#musichall — Public Fediverse posts

Am 20. und 21. 11. 2026 gibt es in der #Musichall #Worpswede wieder #Torfrock satt: 49 Jahre TORFROCK – das Jubiläum beginnt jetzt!
730 Tage Feiern, Pudding in Wellen und Kurs auf 50 https://musichall-worpswede.eu/produkt/fr-20-11-2026-torfrock/

"A Well Respected Man" is a song by the English rock band #theKinks, written by the group's #leadSinger and #rhythmGuitarist #RayDavies, and originally released in the United Kingdom on the #EP #KwyetKinks in September 1965. It was also released as a single in the US and Continental Europe. Written as a satire on the British upper class, the song was inspired by Ray Davies's interest in #musicHall and scorn for wealthy tourists he encountered on a 1965 vacation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8LFXEfbxdw

The Sally Army, the “Scabby Lala” and X-Rated in the City: the thread about the La Scala Electric Theatre

Cinemas are one of those local history topics that are guaranteed to get people enthusiastically excitable. Everyone of a certain age in the city has their story of where they (or their granny) use to go to the pictures. Mention the name La Scala and you’ll more than likely get a knowing nod and an utterance of the term fleapit: mention the Classic and you’ll get either a complete denial or a sharp intake of breath. Both names were different guises of the same establishment. A recent planning application for its long-vacant building provides me with an opportune excuse, as if one was needed, to reflect on its surprisingly long, interesting history, to fill a few gaps and to correct a few misconceptions. A remarkable and largely overlooked survivor, it was at times pioneering, at times pious and at others plain seedy.

Our story goes all the way back to 1862 when a 1,500 seat music hall, the New Royal Alhambra, was opened at 50 Nicolson Street by William Paterson. This replaced his earlier venture – the Alhambra – that had opened only the year before and which was Edinburgh’s first music hall. Its wooden structure was soon condemned and a replacement was built directly across the road, making it the first such purpose-built venue in the city. Designed by architect David MacGibbon, the interior was modelled on Broughton Street’s newly completed Royal Queen’s Theatre (better known as the Theatre Royal). There was no need to replicate the exterior however as our subject is somewhat unusual in not having one of note. It is located behind an older tenement at number 46 Nicolson Street and cannot be seen from the street. This plot had previously been used as a horse-hirer’s yard and was accessed down narrow lanes from that were later roofed over. The grand opening took place on Monday 29th September and prominent adverts were taken out on the front page of all the main local newspapers. From these were are provided with a very thorough description of the entertainment and the premises.

The venture was a resounding success but when Paterson tried to take the place upmarket and focus on stage plays – as The Princess’s Theatre – it faltered. In 1867 he returned it to variety performance but sold it the following year to Alexander Duncan McNeill. It was taken upmarket again as the Royal Princess’s. In 1869 McNeill put on a play from his own pen, The Gloamin’ and the Mirk: or a Story of Modern Athens. A satire on Edinburgh, this proved to be so popular that it ran for 15 months. He died in November 1884 at the age of just 55 from cirrhosis of the liver. His son and deputy manager, William Alexander McNeill, continued to run the business but it closed two years later in the face of stiff competition from the Theatre Royal and Royal Lyceum.

One Samuel Horatio St Austin attempted to take over the licence in September 1886 but was turned down on a number of grounds. These included fire safety, the proximity of residential tenements and inadequate ventilation (as we will find out later, these issues have been repeated sticking points in planning applications for the site in recent years). A new occupant was eventually found in 1891 when the lease was taken over by The Salvation Army. With minor alterations they inaugurated it as a meeting hall (or Barracks in the quasi-military parlance of their organisation) on March 24th 1892. The opening ceremony was conducted in the presence of Catherine Bramwell-Booth, daughter of the Army’s founder “General” William Booth. Recent stripping of the interior of the auditorium has revealed a large, well-preserved Salvation Army crest painted on the rear wall (see picture gallery at the end of the post).

The Sally Army remained at number 50 for twenty years, until February 1912 when the hall was purchased by Photoplays Ltd. This company was controlled by cinema pioneer Ralph Pringle. It was a time of rapid expansion of this new form of entertainment and between 1910 and 1914 no fewer than 29 picture houses would be opened in the Edinburgh and Leith. Most of these were converted from existing halls and theatres and Pringle totally re-constructed and re-decorated his new venue at a cost of £1,600, to designs by architect Hippolyte Blanc.

The curtain went up at the La Scala Electric Theatre on December 30th that year, its namesake being the historic Teatro alla Scala opera house in Milan. This exotic name was much in vogue at the time, Scotland is littered with former cinemas of this name. The capacity was 800, with “about 450” in the balcony and “about 250” in the stalls below (clearly something doesn’t add up here). The projection box was located at the rear of the stalls, under the balcony. The first films shown were the Western Custer’s Last Fight and The Shuttle of Fate, a film about a shipwreck. A continuous daily programme was shown thereafter from 10:30AM to 11:45PM, changing twice a week. Prices at opening ranged from 4d in the stalls to 9d in the grand circle.

It was an instant hit, its selection of films praised by the Evening News as having a “high standard of merit.” Like many early cinemas, variety turns were put on between shows, for which there was a 12ft deep stage. Such acts were known as Lantern Coolers as they had originated with the need to allow projectors to cool in between reels. The evenings were entirely given over to films however, these being shown exclusively after 630PM. Pringle built up a small chain across Scotland and the north of England, including two houses called Pringle’s Picture Palace in Edinburgh. His gilded RP monogram persisted long afterwards in the gilded décor around the balcony, indeed it is still very visible to this day in recent auction photos.

Ralph Pringle quit the cinema industry almost as quickly as he had gotten into it and sold all his shares in the holding company in 1914. The -Electric Theatre part of the name was dropped two years later and it became simply La Scala. The 1928 Kinematograph Year Book records the venue was managed by Miss M. Baillie and its prices ranged from 5d to 2s. The age of the Talkies arrived in February 1930 when an RCA sound system was installed. The first such film shown was The Drake Case starring Gladys Brockwell and Robert Frazer

This show was Brockwell’s final film, she had died in July the previous year in a car accident in Holywood. The old silent programme supported by variety artistes (“Smart & Wilson, the Comedy Duo” and “Tom Robinson, the Singing Pit Boy“) had been run right up to this change of technology.

A further change came four years later when in 1934 the cinema joined the circuit of Peter Crerar. Except for a burglary in May 1935, when a days takings were stolen by blowing the door off the manager’s safe, it led a relatively quiet, low-key life thereafter. Like most small, first-generation picture houses it was able to survive by undercutting its ticket prices relative to the wave of fashionable large Super Cinemas built in the ‘thirties. For example, in 1950 it was charging 1s for the stalls; the New Victoria along the road on Clerk Street started at 1s 9d. This required it to be run on the tightest of margins and there was little leftover for investment in the place. As such these sorts of houses generally declined over time, earning reputations for themselves as being “flea pits“. The La Scala would become known in the Southside by the derisory nickname of the Scabby Lala.

This strategy paid off and the La Scala survived, outlasting far grander venues and the even dingier ones too. A name came change on 27th April 1974 when it became the Classic after being taken over by the London-based chain of that name. This company had hit on a way to make these small, decrepit cinemas pay: pornography. They told Allen Wright, the Scotsman’s cinema reviewer, that takings more than doubled after the introduction of X-rated films to the Nicolson Street playbill. This was a shrewd move as Edinburgh’s principle other house of cinematic ill repute, the (Racey) Jacey, had closed the previous May, leaving a smut-shaped gap in the market. In Another Edinburgh, an alternative guide to the city published in 1976, it is wryly noted that the establishment supported the British film industry by “screening sex – Swedish sex – Swiss sex – Siberian Sex, sextcetera“. There were also “liberal doses” of Kung Fu and “occasional worthies” late at night on Friday and Saturday. In the 2016 novel A Decent Ride by Irvine Welsh, the protagonist credits his visits to the Classic with being the source of his sexual prowess.

In November 1974 the Salon on Baxter’s Place, another renowned fleapit, closed making the Classic the city’s oldest operational picture house. In the spirit of its old tradition of stage entertainment, in 1976 it was a Festival Fringe venue for a show called Tubular Balls. New management came in 1979 with a takeover by Lew Grade’s Associated Communications, by which time the chain had grown to 141 theatres. Grade lost control of his conglomerate in 1982 to Robert Holmes à Court, who immediately began to break it up. This resulted in the cinemas being bought by the American B-movie film producers Cannon Group.

Understandably, both premises and patrons kept a relatively low profile and as such very little can be found in contemporary newspapers about it. One of the few incidents of note happened on April 26th 1979 when a fire broke out that required 50 firefighters and six appliances from four stations to bring under control. The alarm was raised at 1:30AM in the morning when residents of the tenement above found smoke coming through their floorboards. In 1982, one customer was fined £120 for Breach of the Peace by Edinburgh District Court for assaulting an usherette. Philip Boyle, 24, had been drinking and had retried to the Classic to “sleep it off”. When Ruby McClory tried to rouse him from his slumber by shining her torch in his face, he slapped her, grabbed the torch and threw it away. It hit Donald Tindell on the head to his injury.

A more serious fire occurred next door at the recently-opened Uptown restaurant and disco on the morning of 12th April that year when hay bales brought in as props for a Wild West theme night caught fire. £50,000 of damage was caused to the disco – on the first floor – although the restaurant below was largely untouched. Seven months later, on the morning of 15th November, fire returned to the premises and this time finished what it had started. Such was the ferocity of this blaze that the gutted building had to be demolished the next day. Somehow, the cinema survived these three fires largely unscathed.

Cannon sold the cinema in March 1986 to local businessman and former lower-league footballer Jim Wight (probably as a result of acquiring the bigger and better ABC on Lothian Road). It was briefly renamed first The Cinema before settling on the Metro, although both names seem to have been used side-by-side at this time. Wight told the Evening News that his mother disapproved of the adult content of his investment and was no longer talking to him. His initial plan was to renovate and increase the capacity of the cinema, open a restaurant and show a mixed bill of film and stage shows suitable for a family audience. The pornographic programme persisted however and Wight soon seems to have given up on the scheme. The final X-rated showings seem to have taken place during the week beginning 27th October that year, closing to a headline stage show by risqué clubland comedian Alec “Happy” Howden. The doors closed for the last time and the mantle of oldest cinema in the city was passed to the Cameo. This had originally opened in 1914 as The King’s and retains that accolade to this day. It was then sold to gambling entrepreneur Henry Spurway, whose company Him Sintar (Racing) Ltd converted it into Scotland’s first “betting parlour“: Live races were beamed on to the big screen by satellite.

Spurway’s venture does not seem to have lasted long either. An application for conversion into a live music venue was refused in 1990 on account of the potential for noise problems to affect the surrounding flats. Instead the following year it became the New Empire bingo hall, this name being transplanted up Nicolson Street from the Empire Bingo Hall. This had been located in the former Empire Theatre but had recently been served notice to quit its home ahead it being converted into the Festival Theatre. The name changed to Premier Bingo around 2000, in which form it continued – in an ever more dilapidated state – until closure in 2015. Permission was granted in 2013 for change of use to a “dance hall or discotheque“, although no changes to the premises were at that time proposed. This did however allow it to be used as once again as a Fringe venue, branded as the Laughing Horse and Live at the Empire. It also briefly housed the Sunday Assembly, an “atheist church”.

A series of applications were next made by the J D Wetherspoon chain in 2014 and 2015 for conversion into one of their trademark large public houses. These were refused on the grounds of inadequate ventilation and noise control. Wetherspoons bought the building for £440,000 in 2015 and in 2018 managed to have a revised application approved. This was contingent on installing a kitchen limited to reheating food using microwaves, panini presses and toaster ovens only, to prevent a smell nuisance from cooking smells venting from the kitchen. The owners were unhappy with this compromise as they contended that to make converting a historic building profitable they would have to offer a full food service. They successfully made a further application was in 2021 to remove the restrictive clauses whereby a full kitchen could be used with a recirculating extractor system. This application was given three years to complete, however the permission lapsed without ever being taken forward.

The building was instead put up for sale in April 2024, by which time a leaking roof had allowed substantial internal decay to occur. It was finally sold at auction in June 2025 for a price over £400,000. Pictures from the auction show the building is in a partially stripped state internally, with much of the ceiling missing as a result of a collapse caused by water ingress. Despite the damage, what is Edinburgh’s oldest intact cinema interior is in an remarkable state of preservation all things considered. Surviving details include Ralph Pringle’s gilded monograms around the balcony from 1912. Even more remarkable is a large Salvation Army crest painted on the wall behind the proscenium from the 1890s. It feels an exceptional oversight that this century-old interior was never listed and yet somehow endured. In April 2026 a planning application was made to turn the building into a large cafe-cum-venue by its new owners, Our Public, an independent coffee and bakery chain based in the East Midlands of England. Lets hope it can survive the attention of the very stark, fashionably Scandinavian aesthetic of these gourmet croissant merchants.

The history of the tenement above the cinema, at 46 Nicolson Street, has been researched and written-up by Diarmid Mogg for his excellent Tenement Town blog.

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The British #MusicHall Society has announced a Call for Papers for its 3rd Conference, taking place November 21–22, 2026, at The Cinema Museum in #London.

This year's theme is "Catering for People’s Desires and Needs in the Music Hall"

https://britishmusichallsociety.com/event/3rd-british-music-hall-society-conference-november-2026

#History

https://archive.org/details/GregLoiacono2026-03-20-VIDEO
Posted this entire Stingray #LiveConcert as a video. Thanks to Jeff Yasuda for the moving pictures!
#TomAyers #KofyBrown #DanEisenberg #GregLoiacono #VickyRandle #MichaelUrbano #SanFrancisco #BrickAndMortar #MusicHall

1080/60
length 1:18:48
camera audio replaced with stereo SBD + Mic mix
#FreeDownload #NoAds #InternetArchive

Music hall star Marie Lloyd made her own costumes, using skills she’d learned from her mother. 10 things you might not know about her.

https://topicaltens.blogspot.com/2026/02/12-february-marie-lloyd.html

#BirthAnniversary #MarieLloyd #MusicHall #Theatre

Went to the #rock party at #MusicHall in #Oppau last night. Fun!
I'm not that young anymore but my hubby and I were still the youngest 😂
War gestern bei der Rockparty in der MusicHall in Oppau. Hast Spaß gemacht!
Ich bin nicht mehr so jung, aber mein Mann und ich waren trotzdem die jüngsten. 😂

"A Well Respected Man" is a song by the English rock band #theKinks, written by the group's #leadSinger and #rhythmGuitarist #RayDavies, and originally released in the United Kingdom on the EP #KwyetKinks in September 1965. It was also released as a single in the US and Continental Europe. Written as a satire on the British #upper class, the song was inspired by Ray Davies's interest in #musicHall and scorn for wealthy tourists he encountered on a 1965 vacation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRd_CnrwPL0

Uploaded an "oldie" for #MusicWomenWednesday … An original song demo from 2021. I'd like to write more in this style… sortof pop jazz noir, a little bit dark cabaret, a little bit burlesque & vaudeville…

https://soundcloud.com/harrie-hq/a-good-man-to-love-a-bad-girl-demo-2021

MONDAY MATINEE MUSIC VIDEO: “Something About Suburbia” by Tim a.k.a. Chris Andrews 55th Anniversary Video Edition! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGbYBpyaANs

#chrisandrews #timandrews #suburbia #britpop #musichall #flowerpower #hermanshermits #thekinks #raydavies #themonkees #davyjones #paulkorda #cypayne #fleurdelys #tyrantking #film #video #music #parlophone

Die #MusicHall #Worpswede hat noch volles, hochkarätiges Programm bis Jahresende (und auch im nächsten Jahr):

17.10.2025 #SanGlaser
18.10.2025 Wille and the Bandits
19.10.2025 Bertram Engel
24.10.2025 Jaimi Faulkner & Band
25.10.2025 Alin Coen
30.10.2025 #WorpswederSession
31.10.2025 Sari Schorr
01.11.2025 Echoes
07.11.2025 Red Hot Chilli Pipers
08.11.2025 #BillHaley´s New Comets
14.11.2025 #RayWilson
21. und 22.11.2025 #Torfrock
28.11.2025 Wladimir Kaminer… (1/2)

29.11.2025 Herbert Pixner Projekt
12.12.2025 Árstídir
19.12. 2025 Pohlmann
20.12.2025 The Hamburg Blues Band & Friends
https://musichall-worpswede.eu/
#MusicHall #Worpswede #Musik #Konzerte (2/2)

Still reeling at the news that a new song by Half Man Half Biscuit, “Record Store Day”, contains the line “Oh I do like to re-release my B-sides” #musichall

Lovely time at Charing Cross theatre last night.
May have mentioned that I'm better than WC Fields because he's dead.

#westendtheatre #cabaret #musichall #trick #circus #dapper #tweed

📢 New Episode 📢 We had an absolutely fabulous time romping through the history and cultural significance of the Music Hall. It's such a fascinating tangible piece of history. We hope you enjoy listening! media.rss.com/the-shropshi... #History #Victorians #Shropshire #Musichall

One of my favourite Victorian photographs, depicting Lottie Collins. Lottie was a singer and dancer. Her signature song was Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay!, a risqué number that made her an icon of the “Naughty Nineties”.

#SocialHistory #History #Photography #Singing #Dancing #1800s #Music #MusicHall

One of the things I miss so the most of the long since vanished miracle that was the Eaglewood Folk Festival is our nightly campfire chorus, with so sullen hearts put to Harry Wincott's ancient sombre ballad tribute immortalizing forever that tragic firey demise of the Old Dun Cow.

Brings a tear to me eye, it does. Every time. 🥹

https://mainlynorfolk.info/copperfamily/songs/whentheoldduncowcaughtfire.html

#musichall #harrywincott #folkmusic #realfolk

In April 1922, music hall star Marie Lloyd (pictured) collapsed in her dressing room after singing "The Cosmopolitan Girl" at the Gateshead Empire in Cardiff. Her doctor diagnosed exhaustion. After a period of rest, she returned to the stage in August, and reduced the running time of her act.

#SocialHistory #1920s #History #MusicHall #Music #Entertainment

The British Music Hall Society 2024 Conference will take place in the wonderful Hoxton Hall on the weekend of 12th & 13th October.
This years theme is Music Hall Songs & Conflict 1840-1918.

Tickets go on sale on Monday 8th July for our 2nd Conference to be held @hoxtonhall on the weekend of 12/13 October. We strongly advise booking your conference ticket for the weekend ASAP.

#musichall #history #london #performance #songwriters #socialhistory #popularculture

Cockles & Mussels: the thread about the origins of a most Irish cultural anthem in Victorian Abbeyhill

Question. What links the house with the blue door, a Victorian gas meter collector and an Irish cultural legend? Your answer will probably be “well, I never knew that!“

The Irish legend to which I am referring is none other than Molly Malone, that most Irish of folk ballads, sometimes also called Cockles and Mussels.

While there are actually quite a few earlier songs and ditties featuring an Irish lass called Molly Malone, the tune and words that are now recognised the world over can be traced back no further than James Yorkston (no relation), who almost probably was its original composer. James was a gas meter collector and part time music teacher from Edinburgh who would have been living at what was 24 Maryfield Place in the Abbeyhill Colonies at the time it was written.

From what I have read, most Irish musical historians will agree that the tune of Molly Malone is neither musically or lyrically related to Irish street tunes and isn’t recorded anywhere in 19th century Irish music. It is however closely related to the music hall style of the time and the tragicomic themes that were popular, such as “Oh My Darling, Clementine“. It first appears in print in 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts, in a collection of Student Songs of the English and German Universities . The earliest printed credit for it goes to James Yorkston, in an 1884 London publication by Francis, Brothers & Day, where it is by courtesy of Ernst Köhler & Son – despite the name, a very Edinburgh company. By reference to reprints, the earliest publication by Yorkston is thought to be in a copy of Köhler’s Musical Treasury which is now lost to even the National Library of Scotland. The oldest surviving Scottish copy is from 1891 in the Scottish Student’s Songbook.

James Yorkston is one of the most widely credited writers of the music and words in contemporary sheet music and is also the earliest credit for it; so who was he? James Yorkston was born in 1839 to Alexander Yorkston (a “practical engineer”) and Catherine Phair in the Greenside district of Edinburgh, a fairly humble place which would later degenerate into slums. Yorkston is an old Midlothian name.

The Yorkstons have seven children, 5 boys and 2 girls, five of whom survive infancy; James is the 3rd son. His father dies when he is 10 of consumption (TB), in Stead’s Place off Leith Walk. This leaves Catherine Phair to raise the family. They moved to the area known as Maryfield, now the top of Easter Road in tenementland, but in the 1860s a mixture of villas and farm and quarry cottages on the edge of the city, clinging on to a rural setting. In 1867, the Edinburgh Cooperative Building Company started putting in their “colonies”-style terraced housing to the east.

If you don’t know what “colonies” refer to, it’s a peculiarly Edinburgh type of model workers housing, built by a workers cooperative. They look at first hand rather like English terraces in that they are long, two-storey rows of workers housing, but they are actually upper and lower flats, accessed from separate sides of the block by characteristic external staircases. Their finish of dressed stone was also characteristically Scottish and was as a result of them not being cheap, mass-housing thrown up by factory owners, but high-quality workers housing, built by skilled workers themselves, for themselves and others of their class.

Some of, if not the first residents of what was then number 24 Maryfield Place (now called just Maryfield and with all the doors since renumbered, if you’re looking for it) was Catherine Phair, her son James and two of her daughters – one a young widow. The 20 year old James Yorkston is a “Gas meter company collector”; he would have gone door-to-door to collect the money you were due for your domestic lighting gas. Initially this was a fixed rate per gas light jet you had, it later became metered and after that coin-operated and the collector would check the meeter and empty the coin box.

It is likely that James had been apprenticed to become an engineer, like his father was, but perhaps the latter’s early death prevented that. He is recorded in official documentation as a “gas collector” for the rest of his life. But he was quite clearly a man of some musical talent, and for many decades he is also listed as a teacher of music and singing. This is both from the family colony at 24 Maryfield, a flat in Montgomery Street nearby, and also in commercial premises in the New Town.

But this still doesn’t explain how a part-time Edinburgh music teacher comes to write Molly Malone. This is where Ernest Köhler comes in. Frederik Ernst emigrates from Germany to Edinburgh around 1800 and marries in the city in 1817. He is a maker of violin strings. Ernst’s sons Ernest and Philip become involved in the family business and throughout the first half of the 1850s it slowly but surely grows in size and renown. Frederik Ernst and Ernest die in 1857 and 1859, leaving Philip to continue the business, which he does in their name.

By the 1870s the business had outgrown a succession of premises and was not just importing and repairing violins, but making their own. Apparently they were rather good too; an 1871 model went for £1,200 at Bonham’s recently. But where the Köhler’s really come into our story is with their sheet music business. They amassed a massive library of sheet music to serve the burgeoning Victorian market for musical entertainment; both professional, social and hobbyist. Their advert states they have over 10,000 compositions available – Victorian Spotify. They dealt in both traditional (stave) music notation and the then recent craze for “Sol-fa” notation.

“Sol-fa” notation is what you might also call doh-ray-me and is used to teach singing to people who don’t read music. It was all the rage and people couldn’t get enough of it. Indeed, Köhlers published a monthly magazine of it called Musical Star; basically the Smash Hits magazine of its day, a blend of the latest pop music and news. And just who was editing Musical Star and helping Köhler bring popular music to the masses? None other than a certain Sol-fa teacher, James Yorkston. In amongst collecting the gas rates, teaching singing and editing Musical Star, he somehow also managed to fit in writing and arranging music to be published by his employer.

Köhlers really were quite important in the Victorian popular music scene – serving the British market by mail order – and would have given the aspiring James Yorkston a ready outlet for his talents. He would have been intimately familiar with a wide range of popular tunes and ditties (probably including the earlier tunes featuring Molly Malone) and although it’s not exactly clear how he came about it, at some point in the early 1870s he wrote the definitive Molly Malone and it was published by Köhler, quickly finding its way to the London and Boston music scenes.

James Yorkston married Elizabeth Henry in 1872 and they moved in together at 53 Montgomery Street. Note that if you go looking you will not find a flat at 53 Montgomery Street; much of this part of the street was demolished and rebuilt in the late 1880s as tenements, and parts had to be renumbered in the process, with some gaps appearing in the sequence as a result. Appropriately however, if you look on Google Streetview there is a Scottish Gas van approximately where the old number 53 was.

Elizabeth sadly died just 6 years later and James returned to Maryfield Place and his mother. He married again in 1883, to Agnes Hunter, a widow. They must have been relatively comfortably off and moved to 17 West Preston Street, a flat far removed from where he was born in Greenside. In 1889, the 50 year old James was still teaching singing from his house. He was also the precentor (the leader of congregational singing) and choirmaster at South College Street United Presbyterian Church, a position of some standing in his community, and was praised in The Scotsman for his contributions to the church’s music during the unveiling of the its new organ .

About 1894, the James and Agnes retired to a flat at 3 Grange Road, although for a while he was still offering singing lessons. He died from complications after kidney surgery in the Chalmers Hospital in April 1906, aged 66. Agnes lived out her days at number 3, passing away in 1923.

James Yorkston probably never had any idea quite how popular and renowned the song he wrote was, and he probably never made much or any royalties from it. He didn’t even come up with the name Molly Malone but his music hall hit had a sufficiently powerful and memorable story contained within its three short verses that an entire back story and cult would be built around it and the tragic titular figure. People have embarked on Holy Grail-like quests to try and find the “real Molly Malone;” some have claimed she was a mistress of Charles II and you can guess what the Cockles and Mussels refer to…

The song has been adopted by the Irish across the globe as a song of their own which is surely the greatest compliment that it could be paid? For better or worse, the City of Dublin officially claimed the figure of Molly Malone as its own and erected an inappropriately busty statue of her in 1988 as part of its millennium celebrations.

So there you go. That is the story of how one of the worlds most famous Irish songs was written by a Scottish gas meter reader from Abbeyhill and was brought to the attention of the world by its German immigrant publisher.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.