Giles Scroggins ghost; together with Looney Mactwolter, and Sally MacGee

Like Tid re I, this comic song, “Giles Scroggins Ghost” was made popular through theatrical performances by William Twaits (ca. 1781-1814). Printing the text on January 13, 1807, the New Jersey Journal declared that the song was “sung at most of the Theatres in the United States with universal applause.” The song’s subtitle on the broadside, “As Sung by Mr. Twaits, at the Theatre,” may refer to Twaits’s Boston appearances in 1808 (Porter, With an Air 225-28). Written by Charles Dibdin Jr. (1768-1833), the lyrics were set to music by William Reeve (1757-1815), an English composer with whom he worked in the theater. Several sources omit “Jr.” from Dibdin’s name in the attribution for the text: Charles Isaac Mungo Dibdin wrote lyrics that were set by Reeve; his father set his own texts. The text appeared in twenty-two songsters between 1807 and 1817 (Wolfe, Secular Music #7336-41; Roud #1620; R. Keller, Early American Songsters). This appealing song lasted in print and in oral tradition. Charles Dickens opens his Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848) with a reference to this song: “‘But that’s no rule,’ as the ghost of Giles Scroggins says in the ballad.”

“Looney Mactwolter” opens Act II of The Review; or, The Wags of Windsor (1801) by George Colman the Younger, sung by the servant Looney Mactoulter (Tasch 19). Despite its near-nonsense sentiment it was printed in several editions on English slip ballads and American songsters in the nineteenth century, often with the title “Judy O’Flannikin,” the girl of Looney’s heart (Bodleian). The text appeared in twenty-two songsters between 1805 and 1820 (R. Keller, Early American Songsters).

Another theatrical skit of song and narrative using Irish dialect and accents, “Sally MacGee” has a suggestive burden (“whack fol de ral, &c.”) of shifting meaning. It is not quite clear what the whole story is about. The tune indicated on the broadside is a double jig called “Murphey Delaney” that appeared in Edward Light’s Introduction to Playing the Harp-Lute (1785) (12), and continued in Irish traditional music (Fleischmann, Sources #2140). In William Collins’s New Vocal Miscellany (37), the tune is titled “Murtagh Delany and Jenny O’Danelly.” The text appeared in six American songsters between 1805 and 1817 (R. Keller, Early American Songsters,). The C. F. Barrett credited as author may be the same person who wrote gothic novels and horrific tales such as The Black Castle; or, The Spectre of the Forest (1803) and The Perilous Cavern; or, Banditti of the Pyrenees (1803), although this text seems more lighthearted than most of his output.