Thread by @cocteautriplets

A little Monday evening "well I never knew that" sort of a thread. 🧵👇
Question. What links the house with the blue door, a Victorian gas meter collector and an Irish legend?

Ah, no not *that* Irish legend. *This* Irish legend.

Give up? Well, the answer is that the most Irish of Irish folk ballads, "Molly Malone" (or "Cockles and Mussels") was almost probably written by an Edinburgh gas meter collector and part time music teacher at what was then 24 Mayfield Place in the Abbeyhill colonies.

While there are 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) in Edinburgh.

From what I read, most Irish musical historians will agree that it's not an Irish folk tune and isn't recorded anywhere in 19th century Irish music. It first appears in print in 1876 in Boston 🇺🇸, in a collection of "Student Songs of the English and German Universities"

And the earliest printed credits 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, an 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 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 James Yorkston (no, not that one)?

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. (pic Edinburgh City Libraries)

The Yorkstons have 7 children, 5 boys and 2 girls, 5 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 Yorkston to raise the family.

The Yorkston's move 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. In 1867, the Edinburgh Cooperative Building Company starts putting in their "colonies" style terraced housing behind.

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 are like English terraces, but are upper and lower flats accessed from separate sides of the block by characteristic external staircases.

And some of, if not *the* first residents of what was then number 24 Maryfield Place (now called just Maryfield and all the doors renumbered, if you're looking for it) was Catherine Yorkston, 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 go door-to-door and collect the money you were due for your gas. Initially this was a fixed rate per gas light jet you had, it later became metered and after that coin-operated.

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, and he is recorded as a "gas collector" for the rest of his life.

But James 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 Yorkston 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 Ernst Köhler comes in. Frederik Ernst emigrates from Germany to Edinburgh at in the early 1800s and marries in Edinburgh 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 the business slowly grows in size and renown. Ernst and Ernest die in 1857 and 1859, leaving Philip to continue the business in their name.

By the 1870s the business has outgrown a succession of premises and is not just importing and repairing violins, but making their own. Apparently they were rather good too. This 1871 model went for £1,200 at Bonham's recently.

But where the Köhler's really come in is with sheet music. They amassed a massive library of sheet music for the burgeoning Victorian professional and hobbyist. Their advert states over 10,000. They dealt in both traditional stave music and the recent craze for "Sol-fa" notation.

"Sol-fa" notation is 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 Smash Hits, a blend of pop music and news

And who was editing "Musical Star" and helping Köhler bring popular music to the masses? None other than Sol-fa teacher James Yorkston.

In amongst collecting the gas rates, teaching singing and editing Musical Star, Yorkston somehow also managed to fit in writing and arranging music to be published by Köhler

Köhlers really were quite important in the Victorian popular music scene and would have given the aspiring James Yorkston a ready outlet for his talents.

Yorkston would have been intimately familiar with a wide range of popular tunes and ditties and although it's not exactly clear how he came about it, at some point in the early 1870s he pens Molly Malone and it is published by Köhler and finds its way to London and Boston

James Yorkston marries Elizabeth Henry in 1872 and they live at 53 Montgomery Street. It's not actually this flat as it wasn't built until the 1880s and the whole street got renumbered... Appropriately though there's a Scottish Gas van on Google streetview.

Elizabeth dies just 6 years later and James returns to Maryfield Place to his mother. He marries again in 1883 to Agnes Hunter, a widow. They must have been relatively comfortably off and move to 17 West Preston Street, a flat far removed from where he was born in Greenside

In 1889, the 50 year old James is still teaching singing from his house. He is also the precentor (the leader of congregational singing) and choirmaster at South College Street UP Church and is praised in The Scotsman for his contributions during unveiling of the church organ

About 1894, the Yorkstons retire to 3 Grange Road, although for a while James is still offering singing lessons. He dies from complications of Kidney Surgery in the Chalmers Hospital in April 1906, aged 66. Agnes lives out her days at no. 3, passing away in 1923.

James Yorkston probably never had any idea quite how popular and renowned the song he wrote was. He probably never made any royalties or anything from it, but his musichall hit would go on to build a cult around itself and the figure of the tragic Molly Malone

The song has now become globally identified as an old Irish folk song and people have embarked on holy grail-like quests to try and find the "real Molly Malone" (some claim she was a mistress of Charles II and you can guess what the Cockles and Mussels refer to)

For better or worse, the City of Dublin has claimed Molly Malone as its own, and erected a raunchy statue of her in 1988 as part of its millennium celebrations (pic CC-by-SA Rajeev Aloysius)

So there you go. That's the story of how one of the worlds most famous Irish songs 🇮🇪 was written by a gas meter reader from Abbeyhill 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿and published by German 🇩🇪 immigrants.

Footnote. It mat amuse you to know a significant part of my "research effort" is literally scribbling on the backs of envelopes in ever smaller and more contrived lettering... For everything else there's screengrabs