- Style
- Celtic
- Tradition
- Irish
- Form
- Jig
- Key
- G
- Level
- 2
- Played on
- Fiddle
In the public domain. Source
Music
Click any note to start from there
Chord chart
History
The most famous "Irish" jig may have started out English. Samuel Bayard traced it to "Dargason," a tune printed in 1609 and in Playford's Dancing Master, and others point to the English country dance "Country Courtship" from around 1700. Northumbrian piper Matt Seattle found both parts in their modern shape in William Vickers' 1770 manuscript, under the title "Love for Love."
In 1791 it turned up on the London stage as "Corporal Casey," a comic song for an Irish soldier in Samuel Arnold's The Surrender of Calais. The "Irish Washerwoman" title is in print by 1792, in a Neil Gow collection. By 1907 the collector Frank Kidson was grumbling that barrel organs played it on every street corner.
When I was at home I was merry and frisky, My dad kept a pig and my mother sold whiskey. My uncle was rich but he would never be easy Till I was enlisted by Corporal Casey.