I'll Tell My Ma (I)

DESCRIPTION: "I'll tell my my when I go home, The boys won't leave the girls alone; Pulling their hair and breaking their combs...." In some texts, the story ends there; in others, the girl says, "But that's all right till I go home"; we are told of her true love
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1907 (Jekyll-JamaicanSongAndStory); 1885 (parody, according to Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame)
KEYWORDS: courting hair fight
FOUND IN: Ireland Australia Britain(England(North)) Canada(Mar) West Indies(Jamaica)
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Henry/Huntingdon/Herrmann-SamHenrysSongsOfThePeople H48e, p. 11, "I'll Tell My Ma" (1 fragment, consisting solely of the "I'll Tell My Ma" stanza, 2 tunes)
Meredith/Covell/Brown-FolkSongsOfAustraliaVol2, p. 146, "(Polka)" (1 fragment, consisting solely of the "I'll Tell My Ma" stanza, 1 tune)
Jekyll-JamaicanSongAndStory 117, "(When I go home I will tell me mumma)" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame 95, "I'll Tell Mother" (4 texts, 1 tune)
Peirce-KeepTheKettleBoiling, p. 26, "(I'll tell me ma, when I go home)" (1 text)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #277, "I'll tell Ma when I get home" (1 text, consisting solely of the "I'll Tell My Ma" stanza); #377, "My mother said I never should" (1 text, which opens with "My Mother Said (Gypsies in the Wood)" and concludes with part of "I'll Tell My Ma (I)"); #610, "The Wind and the rain and the wind blew high" (1 text, a middle verse of this)
Roud #2649
RECORDINGS:
Em Elliott, "I'll Tell My Ma When I Get Home" (on Elliotts01)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Wind (Rain, Rain, the Wind Does Blow)" (lyrics)
NOTES [155 words]: The Clancy Brothers version of this involves a girl, "the belle of Belfast city," setting her heart on a man. This doesn't seem to happen in many other versions I've seen, which are just the complaints about the boys teasing the girl, though it' s found, e.g., in Peirce-KeepTheKettleBoiling.
The question is, is this a conflate of "I'll Tell My Ma" with some other song (presumably "The Wind (Rain, Rain, the Wind Does Blow)," or is the Clancy version the original which broke in half? Roud lumps them, but I'm not sure that means much.
I eventually ended up splitting them, but I'm none too happy about the situation. - RBW
Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame: "A ditty that was the rage in late Victorian times.... Two of the earliest recordings are parodies ... 1885 ... and ... c. 1900...."
Jekyll-JamaicanSongAndStory's text makes a different point: "When I go home I will tell me mumma That the girls in Jamaica won't leave me alone." - BS
Last updated in version 6.5
File: MCB146

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