Key signature: Dmajor
Submitted on October 10th 2002 by lazyhound.
This tune has been added to 14 tunebooks.
Also known as Did You Wash Your Father's Shirt?, Gather Round The Fire.
Recordings of a tune by this name:
X: 1
T: Did You Wash Your Father's Shirt
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: reel
K: Dmaj
g|fdec dcAg|fdec d2de|fdec dBAB|=cAGE D3g|
fdec dcAg|fdec d2de|fdec dBAB|=cAGE D2AD||
(3EFG AB =cAG2|Addc d3e|fdec dBAB|=cAGE D2AD|
(3EFG AB =cAG2|Addc d3e|fdec dBAB|=cAGE D3||
Did you wash your father's shirt
I came across this reel in an advanced beginner's class in Bristol a little while ago. One of the ladies there gave me the words which had been taught to her by her Irish grandmother many years before. The words fit the first part. Does anyone know if there are further words for the second part?
The words give me the impression this tune may have been a children's school playground song. They give a little insight into Irish village life a long time ago.
# Posted on October 10th 2002 by lazyhound
There's an English version of this rhyme (which starts "Oh, can you wash your father's shirt"), with a different tune, which is fully pentatonic, thus having the advantage of being playable only on the black notes of the piano. As far as I know it doesn't have a second part.
# Posted on October 10th 2002 by granama
The words don't seem to have appeared on the site.
Anyway, they are:
Did you wash your father's shirt?
Did you scrub it clean?
Have you hung it on the washing line
By the village green?
# Posted on October 10th 2002 by lazyhound
Gather Round The Fire
T:Gather Round The Fire
M:4/4
L:1/8
S:Cathal Mcconnel & Robin Morton - irish jubilee
R:reel
K:D
|fdec dcAA|fdec d3z|f2ed cAAB|cAGE D3z|
fdec dcAA|fgec d2de|f2ec cAAB|cAGE D3z||
FG AB =cAG2|Addc d2ef|fdec cAAB|cAGE D3z|
(3EFG AB =cAG2|Addc d2ef|fdec cAAB|cAGE D3z|
# Posted on October 9th 2004 by gian marco
If this tune was a playground song, they must have been pretty musically sophisticated kids! I got it off Paddy Moloney and Sean Potts' record "Tin Whistles".
# Posted on November 23rd 2006 by nicholas
Did you wash your father's shirt
Matt Cunningham plays this tune as the first of two on track 18 of the CD Volume 12* of his series Dance Music of Ireland. Interestingly, he plays it as a polka - it's not unknown for bands to turn reels into polkas and vice versa for some set dances - and plays the B part first.
* I am in the course of identifying the 66 tunes on Volume 12 (the only information available is a list of the names of the set dance figures), and will post the results in the Recordings section in due course.
# Posted on May 1st 2007 by lazyhound