Dan Emmett's "Jimmy Crack Corn"

[Daniel Cassidy]

Jimmy Crack Corn -- Gem Crack Corn -- Jim Crackcorn 

Jimmy Crackcorn
Tiomairg Creaga/irne   ( pron. ChiMairg CraK-awrn; slender "t" = "ch" or tj")
Miserly gathering.
A poverty stricken assemblage. 

Tiomairg: Gathering, assemblage. Collection.  (pron. chimairg)
Crega/irne: miserly.   (cragawrn)

The song entitled "Jim Crack Corn" was written by  Daniel Emmett, the 
Ohio-born son of Irish immigrants, in 1846. In the winter of 1842-43, Dan Emmett had 
organized a troupe he called the "Virginia Minstrels," who opened at New York 
City's Bowery Theater in 1843 and became one the first and best known minstrel 
groups. In Jim Crack Corn Irish indentured servants and African slaves 
celebrate the death of the British Colonial master, who has been killed by the Blue 
Tail Fly. The master's wake is as cheap and miserly as the master. But he is 
dead and they sing.


Jim Crack Corn and I don't care.
Tiomarg Creaga/irne and I don't care.
Jim Crack Corn and I don't care.
My master's gone away. 

Forty years later, Irish-American playwright Edward Harrigan the Irish and 
Scots-Gaelic phrase "Gem Crack Corn,"  (Tiomairg creaga/irne) for a "cheap 
gathering" or "miserly affair," flies out of the "gob" of the comic character Mrs 
Dublin, an eccentric Five Points Irish housewife.


Mrs. Dublin:   "I had a wedding day. None of your gem crack corn weddings, 
but eating, dancing, singing, and fighting..."    

(Mulligan's Silver Wedding, Edward Harrigan, 1882; Typescript, NYPL. p. 112.) 

Creaga/irne: miserly. Cheap

creag:, a rock, a crag, a cliff; a barren spot; a blank in a crop, as from 
seed-failure, etc.; 
creagaire: a miserly, stingy person. ( a "cracker")
creaga/n, a little rock; a rocky or stony place; a blank spot in a growing 
crop; a bruise, a sore. . 

Gem crack corn wedding = a cheap miserly gathering= Tiomairg Creagáirne

Daniel Cassidy
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