Reuben And Rachel: A Song History

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"Reuben and Rachel" began as a comic duet with words by Harry Birch and music by William Gooch, issued in Boston around 1871 by the sheet-music house White, Smith & Perry, scored for two voices and piano.[1] The song is a courting dialogue in which Rachel wonders aloud whether life would improve if every man were sent far off, and Reuben, taken aback, ends up proposing, which she accepts.[2]

A wood engraving of a young man carrying a scythe beside two young women, one shading her eyes and one with a hay rake on her shoulder, as a loaded hay wagon moves off behind them.

Winslow Homer, The Last Load, wood engraving, 1869. A young farmer and two young women in a hayfield in 1869, shown for the song's courtship; it has no connection to the duet.

The duet lived on, turning up in later folk songbooks under the shortened title "Reuben, Reuben," and the Traditional Ballad Index lists it as Roud 15451.[2] The Index also links its tune to several other songs, and it notes a children's game sometimes called by the same name that may be connected, though that game is not listed as a musical one.[2] Judy House includes it in Favorite Sing-Along Songs For The Mountain Dulcimer, a downloadable book of familiar, easy and relaxing songs that she publishes.[3]

Our book that contains the song "Reuben And Rachel"

Sources

  1. The Morgan Library & Museum: "Reuben and Rachel: comic duett".
  2. Traditional Ballad Index: "Reuben and Rachel".
  3. Judy House: "Favorite Sing-Along Songs For The Mountain Dulcimer".
  4. Image: Winslow Homer, The Last Load, wood engraving, 1869. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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