Old maid's last prayer; and the Primrose girl

“Old Maid’s Last Prayer” may have been written by a man writing as a woman for satirical purposes. A variant of this text is on a White broadside now at the Peabody Essex Museum, a companion to a similar text called “Old Bachelor’s Last Prayer” with a similar relief cut. The two present a fairly disagreeable picture of women. The “Old Bachelor” did not survive in oral tradition but the basic text of “Old Maid” was widespread, collected with many different titles and tunes through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Roud #802; Wolfe, Secular Music #6659). The text appeared in twenty-two songsters between 1798 and 1820 (R. Keller, Early American Songsters).

The basic song of “The Primrose Girl” was issued at least twice, from the same plates, as American sheet music under the title “Two Bunches a Penny Primroses” (ca. 1795-1804 and ca. 1800; Sonneck, Bibliography 440) as well as in this Thomas broadside copy. The sentimental woman’s song seems English in style and topic but we have found no English versions of this text nor any other trace in America. Apparently it never was much in demand outside of Philadelphia even though it may have circulated for a decade. White may have gotten his text directly from one of the sheet music editions, but more likely he worked from an intermediate printing on a broadside or in a songster. An entirely different song circulated as “The Primrose Girl” well into the nineteenth century. It was a sentimental song by James Hewitt beginning “Come buy of poor Kate (Mary),” with a different tune (R. Keller, Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources; Roud). The text appeared in five songsters between 1798 and 1802 (R. Keller, Early American Songsters).