Irish balladeer tells the story of little known human rights hero
KITCHENER — Seán Tyrrell lives on the west coast of Ireland, his music and family history is steeped in Irish tradition so it came as a shock when the singer learned about a little known 19th century Irish folk hero, John Boyle O’Reilly.
Today, O’Reilly’s ghost is the engine that drives Tyrrell’s music and he’s been telling the Irishman’s extraordinary tale in venues across the U.S., Australia and Great Britain. Thursday night, he’s coming to Kitchener’s Registry Theatre.
The concert, entitled “Message of Peace: The Life of John Boyle O’Reilly in Song and Story” expounds upon O’Reilly’s message to the world.
“He became the most important Irishman in America,” said Tyrrell. “He spoke out for Black Americans, Native Americans he spoke against anti-Semitism.
“It amazed me the things he was saying in his time. He was pleading for justice.”
Next year will be the 150th anniversary of the sailing of the prison ship, the Hougoumount, a ship that ferried O’Reilly along with 64 other Fenians to the Australian penal colony, Fremantle. And while many prisoners ended up languishing, imprisonment seem to fire up O’Reilly’s passion to help others.
“He was a civil rights activist
before the term was ever invented,” said Tyrell in a phone interview from Rhode Island, one of his tour stops. “It didn’t matter to him about race, creed or colour.”
O’Reilly, born in 1884, grew up in Ireland during a politically tumultuous time. As a Fenian, he was fighting for Irish independence and like many Fenians, he found himself aboard a ship headed to a penal colony.
Tyrrell tells the story in spoken word, song and a power point presentation, recounting the life of O’Reilly who was thought to be the first to escape the Australian penal colony. O’Reilly snuck aboard an American whaling ship settling in Boston where he established himself first as a reporter and eventually ended up part owner of the newspaper.
In his storied career as a newspaperman and civil rights defendant, O’Reilly counted among his friends Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain and Wendell Phillips. Joseph Pulitzer commissioned him to write a poem for the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty.
This poet, rebel and civil rights activist is little known in Ireland, said Tyrrell who holds an undergraduate degree in history and even during his university studies, never heard the name John Boyle O’Reilly.
Tyrrell, a multiple recording artist, was born and raised in Ireland, immigrated to the U.S. where he lived and toured in the 1960s until late 1970s then returned to the quiet village life of Ireland. The musician frequently returns to the U.S. to perform and makes a few Canadian stops on the way.
“It’s an amazing story people should hear about,” said Tyrrell.
The Kitchener concert was organized by Irish-born Michael Kelly Cavan, a Kitchener-based singer songwriter.