Come, sit by the fire, and let the blustery March winds fuss and fret beyond the door. Sit while I share the true story of how an old song revealed a connection between my family and that emerald isle across the sea. A place where fairy rings and hawthorn trees still enchant the wayfaring wanderer, and where the Irish Sea forever laps the sandy beaches of County Down.
When the Victrola was launched in 1906, it transformed how Americans enjoyed music, marking the first time that most folks could hear tunes without stepping out to a live performance. By the 1920s, they had become a common fixture in many homes. As the transition to electric turntables took place gradually over the next few decades, people still held on to their cherished Victrolas—although they began to gather dust.
And so it was that this relic of a bygone era was passed down from my mother’s family, filled with records that played at a speed of 78 revolutions per minute and that felt as heavy as dinner plates. The “78s” were made from shellac, a resin combined with a filler such as carbon black to make the hard, durable discs of yesteryear. They wouldn’t be replaced by vinyl records until the 1950s.
The 78s sat neatly stacked on shelves inside the walnut cabinet. The lid lifted to reveal a turntable. Behind it was the image of a small dog facing a gramophone. My parents said the dog’s name was Nipper. Underneath it was text that read, “His Master’s Voice.”
My mother knew every record it held; she’d played them since she was a child. Whenever the desire struck, she would spend an evening listening to them—which is probably how my father came to know every record as well as she did. They were old souls; one could frequently find them chiming in together on songs that were popular long before either one of them was born.
Unlike today’s popular tunes, early 20th-century 78s often recounted emotional true stories lifted straight from newspaper headlines.
Some songs, such as “Little Mary Phagan” and “The Ohio Prison Fire,” documented tragedies. The 1913 murder of Mary Phagan in a pencil factory was such a complicated, shocking case that it continues to spark coverage today. The Ohio Penitentiary Fire of 1930 was so gruesome that it forever changed prison construction and safety protocols.
There were songs of great U.S. heroes such as aviator Charles Lindbergh—the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. “Lucky Lindy!” and “Lindbergh” (“The Eagle of the U.S.A.”) reflected his celebrity status after flying the Spirit of St. Louis into the history books.
There was a rousing tune from 1917 titled “The South Will Do Her Part,” in which the rebel “men of Lee” in the South vowed to march arm in arm alongside the “gallant sons of the Yankee North.” This was historic because it was the first time since the Civil War that North and South would come together to defeat a foreign enemy.
Depression-era songs captured that period’s struggles with unemployment and hunger with recordings such as “Hobo” Jack Turner’s “Hallelujah! I’m a Bum” and Harry McClintock’s “In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.”
Other songs were tearjerkers, such as Gene Autry’s “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine” and Vernon Dalhart’s version of “The Letter Edged in Black.” The latter was a reference to black-bordered mourning stationery used after the death of a loved one.
There was the classic “O Sole Mio,” performed by Enrico Caruso, and the quintessential Al Jolson early recordings, such as “April Showers,” “My Mammy,” and “Swanee.” Remarkably, many people had two versions of Jolson’s songs on 78s—spanning nearly 30 years—because Jolson re-recorded his own songs for the biopic hit “The Jolson Story” in 1946.
But my mother’s favorite record by far was “Little Town in the Auld County Down“ by the great Irish tenor John McCormack. We were never surprised that she loved it; she’d always held an unexplained passion for Irish music.
Playing this song demanded complete silence, and my mother would sit enraptured, seeming to drift away to another place as she listened to McCormack’s lilting Irish brogue. Oftentimes, we children would sing along, too—dreaming of an emerald isle we had no connection to.
We knew we were English on every branch of the family tree we’d documented, but there was one branch that remained a mystery—that of my maternal grandmother. As my mother observed in hindsight, “When you’re young, it never occurs to ask what came before your grandparents.”
My grandmother had lost track of a roaming younger brother back in the 1920s, and spent much of her life trying unsuccessfully to locate him. After her death, I took up the quest with internet searches. One day, I was shocked when a photo of my grandmother materialized on my computer screen. She was a little girl, standing beside her mother and brother. I knew the picture well, because it hung on our living room wall.
“Mom! Come quick!” I called to the other room. She hurried in to look at the screen. Her eyes welled up with tears. “What is mama doing on the internet?” she asked, horrified that her dear mother had secretly leapt into the computer age.
Under the picture was my great-grandmother’s name with a caption that read, “Unidentified children.” I hurriedly emailed the person who had posted it.
“That’s my grandma,” I typed, “and her daughter is standing here with me!” Amazingly, 10 minutes later, I received a reply from a distant cousin on the other side of the world.
In the email exchange that ensued, my maternal grandmother’s family tree was forwarded to us. My mother recognized a lot of the names, but it was the earliest branch that caused our jaws to drop: My grandmother’s family, the Carsons, had come to the United States in 1790 from Killyleagh in County Down, Ireland.
We really were connected to a little town in the auld County Down!
Why was that old song in our Victrola? Did some long-ago family member feel a kinship with it? I have no doubt that that was the case.
I once read an article that asked, if so many traits are hereditary, is it possible for memories to be passed down from generation to generation? I wonder. Somehow, unknowingly, almost mystically, a love of Ireland—specifically, a pining for County Down—had been passed down to my mother.
The lyrics always remind me that there can be hidden messages that might take a lifetime to decipher. Although my mother is gone now, the song still whispers Celtic secrets in my ears as I hear again the chorus:
In the dear little town in the auld County Down, It will linger way down in my heart, Tho’ it never was grand, it was my fairyland, Just a wonderful world set apart. Oh, my island of dreams you are with me it seems, And I care not for fame or renown, Like the black sheep of old, I’ll come back to the fold, Little town, in the auld County Down.
