Red Man's Wife, The

DESCRIPTION: "'Tis what they say, The little heel fits in a shoe." The singer loves the red man's wife. He's spent nine months in prison, but would leap the sea to be with her. The Day of Doom will come, earth will be destroyed; he'll still cry for the red man's wife
AUTHOR: unknown (English translation by Douglas Hyde, according to Hoagland)
EARLIEST DATE: 1893 (Hyde, Abhráin grádh chúige Connacht)
KEYWORDS: love separation
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 281-282, "The Red Man's Wife" (1 text)
DT, WIFERED2
ADDITIONAL: ADDITIONAL: Douglas Hyde, _Abhráin grádh chúige Connacht, or, Love songs of Connacht_, T. F. Unwin, 1893 (available on Google Books), p. 99, "The Red Man's Wife" (1 text, apparently with an Irish original)
Kathleen Hoagland, editor, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry (New York, 1947), pp. 232-233, "The Red Man's Wife" (1 text, translated by Douglas Hyde)
Donagh MacDonagh and Lennox Robinson, _The Oxford Book of Irish Verse_ (Oxford, 1958, 1979), pp. 128-129, "The Red Man's Wife" (1 text, translated by Douglas Hyde)
Roud #15013
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Red-Haired Man's Wife" (plot elements)
NOTES [109 words]: Shoemaker says this is from a Gaelic (presumably Irish Gaelic) original, but gives no information about it. Could it be another version derived from "The Red-Haired Man's Wife"? There are some thematic similarities, and no sign that the "red man" is an Indian; it sounds more like a European with reddish coloring. And it appears to have been translated by Douglas Hyde. Unlike "The Red-Haired Man's Wife," there is no hint whatsoever that this went into tradition. (Shoemaker does not count, because he lifted several Hyde pieces and presented them as traditional.)
For background on the work of Douglas Hyde, see the notes to "My Own Dark Maiden." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.4
File: Shoe281

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