Widow Machree

Samuel Lover’s comic proposal to a widow (“the shovel and tongs to each other belongs”), which appeared in his 1842 novel Handy Andy and circulated widely as sheet music by 1847. Lover set his words to an older air — the melody is cross-referenced to Petrie’s “My Ain Kind Dearie (2)” and “Sweet Innisfallen” — and the tune also entered instrumental circulation as a 6/8 jig, printed by Elias Howe in Boston and appearing in Ryan’s Mammoth Collection, White’s Unique Collection (1896), and the American Veteran Fifer. Lover was, incidentally, the grandfather of composer Victor Herbert.