Annotation:Buy-a-Broom Waltz
X:1 T:Union Waltz T:Buy a Broom L:1/8 M:3/4 S:Elias Howe - Diamond School for the Violin (c. 1861) Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:D df | a2 abag | f2d2d2 | e2A2 A2 | fede fg | a2 abag | f2d2d2 | e2A2A2 | d4 :| |: cd | e2A2A2 | f2d2d2 | e2A2A2 | fede fg | a2 abag | f2d2d2 | e2A2A2 | d4 :||
BUY-A-BROOM WALTZ. AKA - "Bavarian Air (A)," "Bohemian Waltz (3)," "Union Waltz (1)." AKA and see "Ach du lieber Augustine," "Augustin Waltz (L')," "Did You Ever See a Lassie," "I'm a Little Dutch Girl." English, Waltz (3/8 time). C Major (Ashman, Howe, Winter/Woolfe): D Major (Kohler, Sumner): D Major {'A' and 'B' parts} & D Minor {'C' and 'D' parts} (Kennedy). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB (Ashman, Howe, Winter/Woolfe): AABBCC (Sumner): AABBCCDD (Kennedy): AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIIJJLL (Kohler). The tune is familiar as the vehicle for the words to the nursery song known variously as "Did you Ever See a Lassie," "I'm a Little Dutch Girl" or "Lieber Augustine." Editor Ashman notes that Dutch and Deutsch (for 'German') seem to have been confused in Shropshire {as they were in the United States when the German immigrant Amish were labelled Pennsylvania Dutch'}, and that 'buy-a-broom' girls from Bavaria were in trouble as itinerants in England in the early 19th century. In fact, the tune is an adaptation of the German melody "O Du Lieber Augustin." Wulf Stratowa, writing in Oesterreichishce Lyrik aus Neun Jahrhunderten (Vienna, 1848) identifies the composer as Marx Augustin, an itinerant bagpiper who was said to have survived a number of calamities, including the plague in 1679 and the Turkish occupation of Vienna in 1683. Augustin died on an Austrian highway in October, 1705. "Buy a Broom" was popularized in England in the early 19th century by the famous singer and actress, Madame (Eliza) Vestris (1797-1856), who sang the song on the London stage in 1826, dressed as a Bavarian peasant.
"Buy a Broom" can be found in the mid-19th century music manuscript of William Winter, a shoemaker and violin player who lived in West Bagborough in Somerset, southwest England.
In America, the song was published in Philadelphia by George Willig in 1827. The "Buy a Broom" title appears in a list of Maine fiddler Mellie Dunham's tunes (Dunham was Henry Ford's champion fiddler in the latter 1920's).
