The History of Irish Ballads - The Stone Outside Dan Murphy’s Door

The Museum of London currently houses an enormous panoramic painting, 13ft x 5ft 6ins, depicting 231 music hall stars standing outside the Old Vic in London. Titled Popularity, it was painted between 1901 and 1903 by Walter Hibbert Lambert (1868-1950), an exceptional artist who once strutted the stage as female impersonator ‘Lydia Dreams’. Lambert had the foresight to include an explanatory ‘key’ to his artwork, which listed the names of all the entertainers depicted therein. Near the centre-back of this vast canvas, dressed in a bowler hat, green bow-tie and smart brown jacket, stands J. P. Dane, writer of The Stone Outside Dan Murphy’s Door.

No doubt, those who are reasonably familiar with this jaunting ballad will now be tut-tutting and saying, ‘I’m afraid you got that wrong ... sure everybody knows it was written by Johnny Patterson, the circus performer from Kilbarron, near Feakle, County Clare’. Alas, not so. Definitely not so. Both words and music were composed by the clog dancer, singer, comedian, pantomime actor, and writer of comic songs, John (‘Johnny’) P.
Dane.

John Patrick Dane

Probably born of Irish parentage in Lancashire, Dane began his working life as an employee of the Liverpool Printing Company, a vast concern owned by McCorquodale & Co. Underpaid and unfulfilled, he left the job to become a singer and dancer, and toured the northwest of England with various troupes of minstrels, one of his first engagements being in early April 1882, at St. James’s Hall, Liverpool. In January 1888, he appeared at the Theatre Royal, Waterford, playing the part of Michael Mulcahy in J. T. West’s farce, Muldoon’s Picnic, and on the 13th of October of that year, he placed an ad in the London-based entertainment gazette, The Era, declaring that he had just secured a residency spot at the Prince of Wales Theatre, Birkenhead, and that he intended to sing The Stone Outside Dan Murphy’s Door. This, he said confidently, ‘is my own composition’.

Audiences in Birmingham, Leeds, Derby, Portsmouth, London and Cardiff thrilled at watching Dane doing his manic clog dances, his face sometimes plastered in paint to accentuate his grin. In December 1888, he appeared at the Theatre of Varieties, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin, playing the part of Bryan O’Lynn in James J. MacNally’s panto, The Sleeping Beauty of Erin, and in between bouts of acrobatic dancing, the smiling crowds swayed in their seats and joined in the chorus of his recently composed song. December 1889 saw him back in England, playing Widow Twankey in Aladdin, and within days, he reminded readers of The Era that The Stone Outside Dan Murphy’s Door was now ‘the most successful ditty of all time ... it will never die’. And how right he was. It was a complete success.

Returning to Ireland in September 1891, he played a series of nightly ‘turns’ at the Alhambra Theatre in Belfast, where some of the eager crowd could not wait to hear ‘The Stone ... give us The Stone’!  Dane’s ballad was actually copyrighted in 1891, by Frank Harding, a copywriter based in New York, and was subsequently published by Edward B. Marks Music Corporation, RCA Building, Radio City, New York. In June 1902, Dane, billed as ‘the favourite Dublin comedian and dancer’(!), sang it to packed houses at the Tivoli, Dublin, and by 1903, the sheet music was not only available to buy in Liverpool, Belfast and Dublin, but at Patrick A. Mooney’s printing and stationery shop, in Mall, Ballyshannon, County Donegal.

They say that all political careers end in disaster. Well, the same could be said of that journeyman entertainer, Johnny Dane. Maybe he just wanted to toy with danger, or maybe he was going through a mental breakdown, we simply don’t know, but on the 8th of April 1907, the thirty-nine-year-old appeared before a magistrate at Liverpool Police Court, charged with leaving a Derby Road boarding house without paying, and with stealing and pawning ‘items’ belonging to residents, some of whom were music hall performers. Before sentencing him to two months’ hard labour, the magistrate remarked, ‘It is sad to see a man of talent and prominence doing things of which he ought to be ashamed’. And such was the rather pitiful end of Johnny Dane’s career.

Out of the limelight and down on his luck for twelve years, in September 1919 he was admitted to the Male House Infirmary, Brownlow Hill, Liverpool, and when it emerged in the Press that he was due to have a much needed ‘operation on his foot’, some of his fans tried to alleviate his plight by sending him money. He lived out the rest of his days at Denville Hall, a home for retired entertainers in Northwood, London, and died there on the 27th of January 1936.

On a lighter note, where exactly is Dan Murphy’s stone? Some say it’s in Ennis, others in Sneem, County Kerry. In the 1950s, rumours began to circulate around parts of Fermanagh that it was in fact in Lisnaskea, in front of the old coaching house which later became the local police station. The answer is: no one knows.

Dane’s joyful verses speak of innocent days gone by, when local people gathered at the front of Dan’s cottage, which doubled up as a shop, and when the man of the house shouldered his fiddle, ‘the music did ring’ and sweet songs were sung. The ballad was recorded in 1931 for the Decca label, by William Robert Gordon, a fifty-seven-year-old singer and violinist from Belfast. Subsequent recordings were made by singers including John McGettigan, Richard Hayward, Bridie Gallagher, Ruby Murray, Carmel Quinn, Slim Whitman, Hugo Duncan, and Foster and Allen. And so ends the story of The Stone Outside Dan Murphy’s Door.

The Stone Outside Dan Murphy’s Door
 

There’s a sweet garden spot in our memory,

It’s the place we were born and reared;

Tis long years ago since we left it,

But return there we will if we’re spared.

Our friends and companions of childhood,

Would assemble each night near a store;

’Round Dan Murphy’s shop, and how often we sat,

On the stone that stood outside his door.

 

Chorus:

Those days in our hearts we will cherish,

Contented although we were poor;

And the songs that were sung in the days we were young,

On the stone outside Dan Murphy’s door.

 

When our day’s work was o’er we’d meet there,

In the winter or spring, the same;

The boys and the girls all together,

Then would join in some innocent game.

Dan Murphy would bring down his fiddle,

While his daughters looked after the store;

The music did ring and sweet songs we would sing,

On the stone outside Dan Murphy’s door.

Chorus

 

Back again will our thoughts often wander,

To the scenes of our childhood’s home;

The friends and companions we left there,

It was poverty caused us to roam.

Since then in this life we have prospered,

But now still in our hearts we feel sore;

For memory will fly to the days long gone by,

And the stone outside Dan Murphy’s door.

Chorus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOjuy_ibiPk&t=129s