Annotation:Rakes of Mallow (The)

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X:1 T: The Rakes of Mallow (Jolly Sailor) T: Sandy Lent the Man His Mill O: 1733 Z: John Chambers <jc@trillian.mit.edu> B: Walsh, "Caledonian Country Dances", 1733, p. 34 B: Burk Thumoth collection (as "Rakes of Marlow"), 1745 M: C L: 1/4 K: G V:1 clef=treble name="1." [V:1] |:GB GB | GB c/B/A/G/ |FA FA | FA d/c/B/A/ | GB GB | GB d2 |c/B/A/G/ F/G/A/c/ |BG G2 :| |:gf/e/ dc | Bc d2 |gf/e/ dc | Bg A2 | gf/e/ dc | BG c2 |c/B/A/G/ F/G/A/c/ |BG G2 :|]

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RAKES OF MALLOW, THE (Na Racairide Ua Mag-Ealla). AKA – “Rakes of Malta,” “Rakes of Mellow," "Le râteau de mallon"/"Rakes of Mallon." AKA and see "Heights of Alma (1) (The)," “Jolly Sailor,” “Piping Tim of Galway,” “Rakes of London,” "Rigs o' Marlow," “Romping Molly.” Irish (originally), English, Scottish, American; Air, Polka, Reel or March. England; North-West, Northumberland. USA; Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York State, Massachusetts, Maine. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Bronner, O'Neill): AABB (Aird, Johnson/1983, Kerr, Linscott, O'Brien, Russell, Ruth, Sweet, Seattle/Vickers, Wade): AABBCC (Johnson, Karpeles, Kennedy, Raven). Bayard (1981) wrote that the title stemmed from the 18th century when the town of Mallow, County Cork (on the river Blackwater between Limerick and Cork City) was a well-known spa and known as the “Irish Bath” [the city of Bath, in England, was famous as a spa]. Russell (1989) calls it a “prosperous little town” today, and one which has attracted industry and population because of the good land nearby. Mallow is located at the western end of the ‘Golden Vale’ which stretches across Ireland into Meath and Dublin. ‘Rakes’ appears to be short for 'rakehell', which itself stems from the Old Icelandic word reikall, meaning "wandering” or “unsettled." Croker says that the young men of that fashionable water-drinking town were proverbially called “the rakes of Mallow,” and he adds: “A set of pretty pickles they were, if the song descriptive of their mode of life, here recorded after the most delicate oral testimony, is not very much over-coloured.”

One of the early printings of the tune is in the collection of Burke Thumoth, 1745 (as “Rakes of Marlow”), and Paul Gifford has found it in a manuscript of Danish hakkebraet (dulcimer) tablature under the title "Rakes of London," dated 1753. However, the earliest appearance of “Rakes of Mallow” is in Walsh’s London-published Caledonian Country Dances of 1733 (p. 34), and the earliest printings are from England. The melody is still heard in English sessions in modern times, although considered a ‘beginner’s tune’, and it is widely recognized throughout the English-speaking world, and despite its Irish-sounding title, the tune's provenance has not been established. Morris dance musicians play a version called "Rigs o' Marlow" for a stick-dance collected by Cecil Sharp in Headington, Oxfordshire.

In America an early version appears in the music manuscript copybook of Henry Livingston, Jr. Livingston purchased the estate of Locust Grove, Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1771 at the age of 23. In 1775 he was a Major in the 3rd New York Regiment, which participated in Montgomery’s invasion of Canada in a failed attempt to wrest Montreal from British control. An important land-owner in the Hudson Valley, and a member of the powerful Livingston family, Henry was also a surveyor and real estate speculator, an illustrator and map-maker, and a Justice of the Peace for Dutchess County. He was also a poet and musician, and presumably a dancer, as he was elected a Manager for the New York Assembly’s dancing season of 1774–1775, along with his 3rd cousin, John Jay, later U.S. Chief Justice of Governor of New York. Livingston included the following verse, a drinking song attributed to Edward Lysaght, with the melody:

Beauxing, belling, dancing, drinking,
Breaking windows, damning, sinking,
Ever raking never Thinking
Lives the Rakes of Mallow.
Spending faster than it comes,
Beating Bawds, whores, and duns,
Bacchus’ true begotten sons,
Lives the Rakes of Mallow.

The tune has sometimes been linked in New England with the dance "Morning Star," and mid-20th century called Ralph Page used it as an accompaniment to a dance he called "Ladies' Whirligig." The title appears in a list of the repertoire of Maine fiddler Mellie Dunham. The elderly Dunham was Henry Ford's champion fiddler in the late 1920's. “Rakes of Mallow” was prominently featured in director John Ford’s film The Quiet Man, starring John Wayne (filmed in the village of Cong, Ireland), as the theme for the fight scene when the town comes alive. "Rakes of Mallow" has also been employed for either a polka or a single step dance in the North-West (England) morris dance tradition. See also the tune under the name “Romping Molly” in Shaw’s Cowboy Dances (1943). Bruce Olson gives a good history of the song at the Digital Tradition Mirror, and writes in part:

Although widely known, the widely known version of this song is usually somewhat expurgated. The song with tune was printed about 1740 as a single sheet issue, copies of which are in the British Library and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Other copies of the song are in The Charmer, 3rd. ed., p. 277, Edinburgh, 1765, and it is possibly in the two earlier editions, 1749 and 1751, which I have not seen. The song is also in the 4th ed. I, p. 277, 1782, in The Charms of Melody, Dublin, 1776, and in the Encyclopedia of Comic Songs, London, 1819. In the first of the preceding it is given as four double length stanzas. A copy of the 1740's, given as eight four-line verses is in NLS MS 6299. An expurgated copy of the song was given by T. Crofton Crocker in Popular Songs of Ireland, 1839, with the tune cited for it as "Sandy lent the man his mull." That tune direction is circular, since the first verse and chorus of the latter are in David Herd's MS, c 1776, (reprinted by Hecht, Songs from David Herd's Manuscripts, 1904) with the tune direction "The Rakes of Mallow."

A distanced version was entered into the c. 1841 music manuscript collection of Henry Hudson, a Dublin dentist and an early collector. He was music editor of The Citizen or Dublin Monthly Magazine from 1841-1843, and had collected the tune from "Mrs. (Maggy) Foley," evidently a singer who was the source for several airs in Hudson's manuscript (see "Catherine Ogly" and "My High Caul Cap"). Her "Rakes of Mallow" is probably a vocal air.