The Wilmington morning star., 1944-05-17
By WESTBROOK PEGLER

NEW YORK.-For many years, starting on
or about July IL, 1923, I have wanted to know
the words of one of those songs which Irish
comedians sing entitled, Paddy Mccarthy S
Wake Or Dinny O'Reilly's Wake or Mickey
McGinty's Wake. 1t doesn't make any diff
ference which one for they all are pretty much
alike, being largely composed of rhyming
names such as Dooley and Hooley, Burke and
McGuirk, Flanagan flanagan and so forth,
on and on. Pat Harrington used to sing it.
or them, at Jack Whites club and there
have been many others. The singer must be
Irish because otherwise some Irishman in the
audience is pretty sure to suspect that his
ancestors are being insulted and turn over a
table and raise nasty mess. If an irshnlan
does the song, however, nobody takes offense
and the Irish in the audience beam and laugh
at every pore and everything goes off very
we'll.
1t is a fast song, starting out about as fol-
lows:
Sure Pat Mccain was an Irishman,
He came from County Work,
He sailed across the ocean deep
To little old New York.
Well, then, he meets Bridget O'Reilly and
they get married and have quite few chill
dren and all this and that and finally one
night Mccain gets all dressed up and goes
to Paddy McCarthys Wake or Dinny OReil.
ly's or Steve O'Donnells. Vote for one)
Not until the other night when I dropped
in to hear Morton DoWney at the Waldorf
did I realize how simple it all is. Mr.. Downey
of course, is Irish and he does one for an
encore and, although I should have recognized
the quick tum-tum tempo and the faint mi-
tatlon of the bagpipe in the orchestration
didn't realize that he was doing wake song
until he started moaning: "Wi-dddy-di, wy
diddy-di'' which is a sort of Irish equivalent
OF Marry Doats. 1t breaks down to why did
he die?''
AS Morton went on it dawned on me that
all this time l had been hankering to know
the words of song that really doesn't seem
to need any fixed, or official words a tall
mean at all, at all, the Irish diom.
What you do is give them the names. Lots of
names, fast. Finnegan came in ag'in, and
Rooney and Mooney, Rafferty,, McCafferty,
Kiley and Riley and Finn and Quinn getting
louder and faster as you go, and stamping
your foot and beating the top of the piano
with the flat of your hand. To show you how
LIBERAL how optional the words are, if some
body gets up from a table in the middle OF
the song and starts across the floor to leave
the room, and the artist says, First door
on the left,'' even that fits nicely into the
text and everybody laughs just as much as
if he had stuck to the script.
1 have never had any particular reason for
wanting to know the words. But I know the
words of Abdullah Bull-Bull and the Baggage
Car Ahead and frankie and Johnny, both
versions, coed and stag, and quite lot OF
others and l just thought 1t would be rather
nice to know the wake song or one Of them
Singing is little out of my line, although at
that, l. am a lot better than some of those
old bucks who continue to crowd the hotels
in our big towns for important conventions
of war industries, and, after hours, get to-
gether in suite K on the 22nd floor with a
long white table laid out with rye, scotch
charged water, old-fashioneds, Manhattans
and Martins, and a waiter tending bar, and
pretty soon begin to meet others who served
in the same division in France and rip into
the Old Gray Mare, and Mademoisele from Ar
mentieres and One Keg of Beer for the Four
OF us. Those songs are growing pathetic in a
way. The voices are getting older and the
tenor goes way off and ends in struggle
and they are even beginning to forget some
of the words they used to know so well. Young
fellows in uniform of the present war stop
in sometimes to hoist few and look at those
old men with a puzzled expression, wonder
ing if they ever did anything but sing in
World War 1 and if they had such good
time why all that hollering about adjusted
compensation and pensions few years back.
Well, it isn't important. I listened raptlv
to nv friend family realizing that sometime
in me- my Irishness I guess you could call it.
was laughing with him and glancing around
noticed that others who had a little of the