‘Why Do You Always Be Singin’ That Oul’ Song?’: the Subversion of Emigrant Ballads in John B. Keane’s Many Young Men of Twenty

Abstract

Four days prior to Many Young Men of Twenty’s premiere in Cork, on 5 July 1961, an article published in the Kerryman opined that: With his new play, John B. Keane will bring the audiences flocking to hear what many are saying, but what few will dare to repeat. The way he says it may not be to the liking of all of us. But like it or not, in “Many Young Men of Twenty”, the author has a lot to say, and he says it in word and song.’¹ The theme of these barely repeatable articulations was ‘emigration’; a national concern described by Keane as ‘a particular aspect of evil in Ireland’.² According to Dermot Keogh, ‘[n]et emigration per annum between 1951 and 1956 was 39,353, or 9.2 per thousand of the population. That figure increased to 42,401 between 1956 and 1961. This was the highest rate since “the exceptional period in the 1880s”’.³ The majority of emigrants were from the countryside,⁴ and it was in the rural towns and villages that the audiences would indeed come flocking to see this play, set in a village public house in southern Ireland.