Dublin City- Irish bartender (NY) c. 1944 Ives
[From Burl Ives' 1945 recording, "A Collection of Ballads and Folk Songs" (Personality Series. Album No. A-407. New York: Decca Records). This was first published version ("Wayfaring Stranger: An Autobiography" 1948) of Spanish Lady with standard archaic opening stanzas. It is similar to Frank Harte's 1973 version with the two choruses ("Twenty-Eighteen" and "Wheel"). It was titled "Dublin City" and was collected about 1944 [my date, Ives was back in NYC Dec. 1943]. Did Frank Harte get part of his version from Burl Ives? Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
Both Ives' version and Dyer-Bennet's have "soul" instead of "sole" (as bottom of her feet). Ives' choruses are associated with the related "Madam" while his text doesn't mention "Spanish Lady."
R. Matteson 2017]
Here's the story behind the 1945 recording and the song, "Dublin City" which was published in "Wayfaring Stranger: An Autobiography" by BURL IVES. (Whittlesey House, 1948. McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. New York:
It was lunchtime and I began to feel hungry. The aroma of beer drifted past my nostrils, my head turned toward it, and I followed my nose into a little bar-restaurant on Third Avenue.
The bar stretched along one wall; opposite was a row of tables covered with red-and-white checked cloths. A man and woman were seated at a table eatinsf boiled beef and white potatoes. An old man sat sipping a glass of beer at the end of the bar, his back toward the street. Further along the bar a grocery clerk sat in a white apron and coat and a hard-brimmed straw hat. I took a bar stool and ordered a beer and a salami sandwich. Above the bar were two Irish thorn canes crossed like swords. When the bartender spoke, my guess that he would be an Irishman was confirmed. He had the Irish kind of face that all good Irish bartenders have. He called my order to the kitchen. "Coming up," the cook called back.
The bartender mopped up the bar and served me a beer. Nobody spoke except the couple at the table and they spoke in quiet tones. An elevated train roared by every minute or two, trucks and taxicabs made gross music as they stopped, started and tooted their horns. The bartender took a clean cloth and started to polish the glasses stacked before the mirror behind the bar. As he twisted the white cloth in and out and around the glasses he hummed a melody in a minor key over and over. His song was interrupted by the cook who handed him a plate with my sandwich. He mopped the bar in front of me, and his cloth absorbed the rings of wet beer made by my glass.
"What was that tune you were humming?" I asked.
He looked at me, surprised and embarrassed. "And was I hummin' a tune?"
"Yes, you were, and a very nice tune."
He shook his head, "If my life depended on it, I couldn't repeat it."
I started to eat. He served a beer to the old man and began to polish the glasses again. Soon he was humming the tune. I took a pencil from my pocket, drew a musical staff on my paper napkin, and jotted down the notes of the melody.
I called him for another beer, and when he stood before me I said, "What is the name of this song?" I sang his tune back to him.
"Why, that's a song I sang as a young man in Dublin. Where did you hear it?"
I told him it was his melody, and he was much impressed and looked at the notes on the paper napkin. "What do you think about that now?" was all his amazement could utter.
I asked him if he could recall the words. "I think so," he said, and quietly he sang as only an Irishman can sing his own songs:
As 1 was a walkin through Dublin City
About the hour of twelve at night,
It was there I spied a fair, pretty maid,
Washing her feet in candle light.
First she washed them, and then she dried them,
Around her shoulders she pegged a towel,
And in all me life I ne'er did see,
Such a fine young girl, upon my soul.
She had 20, 18, 16, 14;
12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, none;
She had 19, 17, 15, 13;
11, 9, 7, 5, 8 and one:
Round round, the wheel of fortune
Where it stops wearies me.
Fair maids they are so deceivin'
Sad experience teaches me,
She had 20, 18, 16, 14;
12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, none.
She had 19, 17, 15, 13;
11, 9, 7, 5, 3 and one.
When I had learned the song and put a guitar accompaniment to it, I made an acetate record at a little voice-reproduction shop and brought it to my friend the bartender. When I saw him a few weeks later he told me that he had gathered all his friends together to listen to it. He said it was his most prized possession.