More About
Captain Mackey's Goatskin and String Band
Than You Might Have Ever Wanted to Know
October 31, 2009
Tunesketeers and Balladfolk,
On Friday, Jimmy Crowley's Captain Mackey's Goatskin and String Band will be performing at Ireland House at NYU (9pm, CD Launch at 8). Go there, buy a CD and enjoy the band doing it's thing in performance. You'll be dazzled. So dazzled, in fact, you'll be all like "wow, I'd love to try my hand playing with these guys." That's where Lillie's comes in. No, it won't be a performance...it'll be a chance to play in session with Jimmy and his band. I can't promise that you'll sound as polished with them as they do on their own--it's a session after all--but it'll be good craic all the same. And maybe if you keep your eyes open you'll witness evidence of the band's secret Fenian history.
You got me right, I said secret Fenian history.
See, what you might not know is that there's a shroud of secrecy that envelops Captain Mackey's Goatskin and String Band. Their musical activities--both in the present day and in the past--are known to be dangerous and possibly illegal, what with their rites and passwords, their secret handshakes and high signs and all. But their place in Irish history is something that "official" sources disregard with extreme prejudice. Nobody, for example, will come forward and say why the group's been banned in some parts of Ireland! Mention their name to nearly any politician or government official and they'll even deny all knowledge of the group's existence! Will no one stand up and ask why?
This is where I come in.
It all begins with Hazel Martyn (or at least it does here--other historians will start other places, but I'm starting with her). Martyn was born to the wealthy (but, as I'll later explain, infertile) industrialist Edward Jenner Martyn (a fifth generation descendant of the Martyns of Galway) in Chicago in 1880. Hazel had a normal childhood of privilege--summers in Rangoon, luge lessons, in the spring they'd make meat helmets--and in her early 20s, she met and fell in love with a Catholic-born painter originally from Belfast, John Lavery; they married in 1909. John was the official artist of the British government and rose through the ranks of chivalric honour swiftly. He was Knighted in 1914, at which point Hazel became Lady Lavery. Now when the new Republic needed its own currency after the Anglo-Irish treaty in 1921, Lavery's services were called upon. He put brush to canvas and painted his Lady onto Ireland's monetary instrument. Beginning in 1928, Lady Lavery became the veritable face of Irish money and remained so for nigh 50 years.
When the Republic of Ireland dramatically changed the look of its money in 1977, her visage remained (apparition-like) as its watermark until the introduction of the Euro. A seeming innocent--nay, romantic choice on John Lavery's part, right? Not so fast. Who was this Lady Lavery? What does this American society girl have to do with Ireland's Republican moment and why was she put on the money?
Well, it turns out Hazel was--but never before revealed to be--a blood descendant of a Fenian. And I'll give you a hint--Edward Jenner Martyn wasn't her father!
Eighteen seventy nine was a turning point year for the Irish Republican movement. While Charles Parnell was helping to set up the Irish National Land League in Mayo, John Devoy--a nationalist leader from county Kildare, famous for his role in the Catalpa rescue and living in exile in the United States--was promoting Clan na Gael's "New Departure" initiative (this, just two years after he'd aligned with the Irish Republican Brotherhood). 
At the same time you had yer man William Mackey Lomasney getting involved with Clan na Gael. Up to that point he'd been agitating for the Fenian Brotherhood. See, Lomasney--Captain Mackey to you and me--was born the son of Irish immigrants in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1841. He'd served in the Civil War and got involved in the Irish nationalist movement, which led him to take part in the Fenian Rising of 1865 where he was promptly arrested by the Black and Tans (before they were the feckin' Black and Tans) and ordered to leave the country. He returned to agitate in 1867, was promptly arrested again in 1868 and didn't get released until 1871 on the condition that he return to the US. And return he did, only to get more heavily involved in the Republican movement in America. And although Captain Mackey resettled in Détroit on his return, he maintained his almost fanatical nationalist beliefs and often hopped trains to Chicago to attend secret Clan Na Gael meetings.
Now, between 1878 and 1881, Edward Jenner Martyn had a junior management position at the Armour Meat Packing Company in Chicago--he was the guy who made sure that Armour products (think Armour hot dogs) made it to Detroit, Cleveland, New York and Boston via refrigerated rail car--the very same rail cars on which Captain Mackey rode to Chicago. But Edward Jenner Martyn was the kind of guy who worked long hours and frequently came home tired and eventually grew neglectful of his family. His infertility and lack of attention drove his wife Alice Louise Martyn nearly mad. Alice was a notorious, young trophy wife who married Edward for money and when she figured he wasn't giving her enough she got fed up and amplified the unsavory elements of her social notoriety. She eventually owed money all over town and is suspected of cutting off one of her toes at one point in an elaborate effort to grift her husband.
It turned out that Alice had a particular fondness for Irish guys. Guys who could talk to her in accents she sometimes had a hard time understanding. Guys who could make her feel dangerous...but also safe, needing her, wanting her, taking her. She fell hard for stories of the Republican movement and the Fenian Brotherhood.
This brings us to one fateful evening in the summer of 1879. Alice snuck out of her posh Chicago mansion to attend a dance at Finucane's Hall where, unbeknownst to her, a secret Clan na Gael meeting had just let out. In attendance was one Captain Mackey, who decided it was a good idea to go on the piss before hopping the train back to Detroit. After a few jars, he spied our young Alice, also on the piss, dancing and singing songs. He was immediately smitten.
He liked the way she sang Erin's Lovely Lee. She liked his great big bushy beard and sweaty accent.
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They began chatting and later that evening, behind closed doors in a broom closet, magic took place. Nine months later Hazel was born. It was a society scandal. Mortified, Edward Jenner Martyn denied the whole thing and raised young Hazel as if she were his own. It wasn't until Hazel was 18 that her mother explained to her that she was a blood descendant of the Fenian movement. Hazel was secretly delighted (she shared her mother's proclivities) and kept this something of an open secret...a secret she shared with society friends such as Lillie Langtry. (Yeah, bet you didn't know they used to party hardy together back in the day. And between the years 1899 and 1928 they were frequent correspondents. In the Victorian sense. Oh, yeah.) In fact, it was this "Fenian secret" that originally attracted John Lavery to Hazel.
And the reason he pushed to have her likeness on the Free State's money.
This brings me back to Captain Mackey's Goatskin and String Band. From its initial formation, consanguinity with either Lady Lavery ("Goatskin") or Mackey ("String Band") was an essential qualification for band membership and it remains so today.
Multi-instrumentalist Máirtín de Cógáin and guitarist Don Penzien are Laverys. Jimmy Crowley and Fiddler Valerie Plested are Mackeys. These are facts they don't talk about but theirs is the secret history of Irish America's real role on the Irish Free State. And you can see it in their song lyrics, their passwords and their handshakes...but only if you pay close attention.
So yeah, that's there story. It is a very complicated case, folks. You know, a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-yous. Lotta strands to keep in my head, people. Lotta strands in old Dan's head. I put my life in jeopardy even writing this, but I feel it is the only way (not really) to get you to come out and see Jimmy and the band this weekend. Come for the story. Stay for the craic.
~ Dan Neely
www.CaptainMackey.com