Tullamore

Of the many recurring themes to be found throughout the Celtic songbook, the theme of “the emigrant’s return” is not unknown. That said, it’s also not all that typical. There is certainly an abundance of emigration songs. There’s a lesser-yet-still-healthy number of songs of fond memory for the land once called home (“Spancilhill” comes to mind). But while songs about the emigrant’s return exist, they are few and far between – a correlate to how infrequent it was in real life. Indeed, people who emigrated were very often never again seen by their families. In fact, their return was so unlikely that it was commonplace for families to hold an “American Wake” to bid a final farewell to those about to depart. Still the theme of leaving and returning resonated with many people in Ireland and Scotland, no doubt inspiring hope of an eventual reuniting among those who lost much of their families to emigration. By the time Percy French wrote “Come back, Paddy Reilly” in the early-1900s, the theme of the emigrant’s return, while not very common, was very compelling. More often than not, returning was an illusion, a thought of returning, a keeping open a notion of returning… more often than not, it was the children of the diaspora who returned. “I’m a stranger to this country, from Amerikay I came,” sings “The American Stranger””…