All Around My Hat (song)

"All Around My Hat"
Song
Language	English
Written	19th century
Songwriter(s)	Traditional

The song "All Around my Hat" (Roud 567 and 22518,Laws P31) is of nineteenth-century English origin. In an early version, dating from the 1820s, a Cockney costermonger vowed to be true to his fiancée, who had been sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia for theft and to mourn his loss of her by wearing green willow sprigs in his hatband for "a twelve-month and a day," the willow being a traditional symbol of mourning. The song was made famous by Steeleye Span in 1975. A more traditional version is available on a release sung by John Langstaff.

In Ireland, Peadar Kearney adapted the song to make it relate to a Republican lass whose lover has died in the Easter Rising, and who swears to wear the Irish tricolor in her hat in remembrance in The Tri-coloured Ribbon.

A young man is forced to leave his lover, usually to go to sea. On his return he finds her on the point of being married to another man. In some versions he goes into mourning, with the green willow as a symbol of his unhappiness (willow is considered to be a weeping tree). In other versions he reminds her of her broken promise, and she dies mysteriously. In some versions he simply contemplates his lover left behind, without actually returning to find her being married. In other versions, the young man is a street hawker who is mourning his separation from his lover who has been transported to Australia for stealing.

The song has typical archetypal elements of the separated lovers, the interrupted wedding, and the inconsolable rejected lover. In the "Yellow Ribbon" variants, the adornment is a reminder of lost love, similar to Ireland's The Black Velvet Band.

The song is found in England, Scotland and Canada, all seafaring nations. In Ireland it has been adapted to a modern conflict - the Irish Republican movement.

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