Hate Mail - I'll Let The Late Great Margaret Barry, From Cork So Probably a Cousin, Say It For Me In This Tale Of Racial Profiling

Here's a variant on the verse

A policeman walked out, oh, so proud on his beat
When a vision came to him of stripes on his sleeve;
"Promotion," he whispered, "I'll try for today,
So its come with me Mister Ri-tooral-i-ay."

"Come tell me your name," says the limb of the law
To the little fat man selling wares on the straw.
"What's that, sir? Me name, sir? Why it's there on display
And it's Moses Ri-tooral-i-ooral-i-ay."

Now, the trial it came on and it lasted a week.
One judge said 'twas German; another, 'twas Greek-
"Prove you're lrish," said the policeman "and beyond it say nay;
And we'll sit on it, Moses Ri-tooral-i-ay."

Now the prisoner stepped up there as stiff as a crutch.
"Are you lrish or English or German or Dutch?"
"I'm a Jew, sir; I'm a Jew, sir," that came over to stay.
And my name it is Moses Ri-tooral-i-ay."

"We're two of a kind." said the judge to the Jew;
"You're a cousin of Briscoe and I am one too.
This numbskull has blundered and for it will pay."
"Wisha that's right," says Moses Ri-tooral-i-ay.

There's a garbage collector who works down our strset;
He once was a policeman, the pride of his beat.
And he moans all the night and he groans all the day,
Singing," Moses Ri-tootal-i-ooral-i-ay. "

There's a good reason the hero of Ulysses Is Named "Leopold Bloom".

I love Margaret Barry's music.   I needed to get a piece of Tin-Pan-Alley crap out of my mind.  Pardon me while I put the CD with this on.

Update:  Well, I couldn't prove she's related to me but there's a Youtube of her on a TV show from, I'd expect, the 1970s and she could be one of my mother's cousins, one of the ones who colored their hair at that age.  They lived in Lynn, so what do you expect?  We were the country cousins. My brother told me that when he went to Cork everyone looked like our family.  I've never been there so I'm only going on what I was told.

Update 2:  Of for fucks's sake.   How more obvious could it be.  Margaret Barry was a Corkwoman, considered one of the great Irish folk singers of our time, a sometimes of the traveling folk you don't get more Irish than Margaret Barry.  The song's about an Irish cop, full of himself, figuring on getting ahead by impressing his  boss by arresting a Jewish guy who sells stuff on the street, only he gets him before the Irish judge who recognizes that the guy's part of his family and the cop ends up a garbage collector.  Clearly Margaret Barry, like James Joyce considered Jews to be equals with a right to be in Ireland.  I wouldn't be surprised if a street singer like her figured that someone like Moses was a fellow member of the class that might be the target of such police arrogance, you can tell that from the song. I'd imagine she was hassled by the cops while she was earning her living, too.   It's not that uncommon among the Irish I know.