Music and Song
Music and song are important ways through which human beings frame their experiences and feelings. We have selected four musicians who, had connections with St John ‘s.
William Percy French, civil engineer, artist, journalist, performer, and songwriter, who died just one hundred years ago at the age of 65, is remembered in Ireland with more affection than any other person of his background. He once lived Victoria Lodge on St John’s Road and on his later concert tours, he used to stay with his sister Emily De Burgh Daly on Park Avenue.
Music and song are important ways through which human beings frame their experiences and feelings. We have selected four musicians who, had connections with St John ‘s.
William Percy French, civil engineer, artist, journalist, performer, and songwriter, who died just one hundred years ago at the age of 65, is remembered in Ireland with more affection than any other person of his background. He once lived Victoria Lodge on St John’s Road and on his later concert tours, he used to stay with his sister Emily De Burgh Daly on Park Avenue.
Cecil Grange MacDowell, sometime organist at John’s, composer, artist and draughtsman, came from an establishment background: his brothers served in the Army during the First World War while his sister nursed with the Red Cross. He became an Irish republican, changed his name to Cathal Mac Dubhghaill and fought under Eamon De Valera’s leadership at Boland’s Mills in the 1916 Rising.
Vera Wilkinson, a devout member of the congregation of St John’s, was a talented violinist who played at the Abbey and Gate Theatres. Her Trio also entertained patrons of the Roberts Café on Grafton Street.
Bay and Babbin Jellett were daughters of William Jellett KC MP and sisters of the celebrated cubist painter Mainie Jellett. Bay, a violinist, played with the orchestra in the Gate Theatre, and later became director of the Gaiety Theatre Orchestra. For many years into the 1970s she played on the tea lawns at the Dublin Horse Show. Babbin was a gifted teacher of piano and lived on Park Avenue with her husband W.E. Phillips.
