The Irish Jaunting Car

The Irish Jaunting Car is a folk song associated with the United Kingdom and Ireland. The words were reportedly written by the entertainer Valentine Vousden in the late 1850s, shortly after Queen Victoria's visit to Ireland, and events of the Crimean War.^[1] The original words to the song are widely debated and disputed.

Percy French wrote his own version of the song 'The Irish Jaunting Car' for his highly successful comic opera The Knight of the Road. Bernadette Lowry in her book (Dec 2021) 'Sounds of Manymirth on the Night's Ear Ringing: Percy French (1854-1920) His Jarvey Years and Joyce's Haunted Inkbottle' discovered that the reference 'he might be a Volunteer Vousdem' in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is a reference to Percy French and this opera by French which Joyce knew well.^[2] Lowry found reams of French's material including from his comic paper The Jarvey in Joyce's final novel. Crucially, she discovered the reference to the death of French in Liverpool on page 73–74 of Finnegans Wake. French's comic weekly magazine called The Jarvey from January 1889 -January 1891 is based on the ramblings of a jarvey on an Irish Jaunting car. Lowry traced reams from the magazine in Finnegans Wake. Her scholarship marks the first serious exploration of The Jarvey comic journal.^[2]

The original tune of The Irish Jaunting Car was later used by several other writers as a setting for their patriotic lyrics, particularly among the Irish diaspora in the United States. These included the 1861 marching song The Bonnie Blue Flag by Irish born entertainer Harry McCarthy, and The Homespun Dress by Carrie Belle Sinclair, a volunteer nurse from Savannah, Georgia. Further variants such as "The Irish Volunteer" continue to use the original tune.^[3][4]