My Seventy-Six Geared Wheel

DESCRIPTION: "O how I long for solid roads In the merry month of June ... How jolly I will feel A-spinning down to Rustico On my seventy-six geared wheel." The singer lists his favorite stops on the way to Mary's "big front door" at Rustico.
AUTHOR: Mary Fleming? Ambrose Cosgrove?
EARLIEST DATE: 1965 (Ives-DriveDullCareAway-PrinceEdwardIsland)
KEYWORDS: courting technology
FOUND IN: Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Dibblee/Dibblee-FolksongsFromPrinceEdwardIsland, pp. 25-26, "My Seventy-Six Geared Wheel" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ives-DriveDullCareAway-PrinceEdwardIsland, pp. 151-152,251, "My Seventy-Six Geared Wheel" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #12477
RECORDINGS:
John O'Connor, "My Seventy-Six Geared Wheel" (on MREIves01)
NOTES [120 words]: Dibblee/Dibblee-FolksongsFromPrinceEdwardIsland: Maybe "seventy-six geared wheel" refers to a geared bicycle built in 1876.
The Rusticos are on the north coast of Queens, Prince Edward Island.
Dibblee/Dibblee-FolksongsFromPrinceEdwardIsland claims the author is Mary Fleming, the Mary of the song. Ives-DriveDullCareAway-PrinceEdwardIsland claims the author is Ambrose Cosgrove.
Ives-DriveDullCareAway-PrinceEdwardIsland speculates that "seventy-six" "is probably a then-current way of referring to a bike's power (a derivation involving gear-ratio and wheel size, perhaps), Mr Cosgrove is saying that he's riding the last word in bikes.... [The] distance [was] some forty miles, and not all of it first-class highway." - BS
File: Din025

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