Hat My Father Wore, The

DESCRIPTION: Paddy Miles comes from Ireland to America. On St Patrick's day he wears the hat "wore for more than ninety years ... From my father's great ancestors." He plans to return to Ballymore with "the hat my father wore"
AUTHOR: Daniel Macarthy (source: broadside LOCSheet sm1876 01751)
EARLIEST DATE: 1876 (broadside, LOCSheet sm1876 01751)
KEYWORDS: emigration return clothes America Ireland father
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber)) Ireland US(MW) Canada(Newf,Ont)
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1538, "The Hat My Father Wore" (4 texts, 2 tunes)
Greig-FolkSongInBuchan-FolkSongOfTheNorthEast #168, p. 2, "The Hat My Father Wore" (1 text)
Dean-FlyingCloud, p. 64, "The Hat Me Father Wore" (1 text)
OCroinin/Cronin-TheSongsOfElizabethCronin 165, "The Hat My Father Wore" (2 texts)
Vikár/Panagapka-SongsNorthWoodsSungByOJAbbott 26, "The Hat Me Father Wore" (1 short text, 1 tune)
Hylands-Mammoth-Hibernian-Songster, p. 206, "The Hat Me Father Wore" (1 text)
MidwestFolklore, Ivan H. Watson, "Folk Singing on Beaver Island," Volume 2, Number 4 (Winter 1952), p. 248, "The Hat Me Father Wore" (reference only)
Roud #4796
RECORDINGS:
Angus "The Ridge" MacDonald, "The Hat My Father Wore" (on MUNFLA/Leach)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(1119), "The Hat My Father Wore ("I'm Paddy Miles an Irish boy"), Jones (Sheffield), n.d.
LOCSheet, sm1876 01751, "The Hat My Father Wore!," E. H. Harding (New York), 1876 (tune)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Sash My Father Wore (I)" (form)
cf. "The Sash My Father Wore (II)" (many lines)
cf. "The Hat Me Old Man Wore" (parody which shares many of the same ideas)
SAME TUNE:
The Hat Me Old Man Wore (File: Tawn096)
NOTES [367 words]: Zimmermann: "It has been noted that 'much of the pugnacity has gone from the music played on the 12th day of July' [S.H. Bell Erin's Orange Lily, p. 14]; there is a tendency to replace the most violent ballads by innocuous songs such as 'The Ould Orange Flute' or 'The Sash my Father Wore'. 'The Ould Orange Flute' appeared on nineteenth century broadsides. The other song ['The Sash my Father Wore'] is more recent; it was probably the paraphrase of a non-political song, 'The Hat my Father Wore'. A nationalist version, quite different in character but singable to the same tune, appeared in The Shan Van Vocht, August 1896." The "Donagh MacDonagh Song Collection" at tripod.lycos site includes a version of "The Hat My Father Wore" that has the singer exiled "For the joining of the Brotherhood in the year of '64"; the tune for MacDonagh's version is "The Sash my Father Wore." It is clear that "The Sash" is an adaptation of "The Hat," or vice versa.
The author is in question. The sheet music, LOCSheet sm1876 01751, states "words by Daniel Macarthy" with no attribution for the tune. Greig/Duncan8 says "Cf. Walton's Treasury of Irish Songs and Ballads (Dublin, 1947), p. 105. The song was written by Johnny Paterson."
Weldon Thornton, Allusions in Ulysses: An Anotated List, (Chapel Hill, 1982), p. 92, refers to both claims as songs "which must be substantially the same" and goes no further to resolve the claims. - BS
According to Spaeth, A History of Popular Music in America, p. 331, William ("Billy") Jerome and Jean Schwartz in 1909 published a song "The May My Father Wore on St. Patrick's Day." That can hardly be the original of this, but I don't know how the one influenced the other.
The song appears in Harrigan & Hart's Skidmore Guards Songster, which hints that Edward Harrigan (for whom see "Babies on Our Block") might have written, or rewritten, it, but I don't find it among the songs composed by David Braham in John Franceschina, David Braham: The American Offenbach, Routledge, 2003, so the Harrigan songster just adds to the confusion. Presence in that particular songster doesn't prove anything, though, since it included several pieces not by Harrigan. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: BrdHMFW

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography