tl;dr; I’se the B’y; Irish Washerwoman
Today is a two-fer.
Most of you know that I work for Microsoft in the devices organization which means I work directly with Xbox console and HoloLens hardware development. I’ve finally decided my elevator speech goes something like this:
I work for Microsoft helping to make science fiction come true.
One of the “requirements” of my job is to: take home prototype devices and help test it to ensure that we “delight our customers”. This is part of Microsoft culture. We regularly hear this and other mantras, and honestly, Microsoft really walks the walk in so many progressive areas. I am proud to work for them.
As a consequence of this, I have had the new Xbox One X console, Project Scorpio, in my house for quite a long time. And I have been playing the technical alpha, closed beta, scale tests, and final beta for Sea of Thieves. And I love, Love, LOVE, this game! Diane has been a “Sea of Thieves Widow” for the past four weekends. The final beta was this past weekend and I’ve had sea shanties stuck in my head for days.
Which brings me to today’s songs. My earliest memories of both of these songs is somewhere between three and five years old when my mother’s father, Grandad, would bounce me on his knee and hum/sing these songs to me. The memories were with me in a vague way for many years but it wasn’t until 2005 when I attended my first Old Home Week in Tabusintac in twenty -five years.
Old Home Week in Tabusintac is a *really* special thing. Since 1950, every single person who has ever had even the slightest connection to the tiny fishing village of Tabusintac, NB comes “home” for the first week in August every five years. There is a parade, and a blessing of the boats, and fireworks, and a quilt show, and an antique car show, and family reunions, and boat rides out to the beach, and live music & dancing every night in the “big tent”. I mean, this is an honest to God, down home, event. It’s something simultaneously lost in time and the very pinnacle of “today”. And no matter how old you get, how busy you are, how far you roam, all roads lead home.
In 2005, at Old Home Week, one of the bands played both of these songs. I knew both of them but had names for neither. I remember asking my cousin, Shirley, what they were but she didn’t remember either. I searched the internet. (You know? This was a large part of the “promise”: to have all the knowledge of the world at your finger tips.)
It took me a long time but I found them both.
And I learned that these two were called: I’se the B’y and the Irish Washerwoman.
So today, please have a listen to my childhood, if you please.
wondering aloud 