Although the opprobrium attached to this ancestor made Barry fearful of the consequences of wrenching him from “the dead grip of history and disgrace” (“Steward” ix), the elegiac drama he fashions transforms him into an unabashedly tragic figure, a noble survivor from “a vanished world” ( Plays:1 246), the ghosts of which are his only companions in the nursing home where he languishes in his dotage. The most critically acclaimed of his “family of plays about a family” (Kurdi 42) is The Steward of Christendom (1995), loosely based on the life of his great-grandfather, a Catholic who rose to the rank of chief superintendent in the Protestant-dominated Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) during the 1910s. Virtually all of the prodigal protagonists through whom Barry explores the themes of historical erasure and ambiguous belonging have their origins in his own family history, which he has recursively mined for transgressive forebears whose experiences he reimagines as both singular and representative, “exception to a general rule of Irishness, but at the same time not as rare as one might think” (Kurdi 42). The biblical epigraph to his novel The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998)-“And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire”-speaks to the restorative and corrective impulses that undergird his entire oeuvre. His particular affinity is for historically obscured individuals who, because of their personal choices, public duties or political allegiances, have been excluded from the Irish nationalist master-narrative. As Fintan O'Toole has pointed out, Barry specialises in “history's leftovers, men and women defeated and discarded by their times misfits, anomalies, outlanders” (vii). Little wonder, then, that his fiction and drama should be populated by characters who exceed traditional categorization. This remark nicely encapsulates Barry's imaginative fascination for the disregarged, the idiosyncratic, the uncanny. In another strip, Snoopy is walking so long a distance to Tipperary that he lies down exhausted and notes, "They're right, it is a long way to Tipperary." On a different occasion, Snoopy walks along and begins to sing the song, only to meet a sign that reads, "Tipperary: One Block." In a Sunday strip wherein Snoopy, in his World War I fantasy state, walks into Marcie's home, thinking it a French café, and falls asleep after drinking all her root beer, she rousts him awake by loudly singing the song.Commenting on the inspiration behind his “ghost plays,” the Irish writer Sebastian Barry confessed: “I am interested not so much in the storm as the queer fresh breeze that hits suddenly through the grasses in the ambiguous time before it” ( Plays: 1 xv). Also, Snoopy was seen singing the song out loud in a series of strips about his going to the 1968 Winter Olympics. Schroeder also played this song in Snoopy, Come Home (1972) at Snoopy's send-off party. This song is included, and at that point Snoopy falls into a left-right-left marching pace. Snoopy-who fancies himself as a First World War flying ace-dances to a medley of First World War-era songs played by Schroeder. One example of its use is in the annual television special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966). The song is often cited when documentary footage of the First World War is presented. During Mr Williams' lifetime (as far as I know) he never claimed to be the writer of the song. Not only did I generously fulfil that promise, but I placed his name with mine on many more of my own published contributions. Harry was very good to me and used to assist me financially, and I made a promise to him that if I ever wrote a song and published it, I would put his name on the copies and share the proceeds with him. In a 1933 interview, he added: "The words and music of the song were written in the Newmarket Tavern, Corporation Street, Stalybridge on 31st January 1912, during my engagement at the Grand Theatre after a bet had been made that a song could not be written and sung the next evening. I have sworn affidavits in my possession by Bert Feldman, the late Harry Williams and myself confirming that I am the composer. He would write it down on music-lined paper and play it back, then I'd work on the music a little more. They were all 95% my work, as Mr Williams made only slight alterations to the work he wrote down from my singing the compositions. Judge said: "I was the sole composer of 'Tipperary', and all other songs published in our names jointly.
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