Annotation:Nothing Can Sadden Us
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NOTHING CAN SADDEN US (Ni Deanac Aoinnid Bronac Sinn). AKA - "Nothing in Life," "Nothing in Life Can Sadden Us." Irish, Jig. A Major (O'Neill): G Major (Goodman). Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB (O'Neill): AABA (Goodman): AABB' (Kerr). The title is the name of a song set to the tune in 1802 by Sir Thomas Moore:
Oh! Nothing in life can sadden us
While we have wine and good humour in store;
With this, and a little of love to madden us,
Show me the fool that can labour for more!
Come then, bid Ganymede full every bowl for you,
Fill them up brimmers, and drink as I call;
I'm going to toast every nymph of my soul for you,
Ay, on my soul, I'm in love with them all!
Moore's song proved quite popular; enough for the air to become the vehicle for innumerable parodies, such as "The Monkey; or, dear creatures, we can't do without them" ("Air-"Oh! nothing in life can sadden us"), from The Universal Songster (1834, p. 98), which begins:
Oh! Nothing in life can sadden us
While we have plenty of horrors in store;
With these, and a few clever monkeys to gladden us,
Show me the fool who'd wish to see more!
Thus said each manager, singing in one key,
I for tragi or comedy don't care a sous;
For if I had not a prime devil and monkey,
I must, I am certain, soon shut up my house.
The tune was also printed by New York publisher W. Dubois in 1817 in The Gentlemen's Amusement Book 4 (p. 9), and was entered that same year into the music copybook of flute player Daniel Henry Huntington (Onondoga, N.Y.).
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Hughes (Gems from the Emerald Isles), London, 1867; No. 66, pp. 15-16 (as "Nothing in Life"). Kerr (Merry Melodies, vol. 3), c. 1880's; No. 220, p. 25. O'Neill (Krassen), 1976; p. 20. O'Neill (Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903; No. 747, p. 139. Shields/Goodman (Tunes of the Munster Pipers), 1998; No. 168, p. 71 (appears as "Nothing in Life Can Sadden Us").
Recorded sources: