, focusing on songs about Ireland and the Irish.

This Undated "Songster" Was A
Lyric Sheet Published Without Music.

The sheet music is part of the The Mick Moloney Irish-American Music and Popular Culture Collection, which is the largest known and most comprehensive collection of Irish Americana in the world. This immense archive includes forty-three boxes of sheet music, which document the Irish image in American popular culture, including both positive and negative stereotypes. The songs cover a wide range of genres, from the sentimental to the patriotic to the comic.

Shamrocks, Harps, And Miss Mary Donohue,
Could This 1909 Tune Be Irish?

Sheet music was a hugely lucrative industry, particularly from the 1860's to the 1930's, and composers, lyricists, and publishers used every major political, sporting, and cultural event as fodder for new tunes. As a result, song sheet covers, richly illustrated with colorful art to stimulate sales, became a virtual history of the struggles and achievements of the Irish in the New World.

One Of The Emerald Isle's Exquisite
Colleen's Inspired This 1891 Waltz.

Songwriters were especially drawn to a few popular themes, using words and images that were instantly identifiable as Irish. Place names such as Killarney, Tipperary, and Kilkenny already had a musical sound, so they were naturals for conveying a magical land of lush green hills and crystal clear rivers, which of course never actually existed. Many songs contain the Irish words Mavourneen, Macushla, and Machree, meaning "My Dearest", "My Love" and "My Heart." And the beautiful Irish Colleen provided instant inspiration, becoming "Peg O’My Heart," "Pretty Kitty Kelly," and "My Wild Irish Rose."

This 1914 Song Longs For An
Ireland that Never Was.

Appropriately, the donor and namesake of the sheet music collection is a famed musician, as well as a scholar. Mick Moloney is a tenor banjoist and vocalist who holds a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Global Distinguished Visiting Professor in NYU's Faculty of Arts & Sciences, teaching in the Department of Music and for the Glucksman Ireland House, whose publications include Far from the Shamrock Shore: The Irish-American Experience in Song (2002). For the past twenty years he has pioneered the collection of Irish-American memorabilia, and in 1999 he was awarded the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Gourmet's Famine Is Library's Feast

The Premiere Issue Of Gourmet Magazine, January 1941.

When publisher Conde Nast sliced Gourmet Magazine from its line-up in October 2009, foodies nationwide mourned the passing of a culinary standby. The cooking bible had been published for nearly 70 years, providing inspiration to professional chefs, amateur cooks, and readers who didn't know Escoffier from Le Creuset, but took a pornographic delight in superbly styled, sensual shots of sinfully rich repasts. But at least one librarian saw the magazine's starvation as a chance to pluck a prize plum.

A Selection Of Sinful Sweets Gourmet Style.

Marvin J. Taylor, director of New York University's Fales Library, told the New York Times he "got on the horn immediately" when he heard that Gourmet Magazine's gravy train was out of steam. Taylor knew that the publication's library of cookbooks would be ripe for the picking. And even if the magazine was toast, the remaining crumbs could beef up his mushrooming Food and Cookery Collection.

Fales Library Director, Marvin J. Taylor.
(Photo by Don Hogan Charles for The New York Times.)

Cookbook author Rozanne Gold helped Taylor turn Gourmet's lemons into lemonade with a donation of $14,000 to the Fales Library. This tasty sum secured the publication's smorgasbord of 3,500 cookbooks, a collection comprising the creme de la creme of the culinary community. The new acquistion "really represents what the editors saw as the best of the best," said a satiated Mr. Taylor.

A First Edition Of The James Beard Cookbook. (1959)

The Food and Cookery Collection is a rapidly expanding library of over 20,000 volumes, including the personal libraries of the father of American gourmet cooking, James Beard, and Cecily Brownstone, Associated Press Food Editor from 1947 to 1986. The collection documents the the history of American cooking, with an emphasis on the 20th Century.

Celebrated chef Mario Batali has promised to donate his personal papers to the library. "I would give them anything they want," he said. Batali adds that the collection "matters because some of the most intimate and essential details of a society are made up of its attitudes about subsistence, luxury, taboo and knowledge all relating to its food experience."

Donations like Batali's will enrich The Food and Cookery Collection's growing archive of recipes, menus, pamphlets and other ephemera. Mr. Taylor is especially proud of the acquisition of 5,ooo pamphlets form the estate of Ms. Brownstone, including such gems as a government issued directive on cooking with wartime rations, and a State of Louisiana publication detailing the nutritive value of the nutria, an apparently tasty local variety of water rat.

The Joy of Cooking Meets The Joy Of Sex In The Fales Library Food and Cookery Collection.

(Photo By Don Hogan Charles For The New York Times.)

The cookbooks from the Gourmet Magazine collection will add more spice to a collection that serves up a record of American cookery from soup to nuts. Carol Mandel, Dean of Libraries and Archives for New York University, is convinced of the special collection's importance: "There's almost no topic that can't be illuminated by studying food as a historical record." And the proof in that pudding is provided by one of the more unusual volumes in the collection, a relic of the sinful '70's entitled Cooking for Orgies and Other Large Parties.

Posted by Nancy Mattoon