This song goes back to the 1880s, and was originally performed in Vaudeville by the author Pat Rooney. This recording, for Columbia disc in June of 1915, was a nostalgic revival of the song that had been "rewritten" by
P. Emmett (though I have yet to find out exactly what changed in this version). It has been speculated that the phrase "Life of Reilly" came from this song (see
this page from the book, "Loose
Cannons and Red Herrings" by Robert Claiborne). The emergence of the "mainstream Irish-American citizen" coincided with the publication of this song in the mid 1880s (see the essay at the Library of Congress web site about
"Ethnic Groups and Popular Song"). The record from which this was sampled hadn't been played very much, and was in nice shape.
