I've Got Rings On My Fingers

DESCRIPTION: "Jim O'Shea was cast away upon an Indian isle," where his Irishness is so appealing that the natives appoint him "chief Pajandrum." He writes to his "Irish Rose," Rose Magee, to join him and marry as he lives among the islanders and his harem
AUTHOR: Words: R. P. Weston and F. J. Barnes / Music: Maurice Scott (source: Davison)
EARLIEST DATE: 1909 (source: Davison)
KEYWORDS: travel wreck home marriage ring
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
DT, RINGFING*
ADDITIONAL: Peter Davison, _Songs of The British Music Hall_, Oak, 1971, pp. 77-79, "I've Got Rings On My Fingers" (1 text, 1 tune, as sung by Ellaline Terris)
Roud #5760
NOTES [181 words]: For the long list of songs by R. P. Weston, or Weston and Bert Lee, see the notes to "Goodbye-ee."
The evidence that this song is traditional is very thin -- one collection so modern that it very likely was learned from a recording. But the song is well enough known that I've included it for others' reference.
Davison points out the interesting fact that the person wearing "rings on my fingers, bells on my toes" is not Rose Magee, nor Ellaline Terriss who sang the song, but Jim O'Shea himsef. It would surely have been an interesting site to see him, had he existed.
Davison also wonders why Rose would go to marry a man who had been given a harem, even if it was only an "ornament."
The song is of course pure balderdash, but there was a significant tendency in the English music hall to produce stage-Irish songs in the period before World War I, many of them featuring the same sort of genial improbability as this song (see John Mullen, The Show Must Go On! Popular Song in Britain during the First World War, French edition 2012; English edition, Ashgate, 2015, p. 92). - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: RcIGROMF

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