Camp songs

… and nursery school songs as well.

I had two long phone visits with my sister this week, telling grandbaby stories and trying to remember all the songs and silly poems we knew way back when. (She’s lucky enough to have all six of hers nearby.). My youngest just turned three; and we’ve started with

I’m a little teapot, short and stout.
Here is my handle, here is my spout.
When I get all steamed up, then I shout:
“Just tip me over and pour me out!”

A text exchange with another sister helped me remember the watermelon song:

Now Southern fried chicken is mighty fine,
but all I want is a watermelon vine.
So, plant a another watermelon on my grave and let the juice slip through.

I’ve got my notes from the phone calls scribbled all over a cardboard box. Will add more when I empty it.

In my mind there's a huge difference between nursery rhymes and camp (fire) songs, and not such a big difference between the latter and rugby songs, but I'll try and remember a few as we go along.

A few memorable nursery rhymes from my childhood:

Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.

Oranges and lemons
Say the bells of St Clement's
You owe me five farthings
Say the bells of St Martin's
When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey
When I grow rich
Say the bells of Shoreditch
And when will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney
Oh I do not know
Say the great bells of Bow
Here comes a candle
To light you to bed
And here comes a chopper
To chop off your head.

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat,
Please put a penny in the old man's hat;
If you haven't got a penny a ha'penny will do,
If you haven't got a ha'penny, God bless you.

Goosey goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady's chamber.
There I met an old man
Who wouldn't say his prayers,
So I took him by his left leg
And threw him down the stairs.

Slightly later in life, often with a wee drinkie or two inside us, we would sing things like:

Gin gang, goolie goolie goolie goolie watcha, Gin gang goo, Gin gang goo
Heyla, heyla sheyla, Heyla sheyla, Heyla, ho!
Heyla, heyla sheyla, Heyla sheyla, Heyla, ho!
Shallywally, shallywally! Shallywally, shallywally!
Oompah-oompah! Oompah-oompah!

Then there was "The Quartermaster's Store":

There were rats, rats, big as bloody cats,
In the store, in the store.
There were rats, rats, big as bloody cats,
In the Quartermaster's store (behind the door)

{Chorus} My eyes are dim, I cannot see,
I have not brought my specs with me,
I have not brought my specs with me.

There was gravy, gravy, enough to float the navy,
In the store, in the store,
There was gravy, gravy, enough to float the navy,
In the Quartermaster's store (behind the door)

This song goes on and on for ever, with improvised harmonies, and with improvised lyrics picking on the name of each person present.

There was Tess, Tess, looking at her best...
There was Tim, Tim, looking rather slim... etc, etc ad nauseam.

There were also nonsense songs, such as "Lloyd George knew my father", which could be sung to the tune either of "Onward Christian Soldiers" or "Land of Hope and Glory":

Lloyd George knew my father, father knew Lloyd George,
Lloyd George knew my father, father knew Lloyd George,
Lloyd George knew my father, father knew Lloyd George,
Lloyd George knew my father, father knew Lloyd George... etc

And other repetitive nonsense songs such as:

I've got a wheelbarrow and the front wheel goes round,
I've got a wheelbarrow and the front wheel goes round,
I've got a wheelbarrow and the front wheel goes round,
I've got a wheelbarrow and the front wheel goes round.

and:

Charlie had a pigeon a pigeon a pigeon, Charlie had a pigeon a pigeon had he.
It flew in the morning, it flew in the night, and when it came home it was covered in...
Charlie had a pigeon...etc

and:

My father's a lavatory cleaner, he works all the day and the night,
And when he comes home in the morning, he smells like a bucket of...

{Chorus}...shine up your buttons with Brasso, only three ha'pence a tin,
You can buy it or nick it from Woolworths, I doubt if they've got any in.

We would also sing a lot of British and Irish folk, including Irish rebel songs. In those days I used to play the guitar so I would often find myself leading the singing.

>4 John5918:

In my mind there's a huge difference between nursery rhymes and camp (fire) songs, and not such a big difference between the latter and rugby songs, but I'll try and remember a few as we go along.

From a folklorist's standpoint, you are certainly right about the distinction between nursery rhymes and camp songs. Both have a certain amount of oral tradition about them, but nursery rhymes tend to be older, frequently cleaner, less concerned with contemporary issues.

For those interested in nursery rhymes, there is one reference to rule them all: Iona Opie and Peter Opie's The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. A real scholar will also probably want James Orchard Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales of England, which was the first really substantial scholarly collection. And then there are the various editions of Mother Goose's Melody and the like. I also rather like Brian Sutton-Smith's The Folkgames of Children, which has many children's rhymes collected in New Zealand. It's interesting to see how these rhymes which originated in England evolved in a climate other than Britain or America. (The amount of evolution is actually surprisingly slight.)

I know of only one book really devoted to campfire songs: Patricia Averill's Camp Songs Folk Songs. This is mostly songs for girls' camps (particularly girl scout camps), and is unindexed, so it's hard to use. It does at least demonstrate how many camps evolved their own "folk songs," usually about some local spot or event. The whole field needs a lot more research than it has gotten.

"The Quartermaster's Store" (Roud #10508) is indeed well-known -- and is a hymn knock-off, typically sung to "Power in the Blood." Its tendency to mix with "My Eyes Are Dim" is a curiosity -- "My Eyes Are Dim" is basically an old joke: A preacher in a church where they line out hymns (that is, where the leader speaks the words of the next line, and the congregation sings it) is trying to tell the congregation that he can't read the paper, and they sing the message back to him.

The number of "missing word" songs, such "Charlie had a pigeon," is large; I don't recall seeing that particular verse before. It looks like a version of "Sweet Violets" (Roud #10232), which often has the "lavatory cleaner" verse.

Some other missing-word examples are "George Washington"/"Hallelujah" ("The election now is over, Now, men, you all know well, The Democrats done the best they could But the Republicans gave them.... Hallelujah"), "Johnny Fell Down the Bucket," "Hopalong Peter," and "The Old Lady of Amsterdam."

From what I understand -- I don't have the book myself -- the best reference for this sort of thing is Michael Green's Rugby Songs. The really hardcore examples are, shall we say, concentrated in A Gentleman About Town's Immortalia.

There are, of course, clean camp songs, too. :-) And there are quite a few books of military songs which are closely aligned but perhaps more obscene.

And that, I suspect, is all the references anyone here wants, and then some. :-)

>5 waltzmn:

Thanks, Robert. That's very interesting. The oral tradition in folk songs lasted well into my lifetime. You'd hear a song, go up to the singer afterwards and ask him to write down the words and chords for you, or if that wasn't possible you'd remember them the best you could and try to get a recording of it somewhere to fill in the blanks. I still have in my music file a handwritten copy of "The Rawtenstall Annual Fair" written out for me in blue biro on a sheet of lined A4 notepaper by a mate at university fifty years ago. Nowadays you just google whatever words you can remember and before you know it you have endless different versions on the screen in front of you. More efficient, but I used to enjoy the old way!

Edited to add: You're right about the military songs. We were the post-war generation so just about every adult male that we knew (and not a few of the females too) had been in the military, either during World War II or doing their national service afterwards, and I think a lot of their songs rubbed off on us. As Londoners we'd also sing a lot of the popular music hall and Cockney songs, but I was lucky in my late teens to be exposed to the north of England and pick up some Yorkshire, Lancashire and Geordie songs, all of which I've sung as "camp fire songs". And we won't even begin to explore the rugby songs!

Green Grow the Rushes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Grow_the_Rushes,_O

>7 Crypto-Willobie:

Yes!

>6 John5918:

That's very interesting. The oral tradition in folk songs lasted well into my lifetime. You'd hear a song, go up to the singer afterwards and ask him to write down the words and chords for you, or if that wasn't possible you'd remember them the best you could and try to get a recording of it somewhere to fill in the blanks. I still have in my music file a handwritten copy of "The Rawtenstall Annual Fair" written out for me in blue biro on a sheet of lined A4 notepaper by a mate at university fifty years ago. Nowadays you just google whatever words you can remember and before you know it you have endless different versions on the screen in front of you. More efficient, but I used to enjoy the old way!

The old way is the right way. :-) If you get it from print, it can't be oral tradition. :-)

"The Rawtenstall Annual Fair" (Roud #23927) is a rare item -- apparently only two field collections have been published. I've never encountered it myself. If you are willing to share that text you have, I would happily share your work, with credit, in the Traditional Ballad Index and let the version live on.

>9 waltzmn:

Very willing. Send me your e-mail in a private comment on my profile page and I'll send you a scan of the copy I have.

>7 Crypto-Willobie:

Green Grow the Rushes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Grow_the_Rushes,_O

The Wikipedia article doesn't begin to do it justice. That's the great-granddaddy of cumulative songs. There are 218 entries for the song (Roud #133). The only other cumulative song comparable in terms of versions collected (other than "The Twelve Days of Christmas," which originated in tradition but which has become a pop song) is "I Had a Little Rooster"/"The Farmyard Song." It's not the oldest, to be sure; "The First Day of Yule" is in the Sloane Manuscript that's thought to date from the early fifteenth century and also in Oxford, Bodleian Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodleian 29734) from late in that century.

Incidentally, since we've spoken of military songs, there is a military rewrite, "I'll sing you one-oh, Green grow the rushes, oh. What is your one-oh.... Number one is the old C.O. And ever more shall be so." It can be found in Anthony Hopkins's (no, not that Anthony Hopkins!) Songs from the Front and Rear, which is the primary collection of Canadian World War II songs. (I believe there are other military songs to that tune, but the books aren't as clear about the melodies.)

Several scholar have connected it to the Passover tradition. Archer Taylor claimed a Sanskrit connection!

>11 waltzmn:
Actually I didn't read the wiki yet, I just put it there for lyric example and a little ref. I just remember it from Boy Scout camp and also my uncle's private camp. It has over- written almost all other campfire songs for me. Except maybe the obscene verses of Parly-vouz and Cinderella Dressed in Yella.

Is it really "by" Burns or did he just collect it at some point?
ETA, well that's a dumb question now that I'm reading the wiki...

>12 Crypto-Willobie:

Yes, I well remember Parley-vous - "Three German officers crossed the line..." - but the Cinderella one is new to me.

>13 John5918:

Yes, I well remember Parley-vous - "Three German officers crossed the line..." - but the Cinderella one is new to me.

"Cinderella, dressed in yellow, Went downtown to see her fellow. How many kisses did the get? One, two, three...."

"Made a mistake, And kissed a snake, How many doctors did it take...?"

"Cinderella, Dressed in red, Went downtown To buy some thread And there a fellow shot her dead...."

I never heard it personally, either, but it's fairly well-known. It seems to be exclusively American. And it almost has to be recent, because while the "Cinderella" motif is old, the name "Cinderella" is specific to the Charles Perrault version (in French, "Cendrillon"; translated to English by Robert Samber in 1729).

"Cinderella Dressed in yellow" (Roud #18410) appears to be a rope-counting rhyme. It's been collected several times in that context, and it works well for the purpose.

Wow, I must have led quite a deprived life! I’ve only heard two or three of the songs mentioned so far! I’m wondering, would “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza” fit into one of your lists?

>15 TempleCat:

Wow, I must have led quite a deprived life! I’ve only heard two or three of the songs mentioned so far! I’m wondering, would “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza” fit into one of your lists?

Most people who grow up these days aren't exposed to as many songs as children used to be, especially in rural areas where school was their main place to socialize. I know I didn't learn a lot of play songs as a child. And I for one have never, ever, in my life seen a playparty.

You may well have read about them, though -- e.g. Laura Ingalls Wilder gave the lyrics to "Uncle John Is Sick Abed" in On the Banks of Plum Creek. She also mentioned "Lucy Locket" in On the Way Home.

And even if you don't know any singing games, did you ever hear "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Burning of the School"? I suspect it's the most common folk song in America today. :-p

I've heard "There's a hole in the bucket" (Roud #17845), but it's not very common. It may be German in origin; at least, there is a very similar Pennsylvania Dutch song, "Der Jug hot en Loch." There are only about three collections of the song in English. Both Pete Seeger and Ed McCurdy recorded it (I'm pretty sure I heard it from the latter, not in a playground), and I suspect that helped promote its popularity.

>16 waltzmn:
I don’t even know what a “playparty” is! I never heard the term before.

I grew up in the 40’s and 50’s in a small midwestern (USA) town and attended a two-room, two-teacher schoolhouse (grades 1-4 in the bottom room, 5-8 in the room above.) My memory could be slipping, but I only remember singing standard (mostly American) songs (Old Macdonald, She’ll be coming’ round the mountain, Oh my darling Clementine, I’ve been workin’ on the railroad, etc.) in school and hymns in church; out on the playground it was frequently old WWII songs like “Just whistle while you work, Oh Hitler is a jerk, and Mussolini bit his wienie and now it will not work.”

Pop tunes from the 40’s and 50’s were also popular (Mairzy Doats, for example.) After that came the folk song era. Home life was distinctly non-musical, at least for me, though my grandfather would occasionally put a 78 rpm disk of Caruso on the phonograph. I actually don’t remember any other records ever going on that machine.

Maybe my childhood wasn’t rural enough (or maybe I just hung out with the wrong kids!) I have read and seen enacted on stage and TV scenes where the neighborhood gets together, stands around a piano, fiddle or washtub bass, and sings up a storm, but to me that’s just fantasy; I’ve never experienced it and I don’t actually know anyone who has.

My growing up community had an awesome volunteer fire department. They sponsored the carnival and fireworks for July 4th (the best in the Pittsburgh area!) and they also put on a summer day camp for all the kids. The campground was a few miles out of town out in the woods. Each grade attended a week. You caught the bus every morning at the fire station. The days were full of hikes, crafts, and music. Thursday evenings, the parents and other family members were invited out for a picnic supper and camper entertainment. Then that group had a campfire and slept out and finished up on Friday. Because we had a stairstep family, we attended most of those Thursday entertainments.

Once there was a Chinaman, his name was Chicka Chalucha Pan.
His teeth were short and his nails were long, and this is the way he went along:
Chicka Chalu, Chalu chaPan, Ollipy Ollipy, Chicka Chalollipy; Chicka Chalu, Chalu chaPan, Ollipy Ollipy Chinaman.
When this poor old man did die, in his coffin he did lie.
They shipped his coffin to Japan, and this the way he went along:
Chicka Chalu, Chalu chaPan, Ollipy Ollipy chickachalollipy, Chicka Chalu, Chalu chaPan, Ollipy Ollipy chinaman.

>18 2wonderY:
The day camp sounds fun! But what’s a “stairstep family”?

Has anyone mentioned "99 bottles of beer on the wall"?

>20 hailelib: Please don’t!

>19 TempleCat: Eleven kids in thirteen years.

>17 TempleCat:

I don’t even know what a “playparty” is! I never heard the term before.

They're functionally extinct. But they were very important a century or so ago. B. A. Botkin's The American Play-Party Song is 400 pages long, and more than half of that is just playparties from Oklahoma. Leah Jackson Wolford's The Play Party in Indiana is smaller but still has sixty different pieces. And there are shorter sections on them in many regional folklore books.

Some refer them to school-age children; Botkin thinks them more important for young adults who were courting. That was certainly the point: People gathered to play singing game and, perhaps, get closer. Since I already cited "Uncle John is Sick Abed," I'll describe Wolford's version of it (which isn't the quite same form as Laura Ingalls Wilder's; either Laura forgot a few lines or, more likely, she expurgated). The tune is "Yankee Doodle." The text is "Uncle John is sick abed, What shall we send him? Three good kisses, three good wishes, And a slice of gingerbread. What shall we send it in? In a piece of paper, Paper is not fine enough, But in a golden saucer. Who shall we send it by? By the governor's daughter, Take her by the lily white hand And leader her 'cross the water. (Boy's name), so they say, Goes a-courting night and day, With a sword by his side, And takes Miss (Girl's name) for his bride."

This is a kissing game. The exact actions are forgotten, but very possibly it started with one boy in the middle, and everyone else in a circle. They would dance around the ring, singing the song, and fill in the boy's name. Then the boy would call out a girl's name, and she would join them and promenade out. Repeat with a new boy and girl. Thus the boy gets to tell a girl he's interested, and do a little bit of a dance.

Bottom line: Playparties were social games, with sung music, for young people. Often they were sung in communities which forbid instrumental music or social dance. Playparties, which did not have instruments and were not "dancing" but games," were permitted.

out on the playground it was frequently old WWII songs like “Just whistle while you work, Oh Hitler is a jerk, and Mussolini bit his wienie and now it will not work.”

Yes, this is why I was making the distinction with camp songs. There really isn't a term for the song you're describing, but there are many, many of these sorts of slightly off-color, highly topical, sarcastic items. They almost always are adaptions of old folk tunes, e.g. here is one that uses "Red Wing": "The moon shine bright on Charlie Chaplin, His boots are cracking For want of blacking And his (baggy/khaki) trousers They want mending Before we send him To the Dardanelles." Or the Colonel Bogie march gave us an unusually explicit anti-Hitler song which was very widely known, with many variations: "Hitler has only got one ball, Goering has two, but they are small. Himmler has something sim'lar, But poor Goebbels has no balls at all."

>20 hailelib:

Has anyone mentioned "99 bottles of beer on the wall"?

Not that I've seen. The "99 bottles of beer" form is surprisingly modern. The oldest forms of that song (Roud #7603) refer instead to "99 blue bottles." For something that seems to be almost universally known today, field collections are surprisingly few -- only about a dozen. The common form was probably influenced by broadcast media.

>13 John5918:
John - you've got a different dirty Parly-vouz verse.
Mine begins "The French they are are funny race, parlyvouz..."

Very interesting conversation - my thanks to Ruth for starting it.

I suspect the cultural and geographical factors are significant, between Britain and the USA, say, or between different areas within a country, particularly back in those days before mass media and social mobility played such a prominent role in our lives.

Some of those I recognise - Hitler has only got one ball, Old Macdonald, She’ll be comin’ round the mountain, Oh my darling Clementine, There's a hole in my bucket. We had a different version of the bottles on the wall one - "Ten green bottles, standing on the wall... and if one green bottle should accidentally fall, there'll be nine green bottles standing on the wall... etc" plus another version featuring ten sticks of dynamite/gelignite which only had one verse, ending "And if one stick of gelignite should accidentally fall there'll be no sticks of gelignite and no bloody wall". Has anyone mentioned the paratrooper song with the John Brown's Body tune? "Oh cor blimey what a hell of a way to die... and he ain't going to jump no more".

From my late teens onwards I spent a lot of time volunteering on a camp for disadvantaged children in the northeast of England. It was located in an isolated rural area by the sea. In the evenings after the children had been settled down to sleep we would leave a couple of people on duty to keep an eye on them and the rest of us would repair to the local pub where, despite Britain's restrictive drinking laws which closed the pubs at 10.30 pm, we would usually have a "lock in" and stay there until the early hours of the morning (or until the landlord got so drunk that he fell off his stool) singing and playing guitars. Because of the location, Geordie songs were very popular - Blaydon Races, the Lambton Worm, Cushy Butterfield, Wor Geordie's Lost His Penker - but the Yorkshire song On Ilkley Moor Baht'at was also an old favourite. Fog on the Tyne was also a popular choice for obvious local reasons - I don't know whether that was written by the group Lindisfarne or whether it was an older song that they recorded. For some reason we also sang the military song D-Day Dodgers a lot, perhaps because several artists had recorded it in the sixties and early seventies.

And another endless nonsense song:

Three blind jellyfish, three blind jellyfish, three blind jellyfish sitting on a rock.
{Spoken) And one fell off. {Boos}
Two blind jellyfish...
{Spoken) And another one fell off. {Boos}
One blind jellyfish...
{Spoken) And this one fell off. {Boos}
No blind jellyfish...
{Spoken) And one climbs back on again. {Cheers}
One blind jellyfish...
{Spoken) And another one climbs back on again. {Cheers}
Two blind jellyfish...
{Spoken) And another one climbs back on again. {Cheers}
Three blind jellyfish...
{Spoken) And one fell off. {Boos}
etc, etc, etc, ad nauseam.

Songs like that were very popular when the group were feeling silly or drunk (usually both) and could go on for a long time before one got bored. I recall there was always a lot of impromptu and often impressive harmonisation.

>24 John5918:
Lindisfarne! yes, Fog on the Tyne was written by their Alan Hull. And there's a version of the band that still plays out occasionally, led by original member Rod Clements, with several mid-period members.

>25 Crypto-Willobie:

"We can swing together, We can have a wee wee, We can have a wet on the wall..."

When we sang the chorus we would slip in "way ye bugger, man" in a suitable Geordie accent after "'Cause the fog on the Tyne is all mine all mine. The fog on the Tyne is all mine" in the chorus. "Bugger" is more a term of affection than an insult amongst Geordies. Reminds me of the old story about a rugby match between the Geordies and a southern team. One of the southern players, after being subjected to a particularly robust tackle, angrily shouts, "You sod!" at the offending Geordie player. The referee cautions him, saying, "Howay man, ye divven oughta've called that wee bugger a sod!"

I'm not over 60, but always remember singing songs on any long coach journeys, or with scouts/guides. We did on Ilkey Moor baht tat and some others mentioned above.
I always liked the call and response ones.
I liked "Oh you'll never get to heaven, in a jumbo jet/my dad's car.".. and many other verses but I can't remember any now.

Also:
Everywhere we go oh
People always ask us
Who we are
Any where we come from
So we tell them
We're from (insert place or group name)
The mighty mighty (place or group name)
And if they can't hear us
We speak a little louder.

Always starting from a small whisper up to shouting loudly.

And my favourite, also call and response

Early in the morning
While I'm still asleep
Comes a little chirping
Comes a little tweet
From a tiny birdie
With a funny name
It's the Eine kleine fleedle floodle alphabetical beedle boodle erna splitting louder boomer bird... now you!

>27 bilblio:

Coach journeys reminds me of:

Does the driver want a wee wee?
Does the driver want a wee wee?
Does the driver want a wee wee?
'Cos we want a wee wee too.

Sung loudly and annoyingly to the chorus of the tune of John Brown's Body.

>24 John5918: The conversation certainly took a swift turn to scholarship and then another twist to bawdy. It’s great! But I’m still going to list songs I can teach my 3 year old.

I’ve got a little old pile of tin,
Nobody knows what shape it’s in.
Got four wheels and a runningboard -
It’s a Ford, oh it’s a Ford!
Honk honk, rattle rattle rattle, crash! Beep! Beep!
Honk honk, rattle rattle rattle, crash! Beep! Beep!
Honk honk, rattle rattle rattle, crash! Beep! Beep!
Honk, honk!

>23 Crypto-Willobie:

John - you've got a different dirty Parly-vouz verse.

"Mademoiselle from Armentière" ("Hinky, dinky, parley-vou"; Roud #4703) is one of the all-time most widespread bawdy songs, with almost every platoon having its own verse or two. Just a few alternate titles will give the idea: "Three German Officers Crossed the Rhine"; "The Sergeant-Major's having a time"; "40,000 Marines Can't Be Wrong."

>24 John5918:

Ten green bottles, standing on the wall....

This is an attested variant -- there is a North Carolina version -- but it's rare. As I mentioned earlier, blue bottles are more common than green. So you have preserved a rare line of tradition.

Has anyone mentioned the paratrooper song with the John Brown's Body tune? "Oh cor blimey what a hell of a way to die... and he ain't going to jump no more".

A large family of songs use the "what a hell of a way to die" line, with variants, e.g. "gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die" is in "He'll Never Fly Home Again" (Roud #23999: "I was flying flipping Albacores at forty flipping feet"); "Glory, glory, what a hell of a way to die" is in "He Ain't Gonna Jump No More" (perhaps your version; Roud #29393, in which the guy landed without a parachute and is being treated); the same chorus is in "I'd Like to Find the Sergeant (who forgot to hook me up)" (Roud #29391) and in "I Was Chasing One-Elevens" (Roud #29397). All of these are reported from Canada, but most are probably British by origin.

And another endless nonsense song... Three blind jellyfish, three blind jellyfish, three blind jellyfish sitting on a rock.

I've never met this one before, although there is a "Three Jellyfish" song from the North Riding of Yorkshire which I don't have a text of. This may be another of your interesting rare songs.

Circular songs, though, are fairly common."There's a Hole in the Bucket" has been mentioned. Famous in the Upper Midwest is "My Name is Yon Yonson." And the most famous of all, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," actually was made circular in summer camps. Pete Seeger found some Russian lines in And Quiet Flows the Don, put them in English (three verses only), set a tune, recorded it, and forgot it. Joe Hickerson, who was a camp counselor in the 1950s, heard Seeger's recording, taught it to kids in his group, and they made it circular.

Is it Itsy-Bitsy or Eensy-Weensy?

>32 2wonderY:

Is it Itsy-Bitsy or Eensy-Weensy?

If it's a folk song, then the answer is, Whatever you learned. :-)

However, there are five field collections known to Steve Roud (as opposed to all the pop versions) and two "nursery rhyme" printings known to me. None are "itsy bitsy"; six are variants on "eency weency" (the only spelling to occur twice. Of course, all those spellings are guesses by the collectors).

There is also a Scottish version "There was a bloomin' sparra climbed up the bloomin' spout." Which, if you think about it, make more sense -- spiders, like insects, don't have lungs; they get oxygen through their exoskeletons. Get them wet, they drown. The spider can only go up the spout once. :-)

>33 waltzmn: spiders, like insects, don't have lungs; they get oxygen through their exoskeletons. Get them wet, they drown.

You’ve never drowned flies and then revived them ?

>29 2wonderY:

Thanks, Ruth. Yes, sorry, some of us have concentrated on the camp rather than the nursery side of it, but please do keep posting nursery rhymes.

>31 waltzmn:

a different dirty Parly-vouz verse

Three German officers crossed the line, parlez vous
Three German officers crossed the line, parlez vous
Three German officers crossed the line, shagged the women and drank the wine,
Inky pinky parlez vous.

That was the clean verse. It's downhill from there on! "Three German officers" was often replaced with "Three dirty Germans" - well, those were the post-war years and anti-German rhetoric was still not uncommon. "Don't mention the war!" as Basil Fawlty famously said.

Ten green bottles, standing on the wall

I'd never heard of the version with blue bottles. Everywhere I have heard it sung in Britain has always been green bottles.

"Oh cor blimey what a hell of a way to die... and he ain't going to jump no more"

I've seen a US version, "Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die", on YouTube. Our version was probably British, and had verses like:

Sergeant John Brown was the pilot and the last to leave the plane...
He jumped from forty thousand feet without a parachute...
When he hit the runway he was going like a bomb...
They scraped him off the tarmac like a dollop of strawberry jam...
They put him in an envelope and sent him home to mum...
She keeps him in a jam jar upon the mantel shelf...

Circular songs, though, are fairly common

A more modern circular song is Flanders and Swann's "The Gasman Cometh".

There's also a tradition of several voices/groups singing different words at the same tine. Chas and Dave do it very well in their Sideboard Song, and the Two Ronnies also do it in some of their comic musical finales.

A simple one that I've participated in in the north of England envisages a Viking raid on the British coast. The Vikings are focused on the potential loot and chant:

One bottle of beer, two bottles of beer, three bottles of beer, four,
Five bottles of beer, six bottles of beer, seven bottles of beer, MORE!

The upper-middle-class home-owners sing that haunting lament well known to all English suburban dwellers who sense strangers in their neighbourhood:

You can't put your muck in our dustbin*, our dustbin, our dustbin,
You can't put your muck in our dustbin, our dustbin's full.

Meanwhile the ordinary poor working class folk are focused only on their next meal, chanting:

Fish and chips and vinegar, vinegar, vinegar,
Fish and chips and vinegar, vinegar, vinegar.

All three are sung at the same time to different tunes. It works very well.

* A dustbin is a trash can, I believe, on the other side of the Pond.

"Where Have All the Flowers Gone"

And that of course opens up a whole new range of camp songs, namely the protest and peace songs, also including We Shall Overcome, Kumbaya, If I Had a Hammer, Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream, The Man that Waters the Workers' Beer, The Man with the Dreadful Knob, etc. For some reason Michael Row the Boat Ashore also often featured in that sort of repertoire.

Then there were the sea shanties, the Irish folk and rebel songs, the odd Scottish offering... endless.

Don't know about camp songs but in late 1950s early 1960s used to go youth-hostelling quite a bit and evenings often developed into a sing-song. "Men of Harlech", "On Ilkley Moor Bah't At" were regulars.

>35 John5918: Spending college years and on mostly in West Virginia, I used to know a couple of coal miner laments. I’ll try to dredge them up.

I've just found my Dad's old Woodcraft Folk Song Book. No music unfortunately so I don't know how most of them go.

I remember at school our teacher teaching us an Australian version of Waltzing Matilda, something like "once a Jolly swagman, camped by a billabong, under the shade of a coolibar tree..." I can't remember some bits unfortunately. He'd regularly stop lessons at the end of the day, get his guitar out and teach us folk songs. School would be much better if teachers still had time to do that.

>38 bilblio: you mean there’s a version of “Waltzing Matilda” that isn’t Australian? Sorry, but no there isn’t. The song was written by Australia’s national poet, Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson, in 1896 or thereabouts. As somebody said, it’s about a tramp who stole a sheep. (Swagman = tramp, jumbuck = sheep, billabong = a small creek or waterhole.)

>35 John5918:

Three German officers crossed the line, parlez vous... That was the clean verse.

Yes; note that I was just citing these as examples of all the myriad bawdy verses of "Mademoiselle...." It's in all the dirty songbooks, I think. As the song itself says, "You'll never forget the Mademoiselle." :-)

I'd never heard of the version with blue bottles. Everywhere I have heard it sung in Britain has always been green bottles.

The problem with songs of this sort is that they don't get scholarly attention. Zillions of people know some version of the song, but collections that have been published in books are (relatively) few. The earliest versions that I can date are from the early twentieth century, and have "blue bottles."

One bottle of beer, two bottles of beer, three bottles of beer, four,
Five bottles of beer, six bottles of beer, seven bottles of beer, MORE!

In America, I've heard this as "One bottle of pop," etc. It's another case of a song that's fairly well-known that has gotten almost no scholarly attention; there seem to be no field collections at all!

You can't put your muck in our dustbin*, our dustbin, our dustbin,
You can't put your muck in our dustbin, our dustbin's full.

For the record, I may be American, but I understand dustbins. :-)

This verse circulates independently; there is again an American form (too American, one might argue :-):

Don't throw your junk in my back yard, My back yard, my back yard,
Don't throw your junk in my back yard, My back yard's full.

And that of course opens up a whole new range of camp songs, namely the protest and peace songs, also including We Shall Overcome, Kumbaya, If I Had a Hammer, Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream, The Man that Waters the Workers' Beer, The Man with the Dreadful Knob, etc. For some reason Michael Row the Boat Ashore also often featured in that sort of repertoire.

The types of songs you mention are the songs that got put in the cheap folk song pamphlets, of which there were very many floating around the Unite States back then. A group of colleagues and I once had an inconclusive discussion about which of those are actually folk songs. "We Shall Overcome" and "Kumbaya" are folk songs by origin, as is "Michael Row..." (which, as originally collected in Slave Songs of the United States, isn't much like the Sixties Folk version). I'd be inclined to put "The Man that Waters the Workers' Beer" in the folk category, too, although the words are by Paddy Ryan. "If I Had a Hammer" and "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" I would say are not; they are Sixties period pieces.

But "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" is a very different case, because it was actually remade as a camp song (two verses added, resulting in a circular song). And it's pretty definitely better remembered than most Sixties songs. At this point, I'd be inclined to call it a traditional folk song, even though the guy who made it what it is (Joe Hickerson) is, or at was until very recently, still alive.

>38 bilblio:

I remember at school our teacher teaching us an Australian version of Waltzing Matilda, something like "once a Jolly swagman, camped by a billabong, under the shade of a coolibar tree..." I can't remember some bits unfortunately. He'd regularly stop lessons at the end of the day, get his guitar out and teach us folk songs. School would be much better if teachers still had time to do that.

We had some of that, too, but most of what they taught us was Sixties Folk. It would have been better with real folk songs. :-)

"Waltzing Matilda" is of course by origin Australian, written by A. B. "Banjo" Paterson in 1905. (No, Banjo Paterson didn't play banjo; the nickname came from a horse. I've read, in fact, that he was tone-deaf; I can't verify that.) His authorship is about all that is certain; I regularly get Australians writing to me to complain about having the story all wrong. :-) Paterson's original tune was provided by Christina McPherson, allegedly based on "The Bonnie Woods of Craigilie"; the common tune, which is similar but not identical, was published by Marie Cowan. The Cowan tune has surprising similarities -- I would say suspicious similarities -- to a fragment of uncertain date but that refers to the War of the Spanish Succession of the early eighteenth century:

A bold fusilier came marching down to Rochester,
Bound for the wars of the north country,
And he sang as he tramped the (quiet?) streets of Rochester,
Who'll be a soldier for Marlborough and me?
Who'll be a soldier, who'll be a soldier,
Who'll be a soldier for Marlborough and me?
And he sang as he tramped the (quiet?) streets of Rochester,
Who'll be a soldier for Marlborough and me?

I honestly think Cowan used that tune. Australians hate it when I say that. :-)

The commonly-sung text is not quite the same as Paterson's -- the line "You'll never take me alive, said he" was created in the bush, e.g. -- not by Paterson, whose line said the swagman drowned himself by the cooliba tree. Also, there is a second tune, the "Buderim" tune. All in all, although Paterson clearly is responsible for the ancestral form of the words, there is a lot about the tune that we might be suspicious of.

>39 haydninvienna: Oh dear... I'm very tired.... you're right, I just typed the words of the original song. He taught us an English version. It had hedgehogs and bulldogs in it. My memory is failing me today.

I remember the chorus was:
"Walking the bulldog, walking the bulldog,
you'll come a walking the bulldog with me,
and he sang as he watched and waited till his kettle boiled,
you'll come a walking the bulldog with me."

>41 bilblio:

>39 haydninvienna: haydninvienna: Oh dear... I'm very tired.... you're right, I just typed the words of the original song. He taught us an English version. It had hedgehogs and bulldogs in it. My memory is failing me today.

"Waltzing Matilda," even though the tune is itself derivative, is one of the greatest sources of knock-off texts. They loved it in World War Two. Examples:

O'er the hills of Sicily, up the toe of Italy,
Came the Loyal Edmontons from over the sea,
And they sang as the stuffed the bully in their haversacks,
Who'll come a-marching to Berlin with me?
Marching to Berlin (etc.)

And

Who'll fly a Wimpy, who'll fly a Wimpy,
Who'll fly a Wimpy over Germany?
I, said the Pilot, I said the Pilot,
I'll fly a Hercules Mark Three....

(Obviously that particular poet wasn't very good. The "Wimpy" was the Wellington medium bomber, named after, yes, J. Wellington Wimpy of the "Popeye" cartoons!)

Does anyone know the context of this phrase and repeat game?

E skiddily oaten boaten Bobo baditen dotum watum totum shhhh.

I find this one of the most interesting and fascinating threads I have ever come across on LT! Thanks to everyone contributing songs, and particularly to Robert for his broad knowledge which is really illuminating for me songs which I thought I knew well.

>40 waltzmn:

I remember hearing a recording of "The Man that Waters the Workers' Beer" being sung by British Prime Minister Jim Callaghan at a TUC dinner. I believe it was Tony Benn who recorded him. I've just googled it and found that fifteen years ago BBC included it in an article entitled Never ever sing on camera. I wonder if a singsong at a TUC dinner counts as a "camp"?!

I'm fascinated to hear that "Don't put your muck in our dustbin" which sounds quintessentially Little English actually has wider international roots, but I suppose it's a characteristic of many of these songs that they are adapted to local cultures and traditions.

>42 waltzmn:

"Who'll fly a Wimpy" reminds me of another air force song, "Coming in on a wing and a prayer". I may have learned that one from my dad - he wasn't in the air force but in the Royal Artillery anti-aircraft batteries, trying to shoot aircraft down rather than nurse them home. My mum was a radar operator doing the same. As young boys obsessed with the recent World War II we of course knew what a Wimpy was, but I didn't know that the name originated in a cartoon.

I remember "The Ants Go Marching One by One to the tune of "Johnny Comes Marching Home." Also remember "Low Bridge, a song about the Erie Canal.

>44 John5918:

I find this one of the most interesting and fascinating threads I have ever come across on LT! Thanks to everyone contributing songs, and particularly to Robert for his broad knowledge which is really illuminating for me songs which I thought I knew well.

In many cases, you know them better than I do. I just know about them. :-)

I find myself thinking, though, that the suggestions from this group really ought to be collected and turned into a folk song book of some sort. Folklorists tend to ignore middle-class and urban people, because their songs are "contaminated" by radio and recordings. But most of what people have brought up here are not contaminated, at least directly: People here learned them by oral tradition. They deserve to be published. Yours perhaps most of all, because you've recalled a lot of things we know are traditional but which are rare in tradition.

I'm fascinated to hear that "Don't put your muck in our dustbin" which sounds quintessentially Little English actually has wider international roots, but I suppose it's a characteristic of many of these songs that they are adapted to local cultures and traditions.

I think you're right that it originated in England. It would easily transport, because the tune is familiar ("Ach du lieber Augustin"/"Did You Ever See a Lassie"). Someone picked it up in England, took it to America, rewrote it using American language.

"Who'll fly a Wimpy" reminds me of another air force song, "Coming in on a wing and a prayer". I may have learned that one from my dad - he wasn't in the air force but in the Royal Artillery anti-aircraft batteries, trying to shoot aircraft down rather than nurse them home.

I suspect "Coming in on a wing and a prayer" originated as a pop song. At least, neither I nor Steve Roud has a record of it, and we have the two largest folk song databases there are. And it's not in C. W. Getz's The Wild Blue Yonder: Songs of the Air Force. But, without seeing the text, I can't know.

>45 Tess_W:

I remember "The Ants Go Marching One by One to the tune of "Johnny Comes Marching Home."

That's interesting, because "The Ants Go Marching" (Roud #18336) is relatively rare, and American and Canadian.

Also remember "Low Bridge, a song about the Erie Canal.

There are several well-known Erie Canal songs, but I assume this is the one that starts:

I've got a mule, her name is Sal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.

Low bridge, everybody down,
Low bridge, for we're going through a town....

Generally known as "The Erie Canal" (Roud #6598). It's interesting that you know this one, because it was printed by Carl Sandburg in The American Songbag and was recorded by the first person to have multiple million-seller country 78s, Vernon Dalhart. So there are a lot of ways the song could have gotten to you.

It is possible that it was written by Thomas S. Allen, but proof is lacking. At least, lacking to me. :-)

>46 waltzmn:

Coming in on a wing and a prayer, coming in on a wing and a prayer,
Though we've one motor gone, we can still carry on,
Coming in on a wing and a prayer.

What a show! What a fight! Yes we really hit our target for tonight.
Now we sing as we limp through the air. Look below, there's our field over there.
With a full crew aboard and our trust in the Lord,
We're coming in on a wing and a prayer.

I learned "The Erie Canal" in the late 50's in school in Tennessee.

When my children were younger we had cassette tapes and songbooks in the Wee Sing Series. Wee Sing Around the Campfire , Wee Sing Silly Songs and Wee Sing America, etc. Instead of around the campfire we sang along in the car. I wonder if I still have the books, the cassettes are long gone. :)

>47 John5918:

Coming in on a wing and a prayer, coming in on a wing and a prayer,
Though we've one motor gone, we can still carry on,
Coming in on a wing and a prayer.

(etc.)

I was right; it's a pop song. Words and music by Jimmy McHugh, 1943. I was wrong on one point, though; it is in in C. W. Getz's The Wild Blue Yonder: Songs of the Air Force, under the title "Comin' in on a Wing and a Prayer."

YouTube version here, although it doesn't list the artist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B69CquvLHgY

Incidentally, it sounds to me at first listen as if the tune is based on "Roll Along, Covered Wagon," which also gave rise to the song of the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve, "Roll Along, Wavy Navy."

>49 perennialreader: My children had the very same cassette tapes. I think I can still sing half of them--after listening to them hours per day!

Here’s one I was reminded of today:

Don't ever laugh as a Hearse goes by
For you may be the next to die
They wrap you up in a big white sheet
From your head down to your feet
They put you in a big black box
And cover you up with dirt and rocks
And all goes well for about a week
And then your coffin begins to leak
And the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The worms play pinochle on your snout
They eat your eyes, they eat your noes
They eat the jelly between your toes
A big green worm with rolling eyes
Crawls in your stomach and out your eyes
Your stomach turns a slimy green
And puss comes out like whipping cream
You spread it on a slice of bread
And that's what you eat when your dead
And the worms crawl out and the worms crawl in
The worms that crawl in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
Your eyes fall in and your hair falls out
Your brain comes tumbling down your snout
And the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
They crawl all over your dirty snout
Your chest caves in and your eyes pop out
And your brain turns to sauerkraut
They invite their friends, and their friends too
They all come down to chew on you
And this is what it is to die
I hope you had a nice goodbye
Did you ever think as a Hearse goes by
That you may be the next to die
And your eyes fall out and your teeth decay
And that is the end of a perfect... day.

Songwriters: Joseph Whiteford / Gregg Manfredi / Wes Planten

>52 2wonderY:

Here’s one I was reminded of today:

Don't ever laugh as a Hearse goes by
For you may be the next to die

"The Worms Crawl In" (Roud #15546) is another widespread school song, found all over the United States.

I really doubt the songwriting credit. The song has been in existence since at least 1923. Carl Sandburg helped popularize it. James J. Fuld's Book of World Famous Music does not list an author. Neither does Charles Clay Doyle's monograph "'As the Hearse Goes By': The Modern Child's Memento Mori" in Francis Edward Abernathy's What's Going On? (In Modern Texas Folklore).

Possibly the three folks you credited rewrote it. Your first lines are not the most common, which are, "Did you ever think, When the hearse goes by, That you might be the next to die...." There have been many particularizations; e.g. Carl Sandburg printed a military version in The American Songbag.

>53 waltzmn: I noted it as I found it online. Please don’t take the fun out of the conversation with too much pedantry.

May I add One man went to mow?

One man went to mow
went to mow a meadow
One man and his dog, Spot went to mow a meadow

Two men went to mow,
went to mow a meadow,
two men, one man and his dog, spot, bottle of pop, went to mow a meadow

Three men went to mow
went to mow a meadow
Three men, two men, one man and his dog, Spot, bottle of pop, ham sandwich, went to mow a meadow

The last line keeps adding and the last line I can remember with any degree of certainty is
... his dog, Spot, bottle of pop, ham sandwich, sausage roll, old man Riley and the girl next door went to mow a meadow.

>55 Helenliz:

May I add One man went to mow?

One man went to mow
went to mow a meadow
One man and his dog, Spot went to mow a meadow

This looks like a cleaned-up version, although it's still quite recognizable. Typical title is "One Man Shall Mow My Meadow" (Roud #143), and it's quite widespread. The version I learned (from a recording, not in the field)

One man shall mow my meadow,
Two men shall gather it together.
One man, two men, and one more
Shall shear my lambs and ewes and rams
And gather my gold together.

Peter Kennedy's Folksongs of Britain and Ireland's version runs

I've a one man, I've a two men
To mow down the meadow.
I've a three men, I've a four men,
To carry the hay away.
Me four, me three, me two, me one,
And all lots more
To mow the hay, to carry away,
On a beautiful summer's morn.

It is widely believed that it is a concealed-bawdry song.

>56 waltzmn:

This sort of song where you keep adding something every verse reminds me of The Rattling Bog:

Chorus: Rare bog, a rattling bog, the bog down in the valley oh (x 2)

And in that bog there was a tree
Rare tree, a rattling tree,
The tree in the bog and the bog down in the valley oh.

And on that tree there was a branch,
Rare branch, a rattling branch,
And the branch on the tree and the tree in the bog and the bog down in the valley oh.

And on that branch there was a twig...

Then a leaf, then I think a bird, a feather, a flea... I can't remember very well, and I'm sure there are many versions.

There's a rugby version of Old King Cole was a Merry Old Soul where each verse adds something and repeats the earlier additions. Dr Busker also sings a bawdy song call Wee Willie Wankie to the tune of Scotland the Brave which has the same principle.

>57 John5918:

This sort of song where you keep adding something every verse reminds me of The Rattling Bog:

Chorus: Rare bog, a rattling bog, the bog down in the valley oh (x 2)

And in that bog there was a tree
Rare tree, a rattling tree,
The tree in the bog and the bog down in the valley oh.

...

Then a leaf, then I think a bird, a feather, a flea... I can't remember very well, and I'm sure there are many versions.

You're right on all counts. :-) It's a very widespread song (Roud #129), collected I believe more than 100 times. Very many titles: "The Green Grass Grew All Around," "The Tree in the Wood," "The Pretty Pair (sic.) Tree." There is one, I kid you not, called "The Everlasting Circle." George Korson even found a couple of German versions in Pennsylvania, and Maud Karpeles had a Danish version, and there is a translation into Cornish (!).

I too learned a version with the "Rattling Bog" chorus, but that's relatively rare.

There's a rugby version of Old King Cole was a Merry Old Soul where each verse adds something and repeats the earlier additions.

I think that's actually the version most common in tradition (I could be wrong); it's just that the nursery versions cut it short.

Related to John's Old King Cole where each verse adds something and repeats earlier additions, I thought about the "Old Woman Who Swallowed A Fly"

>59 Tess_W:

Related to John's Old King Cole where each verse adds something and repeats earlier additions, I thought about the "Old Woman Who Swallowed A Fly"

Which is a curiosity: Extremely well-known today, but historically not. There are only two field collections that I know of, the earlier from 1955, both from Norfolk. Burl Ives recorded it slightly before that, and Pete Seeger not long after (several times). The Ives version is said to be by Rose Bonne and Alan Mills (1) (the latter a fairly prominent singer best known for his recordings of Newfoundland songs, and a collaborator on Canada's Story in Song); I suspect that all the versions people sing today go back to the Bonne/Mills version via Ives or Seeger.

I agree with John that this is one of my favorite LT threads, and I also appreciate waltzmnn's folklore explications.

In our family we didn't go to 'camp' much but group singing was a big part of our lives. My dad was a bit of a ham and played the ukulele and we were always singing something -- showtunes (my sister and I performed the classic musicals while washing and drying dishes), hits from the 20s and 30s (April Showers, Yessir Thats my Baby etc etc), patriotic marching songs (Anchors Aweigh, Let's Remember Pearl Harbor etc), Hawaiian songs (both commercial and authentic -- we have native Hawaiian cousins). But there is one piece of 'folk transmission' that comes to mind...

In the early 1950s my dad spent a semester at the University of Alabama (he finished his degree elsewhere) and brought home a song he learned down there. I later found out it supposedly derives from an English music-hall song but it was clearly adapted to local Alabama conditions...

She was poor, but she was honest,
Victim of the rich man's whim
Till she met that Christian gentleman Big Jim Folsom
And she had a child by him

{chorus} It's the rich what gets the glory
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the same the wide world over over over
It's a low down dirty shame

Now he works in the legislature
Makin' laws for all mankind
While she walks the streets of Coleman Alabama
Selling grapes from her grapevine

{repeat chorus}

>54 2wonderY:
To me the 'pedantry' is a large part of the fun here...

>61 Crypto-Willobie:

I agree with John that this is one of my favorite LT threads, and I also appreciate waltzmnn's folklore explications.

Thank you.

In the early 1950s my dad spent a semester at the University of Alabama (he finished his degree elsewhere) and brought home a song he learned down there. I later found out it supposedly derives from an English music-hall song but it was clearly adapted to local Alabama conditions...

Yep. :-)

The original "She Was Poor But She Was Honest" is described in Aline Waites and Robin Hunter's The Illustrated Victorian Songbook as " probably one of the most successful anonymous songs in the world. The tune repeats throughout the verses and the chorus, and is therefore exceptionally easy to pick up." It has been field collected in Australia, England, Canada, and the American Southwest. Carl Sandburg in The American Songbag claimed that his version had been "fortified by H. L. Mencken and a contributor to the American Mercury." That probably helped spread it, but it seems to be much more British than American.

According to Ed Cray's The Erotic Muse, the book on erotic folksongs (disclaimer: I knew Ed until he died a few years ago, but I don't think anyone would argue my statement), "The mock lament of 'It's the Same the Whole World Over,' popularized by British troops, quickly became a bawdy lampoon."

Sample verses show how the "Folsom" version parallels the idea of the original:

She was poor but she was honest,
Victim of a village crime,
Of the squire's guilty passion
And she lost her own good nyme.

Chorus:
It's the same the whole world over,
It's the poor what gets the blame;
It's the rich what gets the pleasure;
Ain't it all a bleedin' shame?

Then she went right up to London,
Victim of a rich man's whim,
He seduced her, then he left her,
She'd a little child by him.

Cray also has the Folsom version -- FWIW, the "Coleman, Alabama" is "Cullman, Alabama" in Cray's text.

There is a recording on the disc "The Unexpurgated Songs of Men," but the singer is anonymous, so it's no help in tracing the song, really. I'm going to mention that you knew it in the 2020s in my notes to the song; this is a "find."

>63 waltzmn:

Coleman vs Cullman -- of course I (and probably my dad) only ever heard, not saw, the word and so normalized it to a more common form.

Well, 2020s yeah, but we all sang it as far back as the early 1960s (and our take hasn't changed since then) and my dad (who learned it c1952) died in 1983.

>64 Crypto-Willobie:

Coleman vs Cullman -- of course I (and probably my dad) only ever heard, not saw, the word and so normalized it to a more common form.

Sure. That's the folk process. We even have a WORD for that sort of error of hearing: it's a "mondegreen." The usual text of "The Bonny Earl of Murray" starts (I'll anglicize)

Ye Highlands and Lowlands, where have ye been?
They have slain the Earl of Murray and laid him on the green.

And someone heard that, and remembered the last line as

They have slain the Earl of Murray and Lady Mondegreen.

Nothing wrong with folk process! I just have autistic-information-disease and over-clarify. :-)

Well, 2020s yeah, but we all sang it as far back as the early 1960s (and our take hasn't changed since then) and my dad (who learned it c1952) died in 1983.

Sure. But most folk songs are collected from old people. :-) What counts is that you still remember.

Oh, I stuck my head in a little skunk's hole;
and the little skunk said;
well bless my soul;
take it out, take it out, take it out, take it out;
r e m o v e i t

well I didn't take out;
and the little skunk said;
if you don't take it out;
you will wish you were dead;
take it out, take it out, take it out, take it out;
r e m o v e i t

ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss;
I r e m o v e d i t;
too late!

>62 Crypto-Willobie:

Ditto.

>66 descartes2:

Lovely! I know that one as the woodpecker's hole, with several more verses - remove it, replace it, revolve it, return it, rotate it, reverse it, reciprocate it, etc, and the last verse you smell your finger, "revolting".

A repeating line chant with clapping hands and thighs:
( I see many variations. This is how I learned it)

Kumala, kumala, kumala vista
No no no no no na vista
Esameanie solameanie oowatu ollameanie.
Esameanie solameanie oowatua
E skidally oaten boaten bobo baditendotum-watum-totum
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Mairzy Doats

I know a ditty nutty as a fruitcake
Goofy as a goon and silly as a loon
Some call it pretty, others call it crazy
But they all sing this tune:
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
Yes! Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey
Sing "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy"
Oh! Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you-oo?
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?

I remember singing about 'John Henry" the steel driving man when I began school in about 1960.

John Henry was a little baby, sitting on the his papa's knee
He picked up a hammer and little piece of steel
Said "Hammer's gonna be the death of me, Lord, Lord
Hammer's gonna be the death of me"

What about "I Went to the Animal Fair"....the birds and the beasts were there. The big baboon by the light of the moon was combing his auburn hair...."

Fast forward to the 1980's, my children used to come home singing "Baby Bumblebee"

I'm bringing home a baby bumble bee.
Won't my mama be so proud of me.
I'm bringing home a baby bumble bee.
Ouch! It stung me! My bumbee bee.

And lastly, "Dem Bones" the toe bone's connected to the foot bone, the foot bone's connected to the ankle bone.........

>60 waltzmn: Another "like" song would be "There's a hole in the bottom of the sea....there's a log in the hole....there's a branch in the log......there's a bump on the branch...

>66 descartes2:

Oh, I stuck my head in a little skunk's hole;

>67 John5918:

Lovely! I know that one as the woodpecker's hole, with several more verses - remove it, replace it, revolve it, return it, rotate it, reverse it, reciprocate it, etc, and the last verse you smell your finger, "revolting".

Ed Cray's canonical title for this is indeed "The Woodpecker's Hole," and his prototypical text uses the woodpecker -- but he also mentions "The first mate's hole." About half the versions I can trace have "woodpecker's hole," so it's pretty clearly the original, but one has a crawdad, one a billy goat, one a corbie (crow). Skunks, which obviously make the song more, er, pungent, are mentioned a couple of times. There is also a rather dubious "skunk" version in A Prairie Home Companion Folk Song Book, which was edited by two serious scholars (John and Marcia Pankake, whom I used to know very slightly) but really fouled up by Garrison Keillor, who kept fiddling with the texts.

If any of you sing it to a tune other than "Dixie," I'd be interested. There are a couple of other "Dixie" knock-offs, Burl Ives's "The Whale" and Carl Sandburg's "Crazy Air to the Tune of Dixie," which from their form I rather suspect derive from a "Woodpecker's Hole" version, but I can't prove it.

>70 Tess_W:

I remember singing about 'John Henry" the steel driving man when I began school in about 1960.

"John Henry" (Laws I1, Roud #790) is probably the most popular ballad to originate in America, collected or recorded several hundred times. It is probably semi-historical. There have been many attempts to find the "real John Henry," mostly settling on John William Henry, who worked on West Virginia's Big Bend Tunnel, on the Chesapeake and Ohio (C & O) railroad. This was the conclusion of Guy B. Johnson in John Henry: Tracking Down a Negro Legend and Louis Chappell, John Henry: A Folk-Lore Study. Scott Nelson, Steel Drivin' Man has a minor variation on this hypothesis. However, John Garst, who was the most thoroughgoing researcher I've ever encountered, believes John Henry was probably (John) Henry Dabney, a slave on the Dabney plantation, who after emancipation worked on the C & W railroad as it was built through the Dunnavant Valley in Alabama. He believes there may have been an actual contest on Tuesday, September 20, 1887. Strong evidence against the West Virginia hypothesis comes from the fact that steam drills were not used on the Big Bend tunnel. (This is only a brief summary of John Garst's supporting data. I think that either he's right or that John Henry was entirely fictitious.)

What about "I Went to the Animal Fair"....the birds and the beasts were there. The big baboon by the light of the moon was combing his auburn hair...."

"...And what became of the monk, the monk, the monk...?"

"The Animal Fair" is Roud #4582. There are a few British versions, but it's almost entirely American. It's another song found in Carl Sandburg's American Songbag, and I suspect it helped popularize the song although it is certainly older.

And lastly, "Dem Bones" the toe bone's connected to the foot bone, the foot bone's connected to the ankle bone.........

Which is another song more popular in kids' songbooks than in field collections. The question -- which I can't answer -- is whether it is a detached fragment of the versions of "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel" which include it, or did the two combine? (There are a lot of songs pertaining to Ezekiel 37 and the Valley of Dry Bones.)

One of the rare collected versions is in John A Lomax and Alan Lomax's Our Singing Country, and has a slightly different opening:

Dem bones, dem bones, dem jee-umpin' bones" (x3)

Bones, bones, won't you tell me the word of God?

De toe bone connected to de foot bone... etc.

>71 Tess_W:

Another "like" song would be "There's a hole in the bottom of the sea....there's a log in the hole....there's a branch in the log......there's a bump on the branch...

Roud #15766. Another song not often found in folk song collections -- and yet, my father learned it somewhere; it's clearly a folk song. I would guess, based on where it has been found, that it originated in North Carolina, even though my father learned it in Michigan.

Folk songs/ballads of the 1960's, some serious stuff--Bob Dylan
"The Death of Emmet Till"
"The Ballad of Tom Joad"

Both of which I used in my honors American History class.

>73 Tess_W:

Folk songs/ballads of the 1960's, some serious stuff--Bob Dylan
"The Death of Emmet Till"
"The Ballad of Tom Joad"

Are you sure "The Ballad of Tom Joad" is by Dylan? I know very little about Dylan's music, but Woody Guthrie wrote a song "Tom Joad" in 1940. I don't have my Woody Guthrie songbook to hand, but Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie: A Life gives the last (I assume) verse as

Wherever little children are hungry and cry
Wherever people ain't free,
Wherever men are fightin' for their rights,
That's where I'm gonna be, ma,
That's where I'm gonna me.

The tune is "John Hardy," a fairly well-known folk song.

I'm not quite a Dylan expert but I'm pretty sure he didn't write a Tom Joad song. He DID cover a lot of Woody songs in performance in the early days.

Verified. Tom Joad is a Woodie Guthrie song. The melody is from a traditional song of which the name escapes me.

>73 Tess_W: Yes, so sorry, Tom Joad was by Woodie Guthrie!

A lot of the songs we used to sing were Cockney/London songs. I don't know how many of them were old, or whether they were from the late 19th and early 20th century music halls - maybe waltzmn can enlighten us.

My old man said follow the van, and don't dilly dally on the way.
Off went the van wiv me 'ome packed in it, I followed on wiv me old cock linnet.
But I dillied, I dallied, I dallied and I dillied, lost me way and don't know where to roam.
You can't trust a special like the old time copper when you can't find your way 'ome...

Another favourite was:

Knees up Mother Brown, Knees up Mother Brown
Under the table you must go, Ee-aye, Ee-aye, Ee-aye-oh
If I catch you bending I’ll saw your legs right off
Knees up, knees up, don’t get the breeze up
Knees up Mother Brown...

There were several where I seem to remember we only really knew the choruses, not the verses.

"Wot Cher!", all the neighbours cried
Who yer gonna meet, Bill
Have yer bought the street, Bill?
Laugh! I thought I should've died
Knocked em in the Old Kent Road...

"Any old iron? Any old iron? Any, any, any old iron?
You look neat! Talk about a treat! You look a dapper from your napper to your feet
Dressed in style wi' a brand new tile And your father's old green tie on
I wouldn't give you tuppence for your old watch-chain
Old iron, old iron!"...

Let's all go down the strand ('ave a banana)
Let's all go down the strand
I'll be leader, you can march behind
Come with me and see what we can find
Let's all go down the strand
Oh, what a happy land
That's the place for fun and noise
All amoung the girls and boys
So let's all go down the strand...

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner
That I love London so
Well, maybe it's because I'm a Londoner
That I think of her wherever I go
I get a funny feeling inside of me
While walking up and down
Well, maybe it's because I'm a Londoner
That I love London town...

We'd often end a song with choruses like the following (although in fact songs often didn't end but just morphed into the next one):

Oh my, what a rotten song, what a rotten song, what a rotten song
Oh my, what a rotten song, and what a rotten singer too-oo-oo...

That was a terrible song, sing us another one just like the other one, sing us another one do-oo-oo...

Why was he born so beautiful, why was he born at all?
He's no bloody use to anyone, he's no bloody use at all...

Then there were the football songs. Growing up in East London of course our local football team was West Ham, so we would sing:

I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the sky,
They fly so high, nearly reach the sky, then like West Ham, they never die...

Arsenal fans would sing "Tip-Toe through the North Bank", Liverpool "You'll Never Walk Alone", etc.

>78 John5918:

A lot of the songs we used to sing were Cockney/London songs. I don't know how many of them were old, or whether they were from the late 19th and early 20th century music halls - maybe waltzmn can enlighten us.

I'll tell you what I can. Some of these are new to me. You should publish a collection. I'm serious. You know a lot of good stuff.

My old man said follow the van, and don't dilly dally on the way....

I don't know the source of this, although there is one printed version from around the 1940s.

Another favourite was:

Knees up Mother Brown, Knees up Mother Brown

This one is better-known, and interestingly is known as a children's game from the 1920s and as a World War II soldiers' song. Naturally the two types amplified different aspects of the song. :-)

There were several where I seem to remember we only really knew the choruses, not the verses.

"Wot Cher!", all the neighbours cried

The version of this that I know opens "Last week down our alley came a toff, Nice old geezer with a nasty cough." The singers inherit a broken-down donkey cart and ride it through various adventures. It was sold on street broadsides in the nineteenth century, so it's fairly old.

"Any old iron? Any old iron? Any, any, any old iron?

Not sure about this one. Probably a version of "The Grand Sweeper," which opens "Though I sweep to and fro old iron to find."

Let's all go down the strand ('ave a banana)

This one I can't identify at all. The books all do first lines of the verses, not the choruses. :-)

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner

The only version of this one I can find is from Charles Keeping's Cockney Ding Dong, which also was the sole source for "My old man said follow the van."

Why was he born so beautiful, why was he born at all?
He's no bloody use to anyone, he's no bloody use at all...

Now this is a classic -- when Michael Green et al published the first collection of rugby songs, the title they gave the book was Why was he born so beautiful, although when the book was republished, it was under the title Rugby Songs. (This is listed in the LibraryThing database as by Harry Morgan, but my copy doesn't say so!)

Then there were the football songs. Growing up in East London of course our local football team was West Ham, so we would sing:

And such things as these are almost always local and anonymous.

>79 waltzmn: You know a lot of good stuff.

Just lucky to have been involved in a lot of singalongs in my youth, at camps, in bars, at university, at church events - in short, anywhere where there was alcohol!

In recent years I've looked a lot of them up on Google and found the lyrics (including the verses to those choruses) and also found some good recordings on YouTube.

I know Wikipedia is not really an authoritative source, but there are some interesting comments. "My old man said follow the van", "Any old iron", "Let's all go down the Strand" and "Wotcher all the neighbours cried" are likely music hall numbers from the late 19th and early 20th century. There are suggestions that "Knees up Mother Brown" was a pub song in the early 1800s.

"Any old iron" was the well known cry of the rag and bone men (scrap merchants) who would slowly drive through the streets to collect scrap - even in my childhood they could still be seen using horse and cart, as in the well known TV comedy "Steptoe and Son". The "old iron" referred to in the song is his watch and chain which he has just inherited from his recently deceased Uncle Bill.

"Let's all go down the Strand" begins:

One night a half 'a dozen tourists
Spent the night together in Trafalgar Square
A fortnight's tour on the Continent was planned
And each had his portmanteau in his hand
Down the Rhine they meant to have a picnic
Til' Jones said, "I must decline"
"Boys you'll be advised by me to stay away from Germany
What's the good a' going down the Rhine"

Let's all go down the Strand (have a banana)...

Cockney Ding Dong could well be Cockney rhyming slang for Cockney Singsong!

>80 John5918:

>79 waltzmn: waltzmn: You know a lot of good stuff.

Just lucky to have been involved in a lot of singalongs in my youth, at camps, in bars, at university, at church events - in short, anywhere where there was alcohol!

I'm sure that's true, but that's how a lot of folk songs are learned. :-) And these are the sorts of things collectors ignored for far too long.

I know Wikipedia is not really an authoritative source, but there are some interesting comments. "My old man said follow the van", "Any old iron", "Let's all go down the Strand" and "Wotcher all the neighbours cried" are likely music hall numbers from the late 19th and early 20th century. There are suggestions that "Knees up Mother Brown" was a pub song in the early 1800s.

The problem is that so many music hall songs didn't make it into print. So we can't prove it either way. Obviously talking about the "chain of evidence" is more a scholarly thing than something a singer would do, but it does make it hard to chase origins!

And folk song scholars, these days, are mostly pretty insulated from ordinary people, because neither can stand the other's music. :-)

"Let's all go down the Strand" begins:

One night a half 'a dozen tourists....

Thank you. This doesn't appear to have actually gone into tradition (or maybe people refused to print it because of that modern word "tourists" :-), but a version was printed in News of the World c. 1910, according to Steve Roud, and there was a version in Music Hall Memories 2 around 1935. So if it wasn't music hall, it gave people the impression that it was. :-)

Hi everyone, I have been a member of LibraryThing since 2007 and joined for the ability to log all my books into a catalog, and to interact with other readers. However, at the time I still had a pretty busy daily schedule and I was reading about 1 book a week (mostly classics) and I never did get around to joining any of the Groups, or interacting with other members. But here I am now.

I just joined the "Readers over Sixty" Group and couldn't resist responding to the Camp songs thread.

I grew up on a farm in Bucks County Pa, and when I was a kid my dad used to throw huge parties in the summer in our picnic grove - kegs of beer and birch beer (for the kids), his friends all brought musical instruments so there was a mix of folk music, records, and radio for entertainment. Games for the kids, horse-shoe tosses and poker tables for the men. Lots and lots of food. The party usually started around 3 PM and after dark a campfire was lit and we all sat around singing...

One of my favorites was Home, Home, on the Range: here are the lyrics

O give me a home where the buffaloes roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Where the air is so pure and the zephyrs so free
And the breezes so balmy and light
That I would not exchange my home on the range
For all of the cities so bright
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light of the glittering stars
I stand there amazed and I ask as I gaze
Does their glory exceed that of ours?
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

My little sister never knew the words to the selected songs and would say, "Can't we sing something like 'Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?" but she was the only one that knew those words, so that didn't happen.

Sometime way after midnight when the party was coming to a close my dad always got out his old army bugle and played Taps.
Wonderful memories!

>82 LadyLo:

One of my favorites was Home, Home, on the Range: here are the lyrics

First printed in the 1873 Smith County (Kansas) Pioneer. Various authors have been proposed; none of the claims is very solid.

I suspect its popularity goes back to a recording by Vernon Dalhart, whose songs often sold in the millions; his version (Brunswick 137) was released in 1927. There were at least seven other recordings in the next six years. These recordings seem to have standardized the title "Home on the Range"; titles like "Western Home" were common before that.

Now the state song of Kansas. In the bill that made it official, they declared that the authors were Dr. Brewster Higley and Daniel Kelley. Not sure what it says that Kansas officially declared the authorship of a piece whose author is unknown. :-)

>83 waltzmn:

"Home on the Range" is one of very many songs which were adapted by proponents of one side or other in Northern Ireland to promote their particular religious and political ideology. Most of the ones I know are Catholic/Republican, but this one was a Protestant/Unionist effort. While it might be offensive to some, it is less offensive and violent than many of these type of adaptations, and it is indicative of the strong feelings on both sides.

Oh give me a home
Where there's no Pope of Rome
Where there's nothing but Protestants stay
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And flute bands play 'The Sash' every day

No, no Pope of Rome
No chapels to sadden my eyes
No nuns and no priests
No rosary beads
Every day is the 12th of July...

>84 John5918:

"Home on the Range" is one of very many songs which were adapted by proponents of one side or other in Northern Ireland to promote their particular religious and political ideology.

This I hadn't seen. Interesting. Thank you!

>82 LadyLo:

Incidentally, the way this song is sung now does not seem to match the earliest versions. The information which follows comes from Kirke Mechem, "Home on the Range,'" article published 1949 in The Kansas Historical Quarterly; republished on pp. 51-83 of Norm Cohen, editor, All This for a Song, Southern Folklife Collection, 2009 (which is where I saw it).

According to Mechem, there were two substantial changes from the earliest texts which made the song more popular. The line quoted here as "That I would not exchange my home on the range" was originally "I would not exchange my home here to range" -- giving the song an entirely different meaning. The other change didn't affect the meaning, but it made the song easier to sing; the first line of the chorus was originally "A home, a home, where the deer and the antelope play."

I've had Sweet Betsy from Pike running thru my head for the last couple days, I think as a result of following this thread...

>87 Crypto-Willobie:

I've had Sweet Betsy from Pike running thru my head for the last couple days, I think as a result of following this thread...

You could certainly have worse songs in your head. Lots of fun stories about that song. But here's just a couple.

There is a reason "Sweet Betsy" and Ike came from Pike. Pike County, Missouri was infamous for the not-quite-all-there-ness of its people. Hence, "Pikers."

The tune of "Sweet Betsy" is "Villikens and His Dinah" (Laws M31; Roud #271), which is one of the all-time most borrowed tunes. For instance, since John5918 mentioned Irish political songs, it was the tune for "Moses Ritoora-li-ay." But it was widely sung on its own. How widely? Well, consider Dinah the cat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and especially Through the Looking Glass. Dinah was a real cat belonging to Alice Liddell's family. The Liddells had originally had two cats. What was the name of the other one, which died young? "Villikens."

>78 John5918: Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner
That I love London so
Well, maybe it's because I'm a Londoner
That I think of her wherever I go
I get a funny feeling inside of me
While walking up and down
Well, maybe it's because I'm a Londoner
That I love London town...

My daughter learnt that one at school in Yorkshire (they spent a month learning about "that London"). There is nothing like hearing a classroom of Yorkshire children singing cockney songs :-)

>89 Dilara86: There is nothing like hearing a classroom of Yorkshire children singing cockney songs

Or a group of drunken Cockneys singing "On Ilkley Moor Baht'at"!

But talking of songs children learned in school, my Kenyan wife often comments on how all the songs she learned at school were British ones, as during that period which straddled the independence of Kenya from British colonial rule on 12th December 1963 the education system was still the British system.

>90 John5918: My dad went to English-medium schools in post-colonial India. He'll still sing For he's a jolly good fellow when he's in the mood.

A request for everyone who has posted to this topic (a pleasant one, I hope):

I've talked to the "board" of the Traditional Ballad Index, and the consensus is that many of the songs and song snippets posted here are worthy of preservation and cataloging.

We haven't quite decided yet how we're going to do this. But I'd like to ask all of you for permission to include your work. That's addressed especially to John5918, but also Crypto-Willobie, and there may be others who posted longer ago whose memories I would like to cite (I haven't looked over the thread to remind myself :-).

If you don't want to be cited, I will not quote your texts, although I may put in a notation that the song was known from oral tradition in 2021.

Another request for those who are willing: I'd like to know what part of the world you're from. I don't mean your address, just the general area -- British county or American state would be more than sufficient. Even a general area ("Midlands"; "New England"). We try to study geographic distribution, but we aren't very granular. :-)

If any of you have any questions, feel free to ask here, or send me a comment.

Thank you all in advance!

Fine with me, in fact I'm flattered.

My father (who sang She was poor/Big Jim Folsom) and the rest of our family are in this century from Pittsburgh, PA. (And before that from Llanelli, Wales -- might have some Davy Lloyd songs for you later.) He picked up the song when he was briefly a grad student in psychology at U. of Alabama in 1952 or 1953, and made it a family favorite when he learned to play the ukulele in the early 1960s after our immediate family had moved to Rockville, MD in the suburbs of Washington DC

We often sang it as a group at family get-togethers, in MD and in PA. In high school c1970, me n my guitar buddy John added it to our repertoire of songs by The Band, Bob Dylan, John Prine, etc. In the late 1990s (I think) I made a rough multi-track recording in my basement where I sang all the vocal parts and played acoustic guitar, slide guitar, 4-string banjo, electric bass, and harmonica.

On what authority I don't know we always called it 'The Ballad of Big Jim Folsom'.

Fine with me too. Grew up in East London but later spent a considerable amount of time in the north east of England. Also hung around with a lot of Irish Catholics, and the British-born offspring thereof.

>93 Crypto-Willobie:

Fine with me, in fact I'm flattered.

>94 John5918:

Fine with me too.

Thank you both.

Glancing through the thread briefly, I also see usable material by 2wonderY and descartes2, and there may be more that I would see with a true and thorough re-read. (So apologies to anyone I skimmed by!)

I will try to update people once we've decided exactly how we're going to do this. It will be freely available on the Internet, somewhere, with all items credited to this thread and whoever posted the text.

I may yet have questions. There is a lot of stuff in this thread even if you ignore my pedantry. :-)

When I was growing up, many of these songs I learned when I was a girl guide - back in the 1970s.

But the one my dad taught me was probably irish. Has anyone heard of Molly Malone?

In Dublins Fair city, where the girls are so pretty,
Where i first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
She pushed her wheelbarrow, through streets broad and narrow,
crying cockles and mussels alive alive oh

Alive alive oh
Alive alive oh
Singing cockles and mussles
alive alive oh

>96 Robloz:
That was in my dad's ukulele rep too!

>92 waltzmn: Ok with me. I'm from US-Ohio

Another song I haven't seen mentioned (although the list is getting very long and I might have missed it) is "Casey Jones"

Come all you rounders if you want to hear
A story about a brave Engineer.
Casey Jones was the Rounders name
On a six eight wheeler, boys, he won his fame.
The caller called Casey at a half past four.
He kissed his wife at the station door.
He mounted to the cabin with his orders in his hand
And he took his farewell trip to that promised land.

Chorus (after every verse)
Casey Jones! Mounted to the cabin
Casey Jones with his orders in his hand.
Casey Jones mounted to the cabin
And he took his farewell trip to that promised land.

Put in your water and shovel in your coal
Put your head out the window watch them drivers roll
I’ll run her till she leaves the rail
Cause I’m eight hours late with that western mail.
He looked at his watch and his watch was slow.
He looked at the water and the water was low.
He turned to the Fireman and he said
We’re going to reach Frisco but we’ll all be dead.

Casey said just before he died,
“There’s two more roads that I’d like to ride.”
Fireman said, “What could that be?”
“The Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe.
Mrs. Jones sat on her bed a sighing
Just received a message that Casey was dying
Said to go bed children and hush your crying
Cause you got another papa on the Salt Lake Line.

When we sang this in school in the early 60's, the last line was changed and I did not realize it to years later. I can't remember what it was changed TO! I guess the music teacher did not want to intimate to such young children that Mrs. Casey had another papa!

>97 Crypto-Willobie:

"Molly Malone"/"Cockles and Mussels" is a curiosity. It is extremely well known, or was until people learned all their music from radio -- and yet it shows almost no variants; the only one that is at all common is in the line quoted above as "through streets broad and narrow," which often occurs as "through streets OLD and narrow." It's as if there is a canonical version that everyone has to follow -- but in fact there is no canonical version; the author is unknown and there seems to be no first edition from which all others derive. The oldest edition I know of with a firm date is from 1876: Henry Randall Waite, Carmina Collegensia: A Complete Collection of the Songs of the American Colleges first edition 1868, expanded edition, Oliver Ditson, 1876, p. 73 (of part 3), "Cockles and Mussels." That's an American edition, note, not Irish. By around 1890 there was a Scottish broadside in the Poet's Box collection, miserably printed. I don't know of any Irish versions until the twentieth century.

Despite which, there is said to be a statue of Molly Malone in Dublin. I understand that it sort of rewrites her story. Which I suppose is allowed, since she's fictional anyway. :-)

>98 Tess_W:

Another song I haven't seen mentioned (although the list is getting very long and I might have missed it) is "Casey Jones"

I haven't seen mentioned either.

"Casey Jones" had a lot of commercial help to become popular. Arthur Collins, who sang sort of popular art songs, recorded it in 1910, and Vernon Dalhart (already mentioned in connection with "Home on the Range") in 1925. There were at least eleven other versions on 78 (or, in one case, Edison cylinder) by 1930.

That 1910 recording was just one year after it was copyrighted. Although the story in the song is largely false, Casey Jones was real; John Luther "Casey" Jones was killed April 30, 1900 near Vaughan, Mississippi. At the time, he worked on the Illinois Central. He got the nickname "Casey" because (folklore says) there were so many Joneses working on the railroad that they needed nicknames, and John Luther Jones had been based near the Cayce water tower.

The original version seems to have been by Wallis/Wallace/Wash Saunders/Sanders (?), a Black man who hung around the railroads in part because he couldn't get a real job in a racist society; but the 1909 copyright claim was by Newton & Siebert.

That last line that your teacher changed was not popular with Mrs. Casey Jones; she died in 1958 at the age of 92, having spent half a century disclaiming the accusations of infidelity in the song.

>100 waltzmn:

The Casey Jones story is of course well known to railroad enthusiasts. I seem to remember the song from an old black and white TV series when I was a child.

Two songs I can remember are 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame' and a 'Bicycle Built for Two.' We sang these in elementary school in the 1960's. My mother just thought of 'Buffalo Gals' and 'Danny Boy.'

>102 Tess_W:

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do,
I'm half crazy all for the love of you.
It won't be a stylish marriage,
I can't afford a carriage,
But you'll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two...

From memory.

Michael, Michael, here is your answer true,
I'm not crazy over the likes of you.
If you can't afford a carriage,
Call off the blooming marriage,
Coz I'll be damned if I'll be jammed
On a bicycle built for two...

>104 Crypto-Willobie:

Or,

Richard, Richard, here is your answer true,
You're (all/plumb/half) crazy, if you think that will do.
If you can't afford a carriage,
There won't be any marriage,
'Cause I'll be switched if I'll be hitched
On a bicycle built for two.

Neither version, of course, is in the original Harry Dacre sheet music (1882). Like a lot of songs from that era ("And the Band Played On" would be another example), the chorus is remembered, the verses are not (and don't deserve to be), and people sometimes add new words to make the chorus into a full-length song.

In the Dacre version, Daisy accepts his proposal despite the bike. However, it contributed to women's liberation in a small way. The woman who made it a hit, Katie Lawrence, dressed in pants to perform the song, which was mildly scandalous at the time.

Incidentally, none other than Lewis Carroll wrote parodies of the song, to the nieces of his special friend Gertrude Chataway. In a letter to Hilda Moberly Bell, he wrote,
Hilda! Hilda!
Give me your answer true;
I'm a crazy builder,
All for the love of you.
Hilda's sister Enid got this message:
Enid! Enid!
Give me your answer true;
It wasn't Hilda I meaned,
It was only you!

>104 Crypto-Willobie:

From the Two Ronnies on prime time British TV:

Daisy, Daisy, standing be'ind the bar,
You're quite 'azy after my fourteenth jar.
It's a bit of an 'ocus pocus
To get you into focus.
Your sweater just goes in and out
Like a jelly mould built for two.

The world needs more Ronnies...

>107 Crypto-Willobie:

One of the all time great comedy duos, along with Morecambe and Wise.

Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man
Washed his face with a fryin' pan
Combed his hair with a wagon wheel
And died with a toothache in his heel
Get out the way, Old Dan Tucker
You're too late to get your supper
Get out the way, Old Dan Tucker
You're too late to get your supper

'Mean old man', no?

>110 Crypto-Willobie: Maybe!

>111 Tess_W:

"Old Dan Tucker" was published in the 1840s, and attributed to "Old Dan D. Emmit" (sic., i.e. Daniel Decatur Emmit) of the Virginia Minstrels, who is most famously responsible for "Dixie"; also "De Boatman Dance" and "Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel." (Ironically for a minstrel performer, he is said to have been anti-slavery.) So there was plenty of time for both your readings to evolve. :-)

The copy of the what is thought to be the earliest sheet music, in Richard Jackson's Popular Songs of Nineteenth Century America, does not give the exact verse quoted (which I fear was semi-popularized by the video portrayals of the Little House books). It opens

I come to town de udder night,
I hear de noise and saw de fight,
De watchman was a runnin roun,
cryin Old Dan Tucker's come to town,

(Gran' Chorus)
So get out de way! get out de way! get out de way!
Old Dan Tucker your to late to come to supper.

Tucker is a nice old man,
He used to ride our darby ram;
He sent him whizzen down de hill
If had'nt got up he'd lay dar still.

(there are five other verses).

This might not have been the original version, though. Without getting into the arguments over priority, there seems to have been another version floating around in the 1840s. This has led to arguments about whether Emmett wrote it. My personal guess is that it is indeed by Emmett (his first published song), but it was "bootlegged," and then Emmett produced a different version to claim the copyright.

The connection with Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books is curious. The books do not quote the song that I ever noticed, but it is extremely likely that Laura knew it. Vance Randolph's Ozark Folksongs has five different versions of the song. The Ozark version typically has the chorus as something like

Git out of the way for old Dan Tucker,
He's too late to get his supper.
Supper's over and breakfast cooking,
And old Dan Tucker standing a-looking.

Two of the five Ozark versions have something like your verse. The C fragment is:

Old Dan Tucker is a fine old man,
Washed his face in the fryin' pan,
Combed his hair with a wagon wheel,
An' died with a toothache in his heel.

Note that, although Laura did not contribute to Ozark Folksongs, her daughter Rose Wilder Lane gave Randolph several pieces (nine, I think it was), though not this one. Thus there is a real Laura connection.

I'm not saying your words originated in the Ozarks; they're found all over the place, and even I am not obsessive enough to try to find the earliest version of those words. :-) But I think the TV version is what most people today have heard.

>95 waltzmn: You may use any material from my posts. My growing up was done north of Pittsburgh along the Allegheny River.

>113 2wonderY:

Thank you!

Hmmm... wonder where i got 'mean old'?

How about Old Joe Clark?

>115 Crypto-Willobie:

Hmmm... wonder where i got 'mean old'?

Oral tradition. Things change. :-) It's not a reading I can recall seeing, but I've read dozens; I could easily have forgotten it!

How about Old Joe Clark?

An amazingly close fit to "Old Dan" in age -- the earliest version I have seen was dated 1842, though I don't know how solid that it. But "Old Joe" is purely traditional; we have no idea of the author. It may well have started as an instrumental and soaked up verses from here, there, and everywhere. Or had one verse as a fiddler's mnemonic and added them from there. I've seen dozens of different stanzas, from animal verses to bawdy. The tune is very stable, though. Possibly because it's mixolydian (flatted seventh), which makes it memorable and harder to swap.

She is more to be pitied than censured,
she is more to be {?____} than despised.
She is merely a lassie who ventured
on life's {something}path ill-advised
Do not scorn her with words fierce and bitter
do not laugh at her shame and downfall.
For a moment just stop and consider
that a man was the cause of it all.

Perhaps not really from the folk tradition? but now I recall that in my dad's ukulele rep it often followed She Was Poor...

I was discussing this with my sister and she can remember: All around the mulberry bush.............POP goes the weasel!

All the girls sang this every recess on the playground:
I'm Henry the VIIth I am, Henry the VIIIth I am, I am
Wouldn't have a Willie or a John, no sir!
It's Henry the VIIIth I am! Each time we sang the song it was faster.

"I'm 'enery the eighth I am, 'enery the eighth I am I am, I got married to the widder next door, she'd been married seven times before, and every one was an 'enery, never had a Willie nor a Sam, I'm 'er eighth old man called 'enery, 'enery the eighth I am" was popular with us. I seem to recall Tommy Steele doing a good rendering of it. Eighth was of course pronounced eightf in true Cockney fashion.

I recall "Pop goes the weasel" being associated with "Up and down the City Road, in and out the Eagle, that's the way the money goes, Pop goes the weasel."

Mulberry bush rings a bell, but I can't place it.

Oh dear, what can the matter be
Three old ladies locked in the lavatory
They've been there from Monday to Saturday
Nobody knew they were there.

>119 John5918: Yes, your version is much more accurate than mine--I couldn't remember!

>117 Crypto-Willobie:

She is more to be pitied than censured,

Not strongly folk, although there are a few hints it went into tradition. It was written by William B. Gray in 1898. Sigmund Spaeth's Read 'Em and Weep gives the first half-verse as

She is more to be pitied than censured,
She is more to be helped than despised,
She is only a lassie who ventured
On life's stormy path, ill-advised.

You have the second half-verse verbatim.

>118 Tess_W:

I was discussing this with my sister and she can remember: All around the mulberry bush.............POP goes the weasel!

Very common. The version in my family was

All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey thought 'twas all in fun.
Pop goes the weasel.

However, I think that was influenced by print.

It was first printed, in both America and Britain, in 1853, though it is much more commonly found in the United States. No author was listed. Neither text much resembles the above (the American version was a political piece, with a reference to President Franklin Pierce). It is widely thought that, in the original, the "weasel" was a tool used by hatmakers, and to pop it was to pawn it.

I'm 'enery the eighth I am is pure music hall. I'd have to dig out my deeply buried music hall books to verify this, but it has a Wikipedia entry that says that it is by Fred Murray and R. P. Weston and was made popular in 1965 by Herman's Hermits. It's older than that, but it's interesting to find people learning it from tradition.

>120 John5918:

Oh dear, what can the matter be dates from no later than 1792; no author is known. The common version is "clean":

Oh, dear, what can the matter be?
Dear, dear, what can the matter be?
Oh, dear, what can the matter be?
Johnny's so long at the fair.

But the "lavatory" verse is a very common parody of a song that is pretty vapid.

Camp songs:

Waltzing Matilda

It Was Sad When the Great Ship Went Down (about the Titanic, "husbands and wives and little cildren lost their lives" went this skippy little tune)

I Used to Work in Chicago (which my dad taught us and the camp leader forbade us to sing, which only made it more fun plus people made up new verses, so I was expanding literary skills even at age 11, you're welcome Girl Scouts of America)

>123 nohrt4me2:

It Was Sad When the Great Ship Went Down (about the Titanic, "husbands and wives and little cildren lost their lives" went this skippy little tune)

The tune is actually "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane" by Will S. Hays. Which is one of all the great sources of parodies. N. Howard Thorp, who published the first book of cowboy songs, used it for "Little Joe the Wrangler." There are at least five different songs about "The Little Red Caboose Behind the Train," of various degrees of bawdiness. In the Great Depression, they sang "Beans, Bacon, and Gravy." In Australia, they were "Waiting for the Rain." And there were many others. This, the best-known of more than a dozen Titanic folk songs, was first recorded by Ernest Stoneman in 1924, although it's not clear that he wrote it. Yet again, it was probably Vernon Dalhart who popularized it.

We were taught a joke version of it in elementary school. I have no idea who was responsible for that.

"I Used to Work in Chicago" may be by Larry Vincent, but the earliest recording seems to be by a group called "Three Bits of Rhythm," and that precedes the earliest recording by Vincent. The song can't be traced before the 1940s, and it's fairly rare in printed collections -- for the very reason you hint at: It was censored. As a matter of fact, the only printed versions seem to be those in Ed Cray's The Erotic Muse. Thus your family version, if you are willing to share it, would actually be a significant addition to erotic folklore.

>124 waltzmn: Here's 2 Girl Scouts singing the Titanic song EXACTLY like we used to. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2rP1gD9xXkU

I will only say that the person who worked in Chicago waited on a lady who asked for a felt hat. It was hardly erotic, just rude.

>125 nohrt4me2:

I will only say that the person who worked in Chicago waited on a lady who asked for a felt hat. It was hardly erotic, just rude.

The versions vary substantially. There are some in which the singer describes something that should have gotten him in prison, not just fired! Cray has verses in which the shopper is "licked," "peeled," and "spread."

Understand that I am not a fan of dirty songs. I don't sing any, really, except for things like "Crockery Ware" or "Eppie Morrie" which have no dirty words and in which the woman surely holds her own! But sometimes folklorists, like historians, have to deal with things we don't like.

Example: A counting rhyme which I'm sure most of you have heard runs something like

Eenie meenie miney moe,
Catch a {something} by the toe,
If he hollers, let him go.
Eenie meenie miney moe.

Thankfully, in the version I learned, what we caught in the second line was a "tiger." But in many versions, especially pre-1960 and in the American south, what they catch is a "n*****." Should we forget the blatant racism shown by that counting rhyme? Does it not tell us a great deal about American society?

>126 waltzmn: I learned it as “catch a monkey by the toe.” Which could also be considered a racist term, but I never thought that way.

Camp Singers --

I've finished going through this thread and have some results for you. I'll also try to send this individually to the more important posters to the thread, but this is for anyone I missed who is still reading, or to any lurkers.

First, I ended up citing the thread for 68 songs. That isn't every song mentioned in the thread, but there were 68 that appeared to be from or linked to oral tradition. I cited the following posters:

2wonderY -- 6 times
bilblio -- 3 times
Crypto-Willobie -- 7 times
descartes2 -- 1 time
Dilara86 -- 1 time
hailelib -- 1 time
Helenliz -- 1 time
John5918 -- 39 times
LadyLo -- 1 time
nohrt4me2 -- 2 times
Robloz -- 1 time
TempleCat -- 6 times
Tess_W -- 12 times

These are just citations; there are 34 cases where I included the song text, not just a citation. The breakdown for those:

2wonderY -- 5 times
bilblio -- 1 time
Crypto-Willobie -- 3 times
descartes2 -- 1 time
Helenliz -- 1 time
John5918 -- 22 times
LadyLo -- 1 time
Robloz -- 1 time
Tess_W -- 4 times

Thanks to all who participated!

The information has been posted in the Traditional Ballad Index, and will be published with the next edition, Version 6.3. This will probably appear in February or March of 2021, assuming the coronavirus doesn't get me. If you just absolutely can't wait, and you have FileMaker Pro, or have an iPad or iPhone and are willing to download FileMaker Go, contact me and I can give you an interim version of the database.

I naturally was able to find out more about many of these songs when I was able to spend time researching them, not just frantically posting to this thread. So I'm going to offer a list of all the songs cited, with their collective Ballad Index titles, which can be used to look them up in the Traditional Ballad Index once version 6.3 comes out. (Ballad Index search page: http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/BalladSearch.html; song list: http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/Contents.html. You can search for the collection name "LibraryThingCampSongsThread" or for your particular user name).

In addition to the collective song title, I'll also list the author(s) if known. I will also give you the Roud Numbers, which can be used to look up songs in the Roud Folk Song Index at the Vaughn Williams Memorial Library (https://www.vwml.org/), and the number of citations in the Roud Index. This isn't an absolutely reliable indication of a song's popularity in tradition (some songs, because they were featured in important catalogs, are more often printed than others -- "Casey Jones" is one such -- while children's songs have often been treated with contempt and it wasn't until recently that bawdy songs could be printed at all), but it will give you a hint.

The list:

Animal Fair. (authors: unknown). Roud #4582, 22 cited versions
The Ants Go Marching. (authors: unknown). Roud #18336, 6 cited versions
Any Old Iron. (authors: Charles Collins, Fred E. Terry and E.A. Sheppard (source: Wikipedia)). Roud #32461, 5 cited versions
Baby Bumblebee. (authors: unknown).
Bicycle Built for Two (Daisy Bell). (authors: Harry Dacre).
Casey Jones (I) {Laws G1}. (authors: Original text by Wallis/Wallace/Wash Saunders/Sanders (?); "Official" text copyrighted 1909 by Newton & Siebert). Roud #3247, 157 cited versions
Charlie Had a Pigeon. (authors: unknown).
Christmas Is Coming, the Goose Is Getting Fat. (authors: unknown). Roud #12817, 9 cited versions
Cinderella Dressed in Yellow. (authors: unknown). Roud #18410, 33 cited versions
Clementine. (authors: unknown). Roud #9611, 35 cited versions
Comin' In on a Wing and a Prayer. (authors: Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh (source: web site "This Day in Quotes," http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2010/02/comin-in-on-wing-and-prayer.html; C. W. Getz, "The Wild Blue Yonder," lists only McHugh)). Roud #32497, 1 cited versions
The D-Day Dodgers. (authors: Hamish Henderson?). Roud #10499, 9 cited versions
Dem Bones. (authors: unknown). Roud #15641, 3 cited versions
Does the Driver Want a Wee Wee. (authors: unknown).
Don't Dilly Dally on the Way. (authors: Fred W. Leigh and Charles Collins (source: Wikipedia)). Roud #32460, 1 cited versions
Everywhere We Go. (authors: unknown). Roud #26354, 4 cited versions
Flee Fly Flo. (authors: unknown). Roud #16804, 5 cited versions
Gin Gang Goolie. (authors: unknown).
Goosey, Goosey, Gander. (authors: unknown). Roud #6488, 17 cited versions
Green Grow the Rushes-O (The Twelve Apostles, Come and I Will Sing You). (authors: unknown). Roud #133, 225 cited versions
Hitler Has Only Got One Ball. (authors: unknown (music by Lieutenant F. J. Ricketts, also known as Kenneth J. Alford, 1881–1945)). Roud #10493, 6 cited versions
Home on the Range. (authors: unknown). Roud #3599, 67 cited versions
I Used to Work in Chicago. (authors: unknown). Roud #4837, 7 cited versions
I'd Like to Find the Sergeant. (authors: unknown). Roud #29391, 2 cited versions
I'm a Little Tea Pot. (authors: George H. Sanders and Clarence Z. Kelley (source: Dolby-OrangesAndLemons)). Roud #20416, 2 cited versions
I'm Henery the Eighth I Am. (authors: Fred Murray and R. P. Weston (source: Wikipedia)). Roud #30028, 2 cited versions
I've Been Working on the Railroad. (authors: unknown). Roud #12606?
I've Got a Wheelbarrow. (authors: unknown).
John Henry {Laws I1}. (authors: unknown). Roud #790, 274 cited versions
Knees Up, Mother Brown. (authors: unknown). Roud #24984, 3 cited versions
Let's All Go Down the Strand!. (authors: Clarence Wainwright Murphy (1875–1913) and Harry Castling (1865–1933) (source: mfiles.org.uk)). Roud #V31313
The Little Birdy with the Silly Name. (authors: unknown).
Little Pile of Tin. (authors: unknown).
Lloyd George Knew My Father. (authors: unknown).
Mademoiselle from Armentières. (authors: unknown). Roud #4703, 80 cited versions
Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner. (authors: Hubert Gregg (source: Wikipedia)). Roud #32458, 1 cited versions
Molly Malone. (authors: unknown). Roud #16932, 22 cited versions
Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer. (authors: unknown). Roud #7603, 13 cited versions
Old Dan Tucker. (authors: attributed to Daniel Decatur Emmett). Roud #390, 253 cited versions
Old King Cole (I). (authors: unknown). Roud #1164, 136 cited versions
Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. (authors: Probaby Rose Bonne (words) and Alan Mills (music)). Roud #9375, 3 cited versions
Old MacDonald Had a Farm. (authors: unknown). Roud #745, 52 cited versions
Once There Was a Chinaman. (authors: unknown).
One Bottle of Pop. (authors: unknown).
One Man Shall Mow My Meadow. (authors: unknown). Roud #143, 63 cited versions
Oranges and Lemons. (authors: unknown). Roud #13190, 65 cited versions
Pop Goes the Weasel. (authors: unknown). Roud #5249, 92 cited versions
Put a Watermelon Rind Upon My Grave. (authors: unknown).
The Quartermaster Corps (The Quartermaster Store). (authors: unknown). Roud #10508, 20 cited versions
The Rattling Bog. (authors: unknown). Roud #129, 199 cited versions
Rawtenstall Annual Fair. (authors: RP Weston (1878-1936) and Bert Lee (1880-1946) (source: various web sites)). Roud #23927, 2 cited versions
Ring Around the Rosie. (authors: unknown). Roud #7925, 73 cited versions
Seven Old Ladies. (authors: unknown). Roud #10227, 3 cited versions
She Is More to Be Pitied than Censured. (authors: William B. Gray (died 1932)). Roud #15477, 15 cited versions
She Was Poor But She Was Honest (II). (authors: unknown). Roud #9621, 33 cited versions
She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain. (authors: unknown). Roud #4204, 105 cited versions
Sweet Betsy from Pike {Laws B9}. (authors: claimed by John A Stone (Old Put)). Roud #3234, 65 cited versions
Teasing Songs. (authors: unknown). Roud #10232 and 10404, 20 cited versions
There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea. (authors: unknown). Roud #15766, 13 cited versions
There's a Hole in the Bucket. (authors: unknown). Roud #17845, 3 cited versions
Three Blind Jellyfish. (authors: unknown).
The Titanic (I) ("It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down") {Laws D24} (Titanic #1). (authors: unknown). Roud #774, 65 cited versions
Waltzing Matilda. (authors: words almost certainly by A. B. "Banjo" Paterson (1864-1941) / original tune fitted (and possibly adapted) by Christina MacPherson; common tune further adapted by Marie Cowan). Roud #9536, 8 cited versions
Whistle While You Work (World War II Version). (authors: unknown (original "Whistle While You Work" tune by Frank Churchill with lyrics by Larry Morey, 1937, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs")). Roud #19993, 2 cited versions
Why Was He Born So Beautiful?. (authors: unknown). Roud #10153, 2 cited versions
The Woodpecker's Hole. (authors: unknown). Roud #10134, 19 cited versions
The Worms Crawl In. (authors: unknown). Roud #15546, 10 cited versions
Wot Cheer! (Knocked 'Em in the Old Kent Road). (authors: Words: Albert Chevalier / Music: Charles Ingle (source: Gammond)). Roud #25941, 5 cited versions

Thanks for all t his work!

Yes, thanks to waltzmn for all his research, and to everyone who contributed to this interesting thread.

>130 John5918: Yes, thanks to waltzmn for all his research, and to everyone who contributed to this interesting thread.

The true thanks are to the contributors to the thread. I was going to be working on my database anyway. :-) But the people who posted here gave me a lot of interesting texts and citations, some of them of songs that have never been printed in any folk music field collections.

I wanted to post an interim report because it will be half a year or so before this becomes publicly available, and I didn't want people to think that I had taken their posts and buried them. Producing the report was very little work, because it's all in the database anyway; I just had to export it and format it.

Again, thanks to everyone.

I love the mountains
I love the rolling hills
I love the flowers
I love the daffodils
I love the fireside
When all the lights are low
Boom-de-yada
Boom-de-yada
Boom-de-yada
Boom-de-yada

>132 cpg: I love the mountains...

Can't say I've encountered this one before; it's not in any traditional collections. But listening to it, I can't help but observe that this is what I think was called the "Great Fifties Chord Progression," perhaps best exemplified by "Heart and Soul": I, VIm, IIm or IV, V. No wonder it's all over the place on the Net. :-)

(Nothing particularly wrong with that; "Baby Shark" is also a riff on an established pattern -- in that case, a descending scale. I'm sure I'll offend everyone here by saying that "Baby Shark" is basically the Pachelbel Canon in D. :-)

>132 cpg: Oh! I remember that one. Thanks!

>134 2wonderY: Oh! I remember that one. Thanks!

Do you remember where you heard it? I'm trying to decide if it qualifies as traditional. There are copies all over the Net, and none of them list the author, but the chord progression says "recent," and the mention of daffodils says "designed to talk down to kids" :-), so I'm doubtful about it.

I’m sure it was one of the camp songs in the 60s. Pittsburgh PA area.

>136 2wonderY: I’m sure it was one of the camp songs in the 60s. Pittsburgh PA area.

Thanks. I appreciate it.

>135 waltzmn:

I had no idea that daffodils were so juvenile! We regularly sang this song in a church youth group in Missouri in the early 70s.

>138 cpg: I had no idea that daffodils were so juvenile! We regularly sang this song in a church youth group in Missouri in the early 70s.

Thank you.

I'm being a little silly in saying that daffodils are talking down. But there is a language of flowers that was used in the Middle Ages and renaissance. You may remember Ophelia's "there's rosemary, for remembrance." Or the version of "The Elfin Knight" recorded by Simon and Garfunkel ("Scarborough Fair") is one of the types that hs the chorus "Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme." The meaning of parsley varies, but sage is of course wisdom, rosemary is remembrance, and thyme is virginity. "Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme" is a warning about losing one's virginity. Often to a man offering a rose (love).

There is a whole complex about thyme songs, telling girls something like "Let no man steal your thyme," because, once lost, one "cannot plant any new." Or the thyme may be replaced by rue (regret). A. E. Housman still remembered that one: "With rue my heart is laden."

Obviously this is too obscure for kids, or for most adults, today. But a daffodil, or daffodowndilly, has different associations, even today, even if not consciously. What flower do you usually give a loved one on Valentine's Day? Roses. On Easter, the flower is lilies. And so forth.

>139 waltzmn: Nah! It was the flower that met the criteria
1. Three syllables
2. Rhymes with ‘rolling hills.’

>140 2wonderY: Nah! It was the flower that met the criteria
1. Three syllables
2. Rhymes with ‘rolling hills.’

You could be right, but you're making an assumption that is at the heart of the issue, for me: That the song as given is the unmodified work of a single author. If it is, then it is not the product of oral tradition (handed on from person to person over the years and making it their own), so I don't have to worry about it. :-)

More seriously:
1. Why do you assume a song or poem is always composed from top to bottom? Some are; some are not. In the case of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, it is infamous that he wrote the last line first, then the last stanza, then the rest of it. The Canterbury Tales had a beginning and an end before it had a middle -- the middle was never finished, and almost certainly Chaucer never even had a final order of tales. Parts toward the end were certainly finished before much of the material at the beginning. And it is almost universally believed by scholars that The Knight's Tale was composed before the General Prologue.
A lot of songs are not written top-to-bottom, even if they are lyrics-first. (One of the strangest stories I've ever heard from a songwriter was of how he often dreams songs in a foreign, even non-existent, language. Those often become chorus lines, and he has to build the rest of the song to make those words make sense!)
I'd bet a lot that this was written tune-first rather than lyrics-first (since the tune is basically borrowed), which does promote a linear writing process, but it certainly doesn't require it.

2. Even if the author was committed to "rolling hills, why does "rolling hills" have to rhyme with a flower? Why not "rocks and rills" or "turning mills" or such?

I do have to grant you one thing, though: Daffodils are a European flower, yet the song seems American. Daffodils in American mountains are unlikely. This could argue that someone was working for effect and really wanted to mention a flower there. So, yes, you could be right. It still strikes me as odd.

And, yes, I do spend too much time on things like this! It comes from being autistic -- and from having given a quarter of a century of my life to a research project that I give away.

>141 waltzmn: having given a quarter of a century of my life to a research project that I give away

And thank God there are people who spend a quarter of a century or more on what may seem like relatively obscure topics but which are still of at least passing interest to some of us to whom it is given away! My own quarter-century obsession happens to be railways, but I can identify with people who have other hobbies.

Reminds me of a chorus from Dr Busker's bawdy version of "English Country Garden". Dr Busker is a humourous folk musician who is known mainly at the annual Great Dorset Steam Fair, which brings together hundreds of steam engines, thousands of enthusiasts and I believe a great deal of beer. He writes his own lyrics, often about steam engines, but uses the tunes and themes of traditional songs.

Some say the world was won by the indoor hobbies of the Englishman.
Some collect stamps, some play trains, some like to build model aeroplanes,
Some like to write down the football scores,
But I like dogging in the great outdoors!

I have to add that while I am an Englishman (musical shades of Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore here, "For he is an Englishman!"), I do play trains, I have built model aeroplanes, and I even collected stamps for a short period as a lad, I have never felt the urge to indulge in writing down the football scores nor dogging!

>142 John5918: My own quarter-century obsession happens to be railways

Just have to say that a folk music scholar has to consider railways very important, even if I'm not expert. :-) I even live next to a railroad track. :-) (There is a train going by as I type, although I definitely didn't plan that part :-).

There are, based on keywords, 283 train-related songs in the Traditional Ballad Index, and the two most popular (John Henry and Casey Jones) have both come up in this thread.

If it matters, the next three most popular are

The Wreck of Old 97
The Wreck on the C & O
Ten Thousand Miles Away from Home

A couple of good ones from this side of the Pond are Paddy Works on the Railway (or Poor Paddy Works on the Railway), which has been recorded by many different artists including the Pogues:

In eighteen hundred and forty one
My corduroy breeches I put on.
My corduroy breeches I put on
To work upon the railway, the railway,
Poor Paddy works on the railway...

And a less well-known one, the Fireman's Song:

Whenever you see a train go by,
Or hear an engine's whistle cry,
Think of the man on the old footplate
Shovelling coal, the driver's mate.

Chorus: A loco fireman is me grade,
Boiling water is me trade,
The driver thinks he runs the show,
But if I'm not there the train won't go.

My notes say it was written by Don Bilston, a fireman and later driver in Birmingham. I don't know when, but presumably 20th century. As a steam locomotive fireman myself, I love this one.

>144 John5918: A couple of good ones from this side of the Pond are Paddy Works on the Railway (or Poor Paddy Works on the Railway), which has been recorded by many different artists including the Pogues:

In eighteen hundred and forty one....

This is in fact one of the railroad songs I learned when young, although I don't remember exactly when or how. It seemed to be One of Those Songs You Are Supposed to Learn. It's both English and American. The typical American version has a chorus "Fil-i-me-oo-ri-ee-ri-ay." This is the common version now, but older versions are more likely to have the chorus "I'm weary of the railway, Poor Paddy works on the railway." I learned that one later; it's much more English (e.g. it has references to Hartlepool and to the Leeds and Selby Railway).

The earliest printed version I know of is from Carl Sandburg's The American Songbag, from 1927, but there is a pretty clear reference from a manuscript of 1864.

It's hard to exactly, er, gauge the popularity of train songs, except that the three most popular are clearly "John Henry" (insofar as it counts), "Casey Jones," and "The Wreck of the Old 97," but my reference count makes "Poor Paddy" tied for twelfth with "The Wabash Cannonball," which is probably the most borrowed tune of any train song.

I can't say I've heard "The Fireman's Song," although that line "But if I'm not there the train won't go" sounds familiar.

Incidentally, if you have any deep interest in train songs, the book you really must have is Norm Cohen's Long Steel Rail. It is well-documented (Cohen was an extraordinarily careful scholar) and pretty close to comprehensive (120 songs).

And I find that Norm Cohen's author entry has combination issues. I'd better go work on that. :-)

>145 waltzmn:

Thanks. I must look out for that one. I don't have any books specifically of railway songs, but I do have a 1953 collection of "the stories, tall tales, traditions, ballads and songs of the American railroad" called A Treasury of Railroad Folklore edited by B A Botkin and Alan F Harlow, which is mainly prose but features a few songs, including "The Wreck of the Old 97". It has "Paddy Works on the Erie" rather than "on the railway".

Edited to add: I've just ordered Cohen's book.

waltzmn, I just came across what is essentially liner notes from an album called ‘They Can’t Put It Back.’ The copyright says 1977 by June Appal Recordings, and contain protest songs about coal mining. Would you like a scan of the contents? I googled, and some of the songs are on YouTube, and here’s a wiki of the company

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Appal_Recordings

I learned these songs from 1973 to 1976, from other college students. My friends were folk musicians, and we attended music festivals around the state.

>146 John5918: but I do have a 1953 collection of "the stories, tall tales, traditions, ballads and songs of the American railroad" called A Treasury of Railroad Folklore edited by B A Botkin and Alan F Harlow, which is mainly prose but features a few songs...

FWIW, Ben Botkin published a series of those folklore compendium, e.g. A Treasury of American Folklore and A Treasury of New England Folklore. All follow that format you describe: Mostly folktales and other prose material, with a few songs. The level of scholarship is decent but not extraordinary -- Botkin rarely added anything to his sources. But the book is certainly the best single volume of railroad folklore.

It has "Paddy Works on the Erie" rather than "on the railway"

That version in fact was pretty well known for a while, because it was reprinted in a very common tabletop book, The Fireside Book of Folk Songs. It appears to go back to Lomax and Lomax's American Ballads and Folk Songs. I wouldn't be surprised if Botkin printed that one to show that folk songs have variations.

I wasn't demanding that you buy Norm Cohen's book :-) -- I used to know him, slightly, but he has been out of touch for years (retired and without internet access, I think). But it is a good one; I think you will find both useful information and interesting songs in it. There are other books of railroad folksongs, e.g. Katie Letcher Lyle's Scalded to Death by the Steam, but none of them come close to Cohen's.

>147 2wonderY: waltzmn, I just came across what is essentially liner notes from an album called ‘They Can’t Put It Back.’ The copyright says 1977 by June Appal Recordings, and contain protest songs about coal mining. Would you like a scan of the contents?

I have to start, since we're talking railroad folksongs, with the June Appal label. They're fairly well known in folk circles -- and they take their name from a fiddle tune, "June Appal." Which is sometimes sung with lyrics such as these:

Train on the island, hear the whistle blow,
Go and tell my true love, I'm sick and I can't go.

Train on the island, listen to it squeal,
Go and tell my true love how happy I do feel.

Train on the island, headed to the west,
Me and my gal, we fell out, perhaps it's for the best.

Interesting tune. Mixolydian (flat rather than standard seventh, e.g. F rather than F# in the key of G).

But as to the recording itself: I found the track list here:

https://www.discogs.com/release/3833782-Rich-Kirby-Michael-Kline-They-Cant-Put-I...

That's all I actually need. There isn't much there that I can actually use -- e.g. the title track and "Coal Tattoo" are both modern songs by Billy Edd Wheeler. "Coal Tattoo," in particular, is an extremely important song that causes a lot of argument over labor issues -- it's a very West Virginia sort of song! -- but it's not traditional.

So thank you for bringing it to my attention, but I don't want to make you scan it unless you want a scan for your own purposes.

But thank you for thinking of it!

John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt
That's my name too! *
Whenever I go out
The people always shout
There goes John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt!
Da da da da da da da

We kids loved this song because it allowed us to shout.
The same verse would be repeated (endlessly almost) and the first part would get quieter and quieter with each repeat, until it was barely a whisper, while the Da da da da da da da got louder and louder each time until we were bellowing fit to break the winders...

*{some versions give this line as 'his name is my name too'}

>149 Crypto-Willobie: John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt

Do you recall when you learned this? Because it is very well-known now, but there doesn't seem to be any proof of its existence before Pete Seeger recorded it in 1955. And Pete Seeger was responsible for a lot of songs that became popular in camps. E.g. that ultimate group-singing song, "Kumbaya" was originally a Gullah song from the North Carolina/Georgia Sea Islands, but it had been printed only once (c. 1930) until it was printed in some scout songbooks in the 1950s and Seeger popularized it. So it would be no great surprise if this one is another instance of Seeger putting a song INTO oral tradition.

I remember my family singing it in the car in what must have been the mid or late 1950s. I doubt if my dad would have been familiar with Seeger then; he did get into folk eventually but that was with Peter Paul & Mary and the Limeliters in the early to mid 1960s.

>150 waltzmn: I know that I sang it in the very early 60's. However, in Wikipedia (as a historian, I know, not a good source!) they intimated it originated in vaudeville of the late 19th and early 20th century. They also said it was probably an immigrant song, which would make sense since the names are German. I would look at the Wikipedia article because it gives links to newspaper articles where the song was mentioned in the 1920's and 1930's by Girl Scouts around the campfire.

>152 Tess_W:

The Google ngram viewer gives hits like:

Monthly Bulletin of the Indiana State Board of Health, Volumes 52-54, Page 116, 1949: ". . . maybe you will hear them singing 'John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt' or maybe the words will float down to you . . ."

>149 Crypto-Willobie: I had to go all the way back to see whether this one has been listed yet. Your lyrics reminded me of it.

Doesn’t really have a tune.

My name is Yohn Yohnson.
I come from Visconsin.
I work in the lumberyard there.
And every guy that I meet, as I walk down the street, says
“Hey dere, vhat’s your name?”
And I tell him:
(repeat)

Thanks to all who had something to say about "John Jacob...." The problem with folklore sources is that they often aren't good at finding things in popular places. :-) (As I have shown several times in this thread.)

>154 2wonderY: "My name is Yohn Yohnson."

This one has an interesting pedigree. The earliest version I know of is from... Sinclair Lewis. It's from his 1929 novel Dodsworth: "Ven I go down de street, All de people I meet, Dey saaaaaaay, 'Vot's your name?' And I sa-aaaaay: My name is Yon Yonson...."

Lewis was, of course, from Sauk Centre, Minnesota (near Saint Cloud, if that helps). So he was from the true "Scandihoovian" region of the state. I'm not saying it's Scandinavian. But it probably originated among Anglophones in the American Midwest and was preserved because of the large Scandinavian and German populations in the area.

>155 waltzmn: And I may have learned it from my Wisconsin cousins, too.

I'm just finding it interesting how on the one hand there are some local songs which somehow got spread internationally and are known to some extent on both sides of the Pond, while there are others, like these two last examples with the odd names, which are apparently well known in the USA but over here I have never heard hide nor hair of them.

>157 John5918: I'm just finding it interesting how on the one hand there are some local songs which somehow got spread internationally and are known to some extent on both sides of the Pond, while there are others, like these two last examples with the odd names, which are apparently well known in the USA but over here I have never heard hide nor hair of them.

There are probably two factors involved. One is that, historically, songs are much more likely to have traveled from Britain to America than vice versa, because they came with immigrants. Many folk songs that are well known in America but originated in Britain are now well known here but very rare in their country of origin -- "The House Carpenter" began life in Britain as "James Harris" or "The Demon Lover," but is extinct there. But it's one of the top ten most popular ballads in America, particularly the Appalachian region.

But in the cases of "John Jacob" and "Yon Yonson," I think it's mostly a matter of local applicability. Both hint at mixed communities -- Anglophone and German in the former, Anglophone and unspecified Scandinavian in the latter. "John Jacob" is fairly widely distributed, but I've never encountered a version of "Yon Yonson" that definitively did not have Midwestern roots -- the center of Scandinavian culture in America. There are a lot of Germans and Scandinavians in the United States, so the jokes "feel" right. The odds of you meeting a Yon Yonson in the streets of London are still fairly small, and were a lot smaller fifty or a hundred years ago. So if by some chance they made it to England, they'd be likely to die out.

>158 waltzmn:

Thanks, yes, that makes sense. The major Scandinavian incursions into the British Isles ended nearly a thousand years ago, and I presume that's too far back for songs to be preserved, although you can still hear the Scandinavian influence in some of the local British dialects, particularly Geordie. Mind you, I believe that there is now new evidence that the Scandinavians also came to north America about a thousand years ago, a good few centuries before that Italian migrant found his way there!

>159 John5918: The major Scandinavian incursions into the British Isles ended nearly a thousand years ago, and I presume that's too far back for songs to be preserved, although you can still hear the Scandinavian influence in some of the local British dialects, particularly Geordie. Mind you, I believe that there is now new evidence that the Scandinavians also came to north America about a thousand years ago, a good few centuries before that Italian migrant found his way there!

Yes, the Norse were certainly in Newfoundland centuries before Chrissie Columbo was even a nightmare in his great-to-the-nth grandmother's mind. In fact, they just obtained a precise date on some of the Newfoundland relics.

As for the Scandinavians invasions, I was afraid someone would bring that up. :-p The problem with saying anything definitive about the Old English period is that so few relics are left. Certainly there is nothing that is labelled a "folk song." :-) There is one scholar who claims that a piece about Edward the Martyr in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the "earliest English ballad," but others don't even accept that it's poetry, let alone a song, let alone a folk song.

But I really doubt that anything from that era survives in oral tradition. It's not just that Old English has turned into Middle English has turned into Modern English. If you think about it, the dominant verse form in the Old English period -- as far as I know, the only verse form -- is alliterative verse. Tough to get from alliterative verse to rhymed couplets (a post-Conquest form basically Anglo-Norman). Yes, I know the Gawain-Poet used both, but that was a very, very special case -- and that dialect is dead anyway.

The oldest folk piece that seems to have survived from the Middle English period to modern times is the riddle piece that, in the Sloane Manuscript of c. 1430 {London, British Library, MS. Sloane 2593, folio 11} begins "I haue a ȝong suster / fer be-ȝondyn þe se / many be þe drowryis / þat che sente me" ("I have a young sister / Far beyond the sea / Many be the druries {gifts} / That she sent me.") In modern tradition, this has become the song "I gave my love a cherry that has no stone..." (dropping the first stanza of the Sloane text, but the rest is surprisingly close).

So I think it safe to say that there aren't any survivals of the Scandinavian period in modern English folk song. :-)

If it matters, you can read more about "I Gave My Love a Cherry" at
http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/R123.html

You can read more about the Sloane manuscript and its relation to folk songs at
http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/C115.html

That piece, "Robyn and Gandelyn," will also lead you to the issue of the Robin Hood legend as it was before Disney (and before Disney, Joseph Ritson) got their dirty mitts on it. If you want to read more about the very earliest Robin Hood ballad, there is the story of Robin Hood and the Monk:
http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/C119.html

And if you want to really dive deep into the original Robin Hood legend, there is the work that should have been my Ph.D. thesis:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Gest_of_Robyn_Hode_A_Critical_and_Te/rM...

For the alleged song on Edward the Martyr, see
http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/ASCEp123.html

NOTE: I do not suggest you visit any of these things. This is a major rabbit hole -- even if you ignore my work on the "Gest," we're talking six or seven thousand words of pretty abstruse stuff. You've seen what I'm like here; imagine me explaining a story that is seven hundred years old and that most people have learned about in a way that's all wrong! :-) I just don't want it said that I'm not footnoting my work. :-)

I can't believe we didn't mention Widecombe Fair (or maybe we did and I've just overlooked it?)

Tom Pearce, Tom Pearce, lend me your grey mare.
All along, down along, out along lea.
For I want for to go to Widecombe Fair,
With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all...

And yes, I admit I had to look it up to check the names at the end - I always seem to forget poor old Harry Hawke.

>161 John5918:

No one mentioned Widicombe/Widdicombe/Ilsdown/Bedford/Widdlecombe Fair... I'd have noticed. :-) And, yes, it's had all those names, but Widicombe is probably original. According to Marc Alexander, A Companion to the Folklore, Myths & Customs of Britain, Sutton Publishing, 2002, p. 316, Widdicombe Fair is:

"The fair held at the Dartmoor village of Widecombe-on-the-Moor.... The fair is held on the second Tuesday in September with a Master of Ceremonies dressed in an old-fashioned farm worker's smock and holding a crook. In the local dialect he announces various events, including such traditional games as the slippery pole and a cross-country foot race. The fair has been held at Widecombe-on-the-Moor since the middle of the nineteenth century."

The names of the people vary as well as the fair, of course. Thank you for your list.

Incidentally, this can be a ghost story. In some versions, the horse takes sick and dies, and its ghost is seen haunting the moors.

>162 waltzmn: Incidentally, this can be a ghost story. In some versions, the horse takes sick and dies, and its ghost is seen haunting the moors.

Yes, that would be the version I knew as a lad.

I have followed this thread with great interest and enthusiasm.
Many thanks for all the thoughtful comments!

As a child, I loved nursery rhymes/songs. I was a girl scout and learned countless folksongs and campfire songs. I knew all the lyrics to every pop song on the radio.
In my library career, I used songs in every program and story time. Now I'm sharing all the same songs with my grand kids. I sing all the time!

A couple of my favorite resources that I have not seen mentioned here yet are:

Folksingers wordbook by Irwin. Words and chords for 1000 folk and traditional songs.
Rise Up Singing: the group singing songbook by Peter Blood. Words, chords, and sources for 1200 songs.
And the sequel, Rise again songbook: words & chords to nearly 1200 songs, Annie Patterson.

My personal collection of songbooks is here -
https://www.librarything.com/catalog/nrmay&tag=songs

>164 nrmay:

Folksingers wordbook by Irwin. Words and chords for 1000 folk and traditional songs.

To clarify, that's the Folksinger's Wordbook by Fred Silber and Irwin Silber. I strongly agree that it is the best single-volume printed text of traditional English-language folk songs -- my copy is very battered by more than thirty years of use. I will give a few cautions that might be relevant, though. First, it's words and chords only, no music notation. Given that most of the material in it comes from Sing Out! magazine (also edited, for many years, by Irwin Silber), if you want the notation, you might want to look there. Also, because it's taken from Sing Out!, and Sing Out! sometimes published some unusual tunes, there are cases where the chords don't fit the common tune, or where they are such strange chords that only a jazz guitarist will recognize what they are. :-) Third, it is never safe to trust the authorship attributions in the Wordbook. Many songs that are in copyright are not attributed; some older songs where the author is known do not have a listing, and some of the listings are wrong. And, finally, there aren't many true camp songs in the Wordbook.

Rise Up Singing: the group singing songbook by Peter Blood. Words, chords, and sources for 1200 songs.
And the sequel, Rise again songbook: words & chords to nearly 1200 songs, Annie Patterson.

These two are indeed the standards of (what is left of) the Sixties Folk Movement. I would add that there is a third book that comes from the same movement, Winds of the People. This is a horribly ugly book, even worse than Rise Up Singing (it's part typewritten, partly hand-scribbled), but it's sort of the ancestor of Rise Up Singing.

An important caveat about the three is that they are almost all composed songs, and, again, not very strong on camp songs. If the interest is songs learned in camps, they won't be particularly relevant.

So far, looking specifically for camp songs, the best resources I've found as I am trying to create an index of camp-songs-gone-traditional are a so-called Official Girl Scout Songbook at https://www.gsmw.org/content/dam/girlscouts-gsmw/documents/Official%20Girl%20Sco... and one called simply "For Scouts" at https://scoutingweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Ultimate-Girl-Scouts-Song-She... -- the latter I've found to be astoundingly full (1482 songs).

If anyone is interested in the history of camp songs, there are a few books that were extensively mined to create the modern camp repertoire. In order of date:
E. O. Harbin, Parodology, 1926
(Carl E. Zanderand Wes H. Klusmann), Camp Songs, 1938?
(No author listed), Songs of Many Nations (many diverse editions, with different orders and contents, but they haven't changed much)

The latter two are pocket booklets. Parodology is the most fun. To give a rather sexist (and anti-vegan) example,

Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb, with green peas on the side.
And when her escort saw the bill, saw the bill, saw the bill,
And when her escort saw the bill, the poor boob nearly died.

That did not go into tradition, but a handful of very popular camp songs it seems to have originated, or at least propagated include
Advertise (It Pays to Advertise)
The Bible Baseball Game
The Billboard Song
Here We Sit Like Birds int he Wilderness
John Brown's Flivver
Kille Kille Wash Wash
Mary Had a William Goat
Mmm, And a Little Bit More
The More We Are Together
My Name is Yon Yonson
Pep/The Peppiest Camp
Perfect Posture
There Was a Bee-i-ee-i-ee
The Thousand Legged Worm

>132 cpg:

I just learned that "I Love the Mountains" is included in the official "Young Women Camp Songs" of the LDS Church. See:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/music/library/camp-songs?lang=eng

Also, regarding daffodils, they are also mentioned in Don McLean's "Vincent" because (I guess) Van Gogh painted them. (Not a camp song though! Still perhaps suitable for singing on a starry, starry night.)

>166 cpg:

I just learned that "I Love the Mountains" is included in the official "Young Women Camp Songs" of the LDS Church.

I now know (as I did not when this thread was active earlier) that this is a very popular camp song. Patricia Averill's book Camp Songs, Folk Songs is built around a list of camp songs, with indications of how many sources used them. She calls the song "Boomdeada," and says she found 48 sources. That's not the most popular camp song -- a few were listed by sixty-odd sources -- but it's well up there. Given that it's not found in the earlier camp song books, my feeling is that it has gained popularity very quickly.

Not surprising, really, given the tune. "Heart and Soul" is pretty popular, too. :-)

No one seems to have figured out where the text came from, though.

>145 waltzmn:, >146 John5918:

I've just received my copy of Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong by Norm Cohen. Impressive. It's a much weightier tome than I had imagined! I look forward to meandering through it.

>168 John5918:

I've just received my copy of Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong by Norm Cohen. Impressive. It's a much weightier tome than I had imagined!

That's why I suggested it. :-) There are other books of train songs, but this is the one that truly delves into the history and background.

>165 waltzmn:

I appreciate very much knowing about those online songbooks. Thanks!

My dad taught me these 'fractured' versions:

Mary had a little lamb,
A little bread, a little jam,
A little beer all topped with fizz;
Now how sick our Mary is.

Starkle starkle, little twink
You the heck you are, you think?
Up above the world so high,
Like a cinder in my eye.

Just returned to this group after a long break. Thanks to all for a fascinating thread.

Perhaps the most striking reflection for me is how in my youth most everyone would have been familiar with and would occasionally sing many if not all of the songs listed here. Somewhere between Bill Haley and the Comets and Queen things changed. I was part of a large crowd on London's South Bank on Millennium Eve and there was a clear desire for a sing-song. It turned out that the only song that enough people knew to join in together was 'We all live in a Yellow Submarine' and the majority could manage only that single line. There is, to be sure, community singing at football matches but I haven't come across much elsewhere.

Does anyone remember singing along to the BBC's Schools broadcasting programme, 'Singing together'?

This was interesting

Camp Songs — History and Traditions
by Jack Pearse
https://www.acacamps.org/resource-library/camping-magazine/camp-songs-history-tr...

>172 nrmay:

This was interesting

Camp Songs — History and Traditions
by Jack Pearse

FWIW, the article cites the work of Sheldon Posen. A (low-quality) scan of his Masters thesis on camp songs is here:

https://research.library.mun.ca/7306/3/Posen_Sheldon.pdf

Some of his field work and field recordings are at the Canadian Museum of History, though the finding aids are not good at all:

https://www.historymuseum.ca/collections/

>171 abbottthomas:Perhaps the most striking reflection for me is how in my youth most everyone would have been familiar with and would occasionally sing many if not all of the songs listed here

Well said, and very true.

>174 John5918:

>171 abbottthomas: abbottthomas:Perhaps the most striking reflection for me is how in my youth most everyone would have been familiar with and would occasionally sing many if not all of the songs listed here

Well said, and very true.

Now you know what it's like to be a folk song researcher and having everyone think your work should be forgotten. :-)

>175 waltzmn: having everyone think your work should be forgotten

You've got my vote! Keep up the research and cataloguing of these important traditional songs.

>176 John5918:

You've got my vote! Keep up the research and cataloguing of these important traditional songs.

Thank you, most sincerely. But what really matters is having people pass on the songs -- which generally isn't happening. I think traditional songs matter because they are our only real insight, until quite recently, into what ordinary people thought.

And, if you think about it, what is our current replacement as a source of news and social connection and time-passing? Facebook. At least there are no Russian 'bots interfering with traditional song. :-)

So, again, thank you to the people who contributed to this thread. Some of what has been posted here is information that wasn't in ANY scholarly collection, and now is getting included, in at least a small way.

I’m looking for the words to a comic song—not strictly a camp song, but maybe someone here knows it. Background: Back in the 50s there was a weekly show on ABC radio in Oz called “The Village Glee Club”, in which various Australian actors and singers got together to play as what the title suggests. The last item was always a Comic Song, and one song that appeared fairly regularly was a song about a fellow taking on the job of a farmhand, being told to do an impossibly long list of tasks, and then being told “The rest of the day’s yer own!”. Any ideas?

>178 haydninvienna:

Presumably this:

NAME: Rest of the Day's Your Own, The
DESCRIPTION: "One day when I was out of work a job I went to seek." He takes a job, is given a list of tasks and told that, once done, "The rest of the day's your own." The list is too long, so he messes up the tasks, is fired, and "The rest of my life's my own."
AUTHOR: J. P. Long and W. David, according to Palmer
EARLIEST DATE: 1915 (Old Time Comic Songs, No. 1., according to Palmer)
KEYWORDS: work humorous escape hardtimes money
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Palmer-EnglishCountrySongbook, #40, "The Rest of the Day's Your Own" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, RESTDAY*

Text and tune here:
https://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=6891

>179 waltzmn: That is absolutely it. Thankyouthankyouthankyou. For a show than ran for as long as “The Village Glee Club” did (1942 to 1971), there’s surprisingly little about it on the net. Even most of the names of the performers are hard to find, although “Mrs Sharpshot”, the contralto, was apparently played by Lauris Elms, an Australian singer with a fairly significant international presence.

Can't remember if we mentioned Auld Lang Syne, popular at this time of year, but here's a BBC article about it:

Why do people link hands to sing Auld Lang Syne? (BBC)

On New Year's Eve millions of people around the world link hands when they sing Auld Lang Syne. Now research from the University of Edinburgh has revealed the origins of the Hogmanay tradition are connected to freemasonry. Singing with arms crossed and hands joined was a parting ritual at many Masonic lodges...

Robert Burns was a Freemason. The organisation was instrumental in promoting the poet's work during his life and after his death. He was inspired to write Auld Lang Syne by fragments of earlier folk songs. He wrote the lyrics in 1788 but the tune did not appear together with the song until after his death. In the final verse the singer offers his hand of friendship to an old friend, and asks for one in return. Burns wrote: "And there's a hand, my trusty fiere. And gie's a hand o' thine"...

>181 John5918:

Not your fault, but that capsule biography may not be reliable:

Robert Burns was a Freemason.

There are a number of sites that say this, but they date his admission to July 4, 1781. Neither of my (short) biographies of Burns mentions that -- and they both say Burns worked as a flax-dresser in 1781. (Sorry I can't site the books I'm using; LibraryThing's editions of Burns are a tangle that I have never managed to figure out. The one that I consider more reliable is James Kinsley's edition of Burns's complete works, which starts with a chronology of his life.) Of course he could have been a flax-dresser and a Freemason both, but he wasn't a mason in the lower-case sense, and the biographies certainly don't stress it.

He was inspired to write Auld Lang Syne by fragments of earlier folk songs. He wrote the lyrics in 1788 but the tune did not appear together with the song until after his death.

Yes, because it's the wrong tune!

Murray Schoolbraid wrote about the text, "The (Scots Musical) Museum text is half-and-half, (verses) 2-3 being by Burns (about youthful days on the braes etc.) and the rest (seemingly) an old fragment. One can dispute this of course, for this old text first appears in SMM. Previously we have the 1711 version, 'Should old acquaintance be forgot / And never thought upon,' attributed to Sir Robert Aytoun (1570-1637/8), one of the first Scots poets to write in English (knighted by King James 1612; buried in Westminster Abbey). A bit later (1720) Allan Ramsay uses the incipit to start his own poem 'Should auld acquaintance be forgot,/ Though they return with scars?/ These are the noble hero's lot,/ Obtain'd in glorious wars.'

"These old versions go to the old tune printed in SMM: The songs that predate Burns (and B's words too) go to the old melody: in Mitchell's ballad opera The Highland Fair (1731), earliest in print in Playford's Collection of Original Scotch Tunes (1700), also sans title in Mgt Sinkler's MS., 1710 (the versions differ). The SMM version is from Neil Stewart's Scots Songs , 1772."

The tune is wrong because Burns typically gave his publishers instructions which tune to use, and they set the tune and he proofed it. But the printer got it wrong this time (or, rather, they misunderstood how it was supposed to fit the words), and Burns wasn't in position to catch it, so the wrong tune slipped through. There are people who have recorded the correct tune (e.g. The Tannahill Weavers), but of course it's a lost cause. :-)

>182 waltzmn:

Thanks! I rather thought you would have more information than that article!

>183 John5918:

I'm not the last word on Burns. I don't want to categorically say that he wasn't a Freemason. He certainly had radical ideas about equality (at least of men). It's just that the short bios don't mention in. They list his various careers as a flax-picker, farmer, exciseman (which he ridiculed in "The De'il's Awa' the Exciseman"), and of course poet and music editor.

The part about the tune is certain, though; we have documentation of what Burns said to print, and of how the printer goofed up.

It may have been a lucky goof; the correct tune is more plaintive, and probably wouldn't have made a good song for New Year revels.

>182 waltzmn:
Huh! I found the Tannahill Weavers rendition on youtube (https://youtu.be/vznJKNpL30c) and I don't think I've ever heard Auld Lang Syne with that melody before. I've got to say, it wasn't as catchy as the usual melody. Maybe the printer's mistake was fortunate!

>185 TempleCat:

Huh! I found the Tannahill Weavers rendition on youtube (https://youtu.be/vznJKNpL30c) and I don't think I've ever heard Auld Lang Syne with that melody before. I've got to say, it wasn't as catchy as the usual melody. Maybe the printer's mistake was fortunate!

You were writing that at about the same time as I was saying the same thing. :-)

Having the advantage of having heard both melodies many times, I think the "correct" melody is better for what "Auld Lang Syne" really is -- a plaintive song about a changed world. But, of course, that's not what the song is used for now. You don't hear much of the original words, either, when you think about it!

So, talking of alternative tunes for well known old songs, how about the Red Flag? I'm aware that it is often (usually?) sung to the tune of Tannenbaum, but I believe there is another tune, one which Billy Bragg has popularised - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEKYQ4GOqmk. If I recall correctly he claims this is an earlier version. I must say I prefer the version Billy uses. It's a stirring song.

>187 John5918:

So, talking of alternative tunes for well known old songs, how about the Red Flag? I'm aware that it is often (usually?) sung to the tune of Tannenbaum, but I believe there is another tune, one which Billy Bragg has popularised - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEKYQ4GOqmk. If I recall correctly he claims this is an earlier version. I must say I prefer the version Billy uses. It's a stirring song.

It sounds to me like he's using "The White Cockade," which as a tune is about as old as "O Tannenbaum" (printed in the Scots Musical Museum in 1803, to tie us back to Burns. And probably going back to 1745 or earlier, since it's a Jacobite song). I can't really speak to which tune is more common, though -- that's not a song that has gotten much attention in folk music circles.

But it is very common for a folk song to pick up multiple melodies in the era before recorded music. Sometimes people learned songs from other people -- but often they learned them from print: Songs were sold on single-sheet broadsides. They might list a tune, but they certainly didn't have music notation (and most people couldn't sight read it if they had!). So people would buy the words, find a tune that fit (since most folk songs use the same handful of metrical patterns, that wasn't hard), and voila! The song has a new tune.

Charles Seeger, the father of Pete, Mike, and Peggy, once studied "Barbara Allen," by far the most popular English-language folk song (at least, the most popular clean one). He found that it had four different, completely independent, tune families.

Dear Singers --

This thread has been dead for a while, so I won't blame you if you don't see this :-), but your contributions have now been sorted out, annotated, and made available to the wider world: Last week, I rolled out Traditional Ballad Index 6.3, with your contributions cited as being from the "LibraryThingCampSongsThread."

The Traditional Ballad Index is here: http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/BalladIndexTOC.html

Of course, that doesn't take you to your contributions. Theoretically, you should be able to find those by using the Ballad Index search page, http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/BalladSearch.html, and searching for "LibraryThingCampSongsThread." If you wanted to find your own personal contributions, you could go to the search form and search for "LibraryThingCampSongsThread" and your user name.

Unfortunately, Google is slow to update its search engine (I posted the files almost a week ago, and it has still not indexed a quarter or so of them), and DuckDuckGo is slower still, so that may not work. But you can at least see a list of the 71 songs indexed by going to this page and following the link for the LibraryThing songs: http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/Version6.3.Songs.html.

The pages for the individual songs will give the authors, date, and source when I could find them; other folk music collections which contain the song; and occasional historical background. For the camp songs, I also went through 17 different camp song books, particularly the earlier ones, to try to find the books that put the song in camp tradition.

So, for instance, one of you mentioned "The Ants Go Marching." This has a relatively short entry (which is why I'll cite it :-):

Ants Go Marching, The
DESCRIPTION: "The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah (x2), The ants go marching one by one, The last one stops to clean his gun, And they all go marching in To get out of the rain." Similarly "By two... tie his shoe," etc.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1973 (NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal)
KEYWORDS: bug derivative travel campsong
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, Gloria Dickens, "Childhood Songs from North Carolina" Vol. XXI, No. 1 (Apr 1973), pp. 6-7, "(The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah)" (1 text)
LibraryThingCampSongsThread, post 45, "(The Ants Go Marching One By One)" (1 mention, from user Tess_W, posted August 30, 2021)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, pp. 167, 385, "Ants Go Marching" (notes only)
Roud #18336
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" (tune) and references there
File: NCF211AG

Tess_W mentioned the song last August. The author is unknown, although it was clearly set to the tune of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." It is sung in camps, as shown by the citation in Patricia Averill's massive study of camp songs, and it has gone into tradition in North Carolina, as shown by the journal citation (yes, really :-) in the North Carolina Folklore Journal.

I won't quote the entry for "Home on the Range," which was mentioned by LadyLo, but the entry for that one cites 27 sources, including three common camp song books (the most familiar of all being the Girl Scouts' Sing Together, with the notes supplying information about the disputed authorship, as well as a firmly established date of first appearance (1873).

So thanks again to all of you for your contributions; if you are interested in background on what you quoted, I hope this proves interesting for you.

>189 waltzmn:

Thanks for all the work you put into this, and for letting us know. I just had a look at one song at random, Rawtenstall Annual Fair, and I see it has been updated to reference the LibraryThingCampSongsThread.

>190 John5918:

Thanks for all the work you put into this, and for letting us know. I just had a look at one song at random, Rawtenstall Annual Fair, and I see it has been updated to reference the LibraryThingCampSongsThread.

Thanks for the kind words.

I may not have been clear in all my verbiage. Try, try again. :-) Every song on this thread that appears to be traditional has been cited in the Index. The problem is to find them. :-) If you search for songs by using the link http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/Version6.3.Songs.html, that will find all the songs that people contributed, and the information on the songs will be current (as of last week when I posted the thing).

What isn't current is the google search. Suppose you go to the search page and look for your (many!) contributions by searching for "John5918 LibraryThingCampSongsThread." As of when I type this, Google will find 22 hits. But you contributed forty different items. (Which is very impressive.) So the search form is still missing almost half your contributions.

That should improve over the coming weeks, as Google and DuckDuckGo re-index the site. But they haven't fully incorporated it into their files yet.

Thanks! I've shared this with my sister who also knows and plays She Was Poor but She Was Honest.

I recall that early in the this thread I mentioned some of the songs in local dialects, particularly Geordie. For some reason one of them has been playing in my head in recent days.

Wor Geordie's, lost his penker, wor Geordie's lost his penker, wor Geordie's lost his penker, doon the double raa.

He's lost it doon the cundy (x3), doon the double raa.
Wor Geordie couldna fetch it (x3), doon the double raa.
Sae he went an' fetched a clathes prop (x3), doon the double raa.
He RAMMED it oop the cundy (x3), doon the double raa.
But still he couldna fetch it (x3), doon the double raa.
Sae he went and fetched a terrier (x3), doon the double raa.
He tied it to the clathes prop (x3), doon the double raa.
He RAMMED it oop the cundy (x3), doon the double raa.
But still he couldna fetch it (x3), doon the double raa.
Sae he went and fetched some dynamite (x3), doon the double raa.
He tied it to the terrier (x3), doon the double raa.
He RAMMED it oop the cundy (x3), doon the double raa.
Noo there's nee bloody cundy (x3), and nee double raa.
Wor Geordie's foond his penker (x3), doon the double raa.
Twas in his bloody pocket (x3), doon the double raa.

All from memory, probably last sung nearly forty years ago. I can provide a rough translation if required!

>193 John5918:

Wor Geordie's, lost his penker, wor Geordie's lost his penker, wor Geordie's lost his penker, doon the double raa.... All from memory, probably last sung nearly forty years ago. I can provide a rough translation if required!

Apologies for not noticing this post for two months. I must have not been looking when it went up.

I suspect it is actually better for not being translated. :-)

This has been collected in the field a few times, but it appears only two people dared print it, both taking it from the family of Len Elliot. The earliest verifiable copy appears to be from 1961.

Paul Stamler wrote a description and some notes about it:

DESCRIPTION: Geordie has lost his penker (largest marble) in a cundy (drain-grate). The singer rams a clothes prop up the cundy, but can't retrieve the penker. He ties on a terrier, but fails; finally he blows up the drain -- as Geordie finds the penker in his pocket.
ALTERNATE TITLES: Wee Willie's Lost His Marley
NOTES: Anyone who thinks everything in this song is simple and straightforward hasn't heard Louis Killen sing it, or seen the look in his eye as he sings, "He rammed it up the cundy...." - PJS

>194 waltzmn:

You should have heard "He rammed it oop the Cundy" being sung after a few pints in a pub on Holy Island during a lock-in after closing time...

>195 John5918: You should have heard "He rammed it oop the Cundy" being sung after a few pints in a pub on Holy Island during a lock-in after closing time...

Yes, well, that's why it's better for not being translated. :-)