"I've Got Rings On My Fingers" is a popular song written in 1909, words by R. P. Weston and Fred J. Barnes, and music by Maurice Scott. It concerns an Irishman named Jim O'Shea, a castaway who finds himself on an island somewhere in the East Indies, whereupon he is made Chief Panjandrum by the natives because they like his red hair and his Irish smile. He then sends a letter to his girlfriend, Rose McGee, imploring her to come join him.
The song was a hit for Ada Jones, and for Blanche Ring (who first performed it in The Midnight Sons, and carried it over into 1910's The Yankee Girl).[1] The verses explain the situation. The chorus is best remembered:
In 1962, Ray Stevens referenced the expression in his comic song, "Ahab the Arab", in which Ahab's girlfriend Fatima wore "rings on her fingers and bells on her toes and a bone in her nose, ho ho."
In 1928, a children's book, Jiji Lou: The Story of a Cast-Off Doll, by Lurline Bowles Mayol, featured a rag doll named Jiji Lou Jay O'Shay, who explains that her owner found her name "On our phonograph... It was a song that Sally Lee loved. It was all about 'rings on her fingers and bells on her toes' and it ended with 'Jiji Lou Jay O'Shay.'" The book was illustrated by Fern Bisel Peat and published by Saalfield.
