The First Rose of Tralee
This is the story behind the ballad “The Rose of Tralee”, ascribed to William Pembroke Mulchinock, about Mary O’Connor, a cobbler’s daughter who was a servant in his mother’s house, and with whom he fell in love.
Their ultimately tragic story has as its backdrop the years before the Famine. The well-to-do William is a fervent supporter of the charismatic Daniel O’Connell in his campaign for the repeal of the Act of Union. Mary’s younger brother may or may not be involved in the underground agrarian movement, the Whiteboys.
O’Reilly paints a compelling picture of the poverty in which Mary’s family and neighbours live, priestly entitlement, and the utter powerlessness of young women in deciding their course in life – including choice of husband, where not affection, but the bride-price negotiated with the girl’s father, was decisive. In this setting, anyone who transgresses codes of morality or class must pay.
The cleverest child that the local schoolmaster ever taught, Mary nurses distant dreams of becoming a teacher, partly realised when she moves from below stairs to being quasi-governess of William’s nieces (two most engagingly described children). Their love story builds very gradually and is almost immediately thwarted by circumstance; for this reviewer Mary’s anguish was not as clearly conveyed as William’s, and towards the end her point of view is eclipsed by his. Sometimes I would have liked more of the backstory of the supporting characters: why did Charlotte leave her husband? Why did the Keoghs so readily overcome their indignation with William? Occasionally terms like “economic downturn” sounded too modern in a character’s mouth, but descriptions like “a skein of barnacle geese… like stitches sewn into the air” were a joy to read.
