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 (1878-1936) and F. J. Barnes / Music: Maurice Scott (source: Davison)
EARLIEST DATE: 1909 (source: Davison)
KEYWORDS: travel wreck home marriage ring
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (3 citations):
FolkSongAndMusicHall, "I've got rings on my fingers"
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 [250 words]: For the long list of songs by R. P. Weston, 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 sight 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."
Some of the ideas in this song are much older. Jackson-EarlySongsOfUncleSam, p. 165, has a song "The Tongo Islands," which begins, "I sailed from port one summer's day." The sailor is wrecked "All in the Tongo Islands. The king he made a chief of me, They called me Koora Kira Kee." The main difference is that this fellow doesn't have a girl to invite to the island; he is supposed to marry the king's daughter, but ends up back home.
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
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File: RcIGROMF

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