Smash The Windows: A Song History
"Smash the Windows" is a single jig in D major that turns up in Irish, English, Shetland, Canadian and American traditions, sometimes played as a slide.[1] Among the early copies cited by the Traditional Tune Archive is one in the Brown family's music manuscripts from the Lake District, in the hand of James Lishman, about 1800. The first printing under the present title seems to be W. M. Cahusac's Annual Collection of Twenty Four Favorite Country Dances for the Year 1809 (London), and at about the same time it appeared in Boston in G. Graupner's collection of country dances and cotillions.[1] In the decades that followed it was copied into English musicians' manuscripts such as the Kershaw manuscript from Saddleworth, and printed in the Gows' Scottish collections, in R. M. Levey's Dance Music of Ireland (1873), and in America in Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883).[1] The sources consulted here give no explanation of the title.
Irish Jig, from the National Dances series (N225) issued by Kinney Bros., commercial color lithograph, 1889. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A tobacco trade card shown for the jig only.
The tune has gathered many names on its travels: "Break the Windows," "Roaring Jelly," the American "Jelly Jig," and "Smash the Windlass" in Shetland, while 78 rpm records on the Starr label issued it as "Gigue de Chicoutimi" and "La gigue des belles filles."[1] Francis O'Neill printed it in Chicago in 1903 and 1907, and his 1903 book also has a reel version, which Paul de Grae suggests O'Neill's scribe, James O'Neill, made from the jig as an amusement.[1][2] Recordings indexed by irishtune.info run from Séamus Ennis in 1940 to the flute player Matt Molloy around 2018, and the Tune Archive describes it as "solidly absorbed into the core repertoire" of several genres.[1][3]
Find books with Smash The Windows for sale →