In 1940 Judy Garland (18) played the lead role in the fillum ‘ Little Nellie Kelly’.
It is safe to say that it did not quite make the same lasting splash as the movie she had made the previous year: ‘The Wizard of Oz’.
In fact, in between those two motion pictures she actually made three other fillums. Starlets were even busier than, say, harlots in those distant days. Little time left to indulge in such frivolous craw-thumpng as, say, frumpy anti-Trump stump-speechifying a la La Striapach..
In fact, Judy Garland played two roles in ‘Little Nellie Kelly’: apart from the eponymous role itself she also played the part of Nellie Noonan. As follows: Nellie Noonan married (gulp) handsome Jerry Kelly, almost over the dead body of her daddy whose name was (gasp) Michael Noonan.
This Michael Noonan, whose face was made to moon, bears a not unremarkable resemblance to another of that name: take a gawk, take a gawk. And not just in looks: the movie- Michael Noonan’s constant prop is a clay pipe which he sucks upon with pleasure.
In fact, with all the pleasure of the contemporary Michel Noonan’s sucking on the dudeen of his D-notice disdain which he displays on a daily basis towards lesser creatures with or without the Tiocfaidh ár Lá.
The movie-Michael Noonan’s big line is:
-A clay pipe is a great blessing to a man. When you drop it you don’t have to pick it up.
(Ditto: hubris).
The young couple take the emigrant boat (with MN in tow as chapero) west to the Land of Uncle Sam where, in time, tragedy strikes when Nellie Noonan Kelly dies giving birth to her daughter. In time Little Nellie Kelly grows up to become the,erm, dead spit of her late Mammy.
Siar sa lá / Back in the day, this rambunctious romp of a motion picture never seemed to feature in the March 17 schedule of RTE and the stations of other grim-visaged guardians of the prig in the parlour media mindset.
We didn’t do comical Leprechaun gear in high conical hats, emerald waitscoats and long red beards then: only tanked-up Irish Yanks went in for that class of cawboguery . But now that those sophisticated arbiters of sartorial taste, the anal-retentive alickadoos of Lansdowne Road have given the green light to the effect that this made-for-mountebanks malarkey is a-ok, no doubt Little Nellie Kelly features on the , erm, Lady Captain’s Run in these enlightened times.
And not before time. Any movie which includes in its soundtrack ‘The Irish Washerwoman’, ‘St. Patrick was a Gentleman’, ‘Believe me if all those Endearing Young Charms ‘, ‘Singing in the Rain’ (could anything be more apt for Lá le Pádraig?) , ‘It’s a great day for the Irish’ and above all, ‘A Pretty Girl Milking her Cow’.
Little wonder that Judy Garland sensed there was something special about this best-wine-of-a-kept-last -song , A-special.
According to Legend fm and other, later purveyors of Fake News, the one toon which is supposed to have inflitrated itself from the Leprechaun repertoire to the human equivalent was:
-Cailin Deas Crúite na mBó.
Otherwise known as :
-A Pretty Girl Milking her Cow.
According to their Celtic Twilight Correspondent, Derewent O Gilbert , it happened one night in the long-ago, that a blind fiddler in County Roscommon of the Kings who also happend to be blind drunk fell down and also fell asleep on the gentle flank of a Fairy Lios.
Unknown to him and them, within the confines of the Fairy Lios there was a right hooley in the process of being concelebrated , with the flure being bate and trotters shook, that sorta thingy, all to the thoughtful accompaniment of the 128-piece Leprechaun Craft Ceili Band.
On waking in the morning, and by a process of nocturnal osmosis, the blind fiddler found himself to his major surprise to be in possesson of the yet unknown toon. Which only acquried a name when it was later fitted out for a suit of lyrics
Squinty McGinty (for it was he!) was destined, alas, to become a one-hit wonder; his self-composed follow-up toon was a complete flop, failing even to break into the Top Hundred despite his blue-suited, brown-shoed manager, Bainisteoir O Maor-Uisce, paying the equivalent of a crock of gold in payola:.
-Tá Cíoch tuilte ag Canna Maith Bainne / One good Churn deserves an Udder.
Meanwhile words in Leprechaun had been added to his over-heard but under-dressed hit-song:
Tá blian nó níos mó ‘gam ag éisteacht
Le cogar doilíosach mo mheoin,
Ó casadh liom grá geal mo chléibhe
Tráthnóna brea gréine san fhómhar.
Bhí an bhó bhainne chumhra ag géimneach
Is na h-éanlaith go meidhreach ag ceol,
Is ar bhruach an tsruthán ar leathaobh dhom
Bhí cailín deas crúite na mbó.
The writer of this verse in Erse was the celebrated lyricist, Gan Ainm / A.N. Other.
Later on, Thomas Moore, who dearly loved the language of the Lords, converted it into the King’s English:
Twas on a bright morning in summer
When I first heard his voice speakin’ low
As he said to a colleen beside him
“Who’s that pretty girl milking her cow?”
Och many times often ye met me
And told me that I should be
Your darling, Acushla
A Lana Mavourneen, Asuilish machree
In 1951, Judy Garland (29) came to Dublin to play a concert in the Theatre Royal , then the third biggest theatre in Europe. Dublin zoo, as it happened, was also the birthplace of Leo the Lion who growled the opening logo of MGM.
The one song her heart was bent on singing was ‘A Pretty Girl Milking her Cow’ and the one language she was intent on singing it in, was, erm, Leprechaun.
Her father, a vaudevillian from Tennessee of Irish stock, used to sing toons of a tooreloo type to her when she was a young colleen. She assumed that the lingua franca on Liffeyside would be the Leprechaun.
Imagine !
Pope Innocent was not only not at the races, he didn’t even manage to get out of the Bosca Capaill / Horse Box.
Little inkling entirely did she have that the Free Southern Stateen was (and still do be) in the throes of a cultural civil war involving:
-WM v WM
( The Wal-Mart Mentality diss the Leprechaun as the Wooly Mammoth of West Britain).
As this piece started with a a mention of Michael Noonan and as that name is synonymous with Limerick perhaps a high-five liner might be in order:
THE NATION that SWALLOWED its TONGUE
When J. Garland came first to the Bizzare-land
Of Arl-land, it was a We serve King or Czar Land
Her face was homely,
For a star, not comely
And the Lephrechaun had NFA in Avatar-land.
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