Bunch of rushes, and A sprig of shillelah, and shamrock so green

A song of seduction, “Bunch of Rushes” is set to an Irish tune known as Cailín ag buaint luachra, or “The Little Girl Cutting Rushes” (Fleischmann, Sources #4253). The lyrics were printed in English and American songsters and chapbooks, and on slip ballads, well into the nineteenth century (Roud #831).

“A Sprig of Shillelah, and Shamrock So Green”appears to have been composed with the lyrics and the tune of the 1720s song “The Original Black Joke, Sent from Dublin” in mind. In the early song, the storyline is of a whore “with a black joke & belly so white,” the burden line falling on bars 9 and 10 of the tune in the same way “with his sprig of shillelah, and shamrock so green” does in this text. “Black Joke” was immensely popular as a song throughout the century and spawned many parodies. In “Sprig of Shillelah” the “Black Joke” imagery is toned down but can certainly be read as sexual innuendos with an Irish touch. The change in expression and the pan-British nationalism of the last verse suggests that they may not have been present in the original composition but a later interpolation, reflecting the French threats on Britain in the early 1800s.

Probably written in the late 1790s, the song is usually credited to Irish songwriter Edward Lysaght (1763-1810); however, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, the text “has been, with other popular songs, assigned to Lysaght in error” (34:360). The song was published in sheet music form in New York in 1809 as “a favorite song, sung by Mr. Johnstone” (Webb 299; Wolfe, Secular Music #8512). John Johnstone (1759-1828) was a principal tenor singer at Covent Garden from 1783 until the end of the century (Porter, With an Air 318). In 1811 the text appeared in two New York newspapers, the Political Bulletin (January 2) and the Shamrock (April 13). The song became very popular and was published in England and America in sheet music, songsters, and tune collections, appearing in thirty-eight songsters between 1807 and 1820 (Philbrick 256; R. Keller, Early American Songsters). The lyrics were later used by Henry B. Code in The Russian Sacrifice (1813). The song was still being performed in theaters well into the 1860s (Roud #13379).