Lanigan's Ball (I)

DESCRIPTION: Jimmy Lanigan had "batter'd away till he hadn't a pound"; coming into money from his father, he determines to have a party. A fight ends the ball when "Old Shamus the piper" was tangled in "pipes, bellows, chanters" and "the girls in their ribbons"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1863 (Dime-Song-Book #10)
KEYWORDS: money party fight dancing drink music humorous brawl
FOUND IN: US(MW) Ireland Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (9 citations):
Greig/Duncan3 627, "Lannagan's Ball" (2 fragments, 2 tunes)
Spaeth-WeepSomeMoreMyLady, pp. 222-224, "Lanigan's Ball" (1 text, 1 tune)
O'Conor-OldTimeSongsAndBalladOfIreland, pp. 100-101, "Lannigan's Ball" (1 text)
OLochlainn-IrishStreetBallads 52, "Lanigan's Ball" (1 text, 1 tune)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #1216, p. 4, "Lannegan's Ball" (4 references)
Dime-Song-Book #10, pp. 12-13, "Lanigan's Ball" (1 text)
New-Comic-Songster, p. 8, "Lanigan's Ball" (1 text, 1 tune)
cf. Gardner/Chickering-BalladsAndSongsOfSouthernMichigan, p. 480, "Lanigan's Ball" (source notes only)
DT, LANIBALL*
ST SWM222 (Partial)
Roud #3011
RECORDINGS:
Warde Ford, "Jimmie Lanigan" [fragment] (AFS 4212 A4, 1939; in AMMEM/Cowell)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(2058), "Lannigan's Ball", H. Such (London), 1863-1885; also Harding B 15(167a), Harding B 11(3172), Harding B 26(345), 2806 c.8(124), "Lannigan's Ball"; 2806 b.11(154), "Lannigan's Ball!"
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Blythesome Bridal" (theme)
SAME TUNE:
Larry Magee's Wedding (File: OCon083)
The President's Ball ("No doubt you've all heard of the hop of Tim Lannegan") (Wolf-AmericanSongSheets p. 129)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Laddikin's Ball
NOTES [220 words]: This reminds me quite a bit of "The Blythesome Bridal," in that the minimalist plot is offered simply to offer a justification for the party that the song is really about. - RBW
OLochlainn-IrishStreetBallads: "Air and fragment of words from my mother who learnt them in Kilkee about 1880.... I have seen a full music sheet of this song published about the 'seventies, where words were ascribed to 'Mr. Gavan, the celebrated Galway poet.'"
The versions of "Lanigan's Ball" that I have seen (the broadsides, O'Conor-OldTimeSongsAndBalladOfIreland, OLochlainn, the Spaeth fragment in the Supplemental Tradition) vary very little. The fragments in Greig/Duncan3 have a phrase ("Just in time for Lannagan's/Laddikin's ball") that ends a verse of other texts but the lines preceding that phrase ("I'll get up in the morning early, I'll get up and gie ye a call, I'll get up in the mornin' early") do not come close to fitting any of those texts. Greig, in Greig/Duncan3, suggests this as "kind of chorus." - BS
A date in the 1870s, or earlier, sees nearly certain, since Edwin Wolf 2nd, American Song Sheets, Slip Ballads, and Political Broadsides 1850-1870, Library Company of Philadelphia, 1963, p. 84, lists four mid-nineteenth century broadsides, mostly distinct from the British broadsides in the Bodleian collection. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: SWM222

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