Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron

"Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron" is an English folk song about a man admiring the woman he loves as she goes through daily stages of washing and ironing clothes. It is classified as Roud number 869. The earliest date in the Vaughan Williams catalogue is 1904, as collected in Somerset and arranged by Cecil Sharp. A later entry for 1908 gives the source as Jane Gulliford from Somerset. The Fresno State University gives a slightly different title, "Driving Away at the Smoothing Iron", with a date of 1909.

Lyrics
'Twas on a [ Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday ] morning

When I beheld my darling:

She looked so neat and charming

In every high degree;

She looked so neat and nimble, O,

[ A-washing | A-hanging | A-starching | A-ironing | A-folding | A-airing | A-wearing ] of her linen, O,

Refrain

Dashing away with the smoothing iron,

Dashing away with the smoothing iron,

She stole my heart away.

Adaptations
The musical comedy duo Flanders and Swann quoted the first 7/8 syllables of each verse, verbatim and notewise, at the beginning of each verse of The Gas Man Cometh, the first track on At The Drop of Another Hat (1963).

The tune was used by the English composer John Rutter for the fourth movement of his Suite for Strings (1973) under the title Dashing Away.