Irish Washerwoman: A Song History

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Where "The Irish Washerwoman" began is a matter of debate, and the Traditional Tune Archive sets out the competing views: Samuel Bayard (1981) judged it probably English, a descendant of the old air "Dargason," printed in Ravenscroft's Pammelia in 1609 and in editions of Playford's Dancing Master from 1651 to 1690, while Fuld (1966) thought the two tunes grew up independently; the Archive also points to the English country-dance tune "The Country Courtship," traceable to at least 1715, as a likely ancestor.[1] Both parts of the tune turn up in the 1770 manuscript of the Northumbrian musician William Vickers under the title "Love for Love." In print it appears as "The Wash Woman" from the Dublin publisher Henry Mountain around 1785, as "Irish Waterman" in an Edinburgh collection of 1790, and under its familiar name in a Niel Gow collection of 1792 and James Aird's Selection of 1794. Bruce Olson suggested that "Irish" was tacked on outside Ireland simply to say where the tune came from.[1]

Honoré Daumier painting of a laundress carrying a bundle of washing and helping a small child up the steps from a river quay

Honoré Daumier, The Laundress, oil on wood, probably 1863. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A Paris washerwoman, shown for the subject of the title; it has no connection to the tune.

America had it early. A Collection of Contra Dances, printed in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1792, includes it as "Irish Wash Woman," and it kept a following, at least among contra dancers. Viola "Mom" Ruth said it was her winning piece at the 1926 Arizona state fiddle championship, and the folklorist Vance Randolph reported that widely known bawdy words sung to it once made it rather scandalous in the Ozarks.[1] The earliest recording the Archive knows of is by Charles D'Almaine, in 1904.[1] The Discography of American Historical Recordings lists, among many others, a 1918 Edison medley by the violinist Harold Veo and a 1926 Columbia side by the fiddler Michael Hanafin with Dan Sullivan at the piano, and in 1939 the WPA collector Sidney Robertson Cowell recorded John N. Selleck playing it in Camino, California.[2][3][4]

Its very familiarity has cut both ways. It was already serving the stage as "Irish" music in 1791, when Samuel Arnold used a variant of it in The Surrender of Calais for a song by an Irish soldier, and by 1907 Frank Kidson was complaining that street barrel organs made it inescapable.[1] In Ireland itself, Caoimhin Mac Aoidh notes, it is now seldom played and thought "trite and hackneyed," though Donegal fiddlers still keep elaborate settings of it.[1]

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Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Irish Washerwoman (1)".
  2. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Edison matrix 6122. Irish washerwoman / Harold Veo".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Columbia matrix W142530. The Irish washerwoman / Michael Hanafin".
  4. Library of Congress, American Folklife Center: "Irish Washerwoman" (John N. Selleck, recorded by Sidney Robertson Cowell, 1939).