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Curious- What were the Irish "fragments"? I don't believe that they have been quoted in Mudcat. ???
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To quote myself ...

1. The Origins – Somewhere in Ireland, 1790

In Dublin in the 1790s, a song called "The Unfortunate Rake" was being sung on the streets. Although (as we shall see) later versions which clearly derive from this song exist, only two stanzas of this progenitor of a whole series of metamorphosed laments remain:

Get six of my comrades to carry my coffin,
Six girls of the city to bear me on,
And each of them carry a bunch of red roses,
So they don't smell me as they walk along.

And muffle your drums, and play your fifes lowly,
Play the dead march as you carry me on,
And fire your bright muskets all over my coffin,
Saying: 'There goes an unfortunate rake to his doom!"

This fragment is the only text, so far as I know, to contain the actual phrase "unfortunate rake". The rake seems to have declined rapidly in social status. In the earliest full text, he is a Buck, almost a synonym for a Rake, in the title, and is clearly officer class as two of his pallbearers are captains. In obviously related but slightly later texts, he has declined in status to the Other Ranks as a squaddy, swaddy, or trooper. The stink of the corpse, kept off by the bunches of red roses carried by the mourners, emphasises that these early versions had the dying man (as will later be the case, before the text is somewhat euphemised in its American versions) dying of syphilis.

The first of these two fragmentary stanzas appears again in "The Trooper Cut Down in His Prime", but there only the comrades carry the coffin – the flash girls of the city watch it as it passes, and moralise on the soldier's fate.

At about the same time, in Cork, another soldier was dying in a similar fashion, again to the sound of drums:

My jewel, my joy, don't trouble me with the drum,
    Sound the dead march as my corpse goes along;
And over my dead body throw handfuls of laurel,
    And let them all know that I'm going to my rest.

[EndIf]

Robin

(Oh, I'm using the OED2(3) on CD-Rom -- easier to search.It's [I think] technically the third edition -- not quite the latest -- the on-line version, to which I don't have access, adds stuff -- D'oh!)

As to slang, the OED obviously sucks. Partridge is better. I don't have access to primary texts of the 18thC slang dictionaries.

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Re, "flash girls", Rictor quoth:

Hi Robin,

Nope, I can't think of any usage of "flash girls". They are lots of early eighteenth century references to "flash houses" and "flash kens" (safe houses for thieves and their whores), and to "flash words" (thieves' cant), but I haven't noticed "flash girls" specifically. The word "flash" seems to be used mostly in connection with thieves, and probably (in my view) relates to their cunning and quickness at picking pockets etc. (though some etymologists relate it to their flashy or gaudy style of clothing or bravado etc.).

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... me, I really like the term flash dona. [g]

R.