The song may be over-used, but I like Irish Washerwoman. I have begun learning this classic tune on me whistle. It is a fun song. And there are ample samples on youtube.
This would be my first official jig I am learning.
It’s funny, I’ve been listening to and playing ITM for 30 years+ and I’ve never heard a “real” ITM musician play it except on a 78 from the 1920’s.
I’ve actually worked up a flute/whistle version which gives the tune a style which ITM players would find acceptable, I think. I had to rework the tune a bit to make it fit our concept of the structure of ITM.
Few tunes are ever overused for being bad. To attain that status, they had to be pretty good melodies in the first place.
Can we have a look at your tune then, Panceltic Piper? And maybe hear it?
Best wishes.
Mr Internet says that over the years it’s been recorded by fake ITM players like Patsy Touhey, Joe Derrane and Jerry O’Brien, Paddy Glackin, Sean Og Potts, & Ed Reavey.
I have an idle notion that you might be able to play “The St. Patrick’s Day March” alongside “The Irish Washerwoman” and get something slightly better than either one.
Haven’t managed to convince anyone to let me try it with them, though.
That’s interesting, I didn’t know so many had recorded it. I’ve only heard it on old 78’s by the likes of Touhey.
Of course Touhey, in addition to being a great traditional uilleann piper, played all the hokey tin-pan-alley stuff of his day, and was a stand-up comedian.
This reminds me of a story a fiddler friend told me: he went into a violin shop to buy some rosin or whatever, and the woman there, the owner and a good “classical” violinist, asked my friend what sort of music he played on violin. “Irish music” he replied.
“Oh, I play Irish music too!” she said, tucked her violin under her chin, and proceeded to play Irish Washerwoman entirely staccato, with the bow bouncing up and down on and off the strings for each note.
Also, for some reason, every pseudo-Irish band plays Irish Washerwoman where they start out rather slow and keep speeding it up until it’s a blaze of notes. They think it’s a show-stopper, that it’s somehow really impressive.
The versions of this tune one usualy hears, likewise played by people clueless about ITM, don’t have a form that fits what we think of as being acceptable ITM. That’s why I put rolls etc in it, to make it sound like a normal Irish “double jig”.
Time for this one again ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-JAP7Kf1cI
Who’s the guy with the beard ?
Does that illustrate both S1m0n’s and pancelticpiper’s views ?
Drop a YouTube bomb on us, will you? Well take this! and This!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhEHmmhS4f0
As the OP said
I liked the sax arrangment.
sadley, this jig keeps getting pushed to the bottom of my ‘to learn’ list as its less fun the the other obscure hornpipes / funkey reels / videogame theme music which usually populated said list.
im sure i will get round to it.
Yikes! Then there’s the song based on said tune:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz_S7MSgwwI#t=12s
I still can’t get a hold of this tune. I have the first part down, but the very last part just throws me off.
It’s certainly not a terribly simple tune.
The Sailor’s Hornpipe (the one Popeye
sings) gives me similar problems.
Thanks to the OP, I’ve been trying to figure out what tune that was for a few years. Now that I know there is a “tune that must not be named” type of disdain following it, I will attempt to learn it out of curiousity, then be careful never to play it in public 
Another one that was terribly familiar yet escaped me for a bit was “Rakes of Mallow”. Any other songs that would come to mind, ones that most everyone associates with Irish music (whether they be ITM in origin or not)?
Piffle! Ignore those fuddy-duddies. No one likes music snobs, except other snobs. 
When you’ve got this Washerwoman tune you can go on to similar fingering demands in The Boys of Bluehill and Harvest Home.
Ignore the ITM extremists. They sometimes give the impression CnF is dedicated to them and that ITM is all, or should be all that exists. It’s not. Don’t worry, they get flattened every now and again by our reigning musicians (not me) when they get too out of hand.That seems to do the trick until next time.
I can see that lyrics would be memorable
to enough people such that Danny Boy or
Irish Eyes are Smiling might become easily
linked to Irish music by the mainstream.
But I wonder what caused such tunes as
Rakes of Mallow and Irish Washerwoman
to be placed in the collective subconscious?
Were they used in Vaudeville? A Bugs Bunnny
cartoon?
I think The Irish Washer Woman is quite a sophisticated tune, especially the last line of the second part.
It’s also quite good practice when you’re trying to get the hang of a jig rythmn because it’s quite obvious in that respect, bit like the Kesh.
Rakes of Mallow = Prelude to the Big Fight from the soundtrack to “The Quiet Man” movie, probably where I first heard it. That soundtrack is likely a good place to start to find other “familiar” Irish music (http://www.moviemusic.com/soundtrack/quietman-exp)