![Bye Bye](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kX6djjIi-jo/maxresdefault.jpg)
Related Rock-a-bye Baby - The Green Orbs (No Copyright Music) videos
- This Old Man (instrumental) - The Green Orbs Photo used: 14/365 by Alexis FamLicensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY ...
- Top 10 NoCopyRightSounds [NCS] :DThis video is just a mash up of the best songs released from NoCopyRightSounds in my opinion. ...
Clean Bandit - Rockabye (feat. Clean Bandit - Baby (feat. Marina & Luis. Elisabeth Troy Official Lyrics Video. Yasmin Green) Official Audio. Bye, Baby Bunting Christmas Cobbler, cobbler. Rock a bye baby Round and Round the Garden. Ten green bottles Ten in the Bed The Crooked.
Watch more videos
- Finally RapidFire and HDO recorded DVR without glitches! Had really hard times with HDO and ImmersionRC RapidFire, tried many different cameras/settings/g...
- Mini ArWing - Throw and catch time! Terrible weather but what to do when have a lot of batteries left, well, try to have some fun!W...
- Big Boeing plane followed by race quad Nice day for easy fly! Parts used Motors: T-Motor - Fc: ECS - 8S: Camera: Foxeer - VTX...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
'Rock-a-bye Baby' Roud#2768 | |
Written by | Traditional |
---|---|
Published | c. 1765 |
Written | England |
Language | English |
Form | Nursery Rhyme |
'Rock-a-bye Baby' is a nursery rhyme and lullaby. The melody is a variant of the Englishsatirical ballad Lilliburlero. It has a Roud FolkSong Index number of 2768.
Lyrics
The first printed version from Mother Goose's Melody, has thefollowing lyrics:
- Hush-a-by baby
- On the tree top,
- When the wind blows
- The cradle will rock.
- When the bough breaks,
- The cradle will fall,
- Down tumbles baby,
- Cradle and all.
The version from Songs for Nursery (1805), contains thewording:
- Rock-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green,
- Father's a nobleman, mother's a queen...
The most common version used today is:
- Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop,
- When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
- When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
- And down will come baby, cradle and all.
Origins
Originally titled 'Hushabye Baby', this nursery rhyme was saidto be the first poem written on American soil. Although there is noevidence as to when the lyrics were written, it may date from theseventeenth century and have been written by an English immigrantwho observed the way native-American women rocked their babies inbirch-bark cradles, which were suspended from the branches oftrees, allowing the wind to rock the baby to sleep.[1]
In Derbyshire, England, local legend has it that the songrelates to a local character in the late 1700s, Betty Kenny (KateKenyon), who lived with her charcoal-burner husband, Luke, andtheir eight children in a huge yew tree in Shining Cliff Woods inthe Derwent Valley, where a hollowed-out bough served as a cradle.[2] Howeverthis date is incompatible with the poem's appearance in print in1765.
Yet another theory has it that the song, like 'Lilliburlero',refers to events immediately preceding the GloriousRevolution. The baby is supposed to be the son of James VII and II, who was widely believedto be someone else's child smuggled into the birthing room in orderto provide a Catholic heir for James. The 'wind' may be thatpolitical 'wind' or force 'blowing' or coming from the Netherlandsbringing James' nephew and son-in-law, William III of England,a.k.a. William of Orange, who would eventually depose King James IIin the revolution. The 'cradle' is the royal House of Stuart.[3]
Publication
The song first appeared in print in Mother Goose'sMelody (c. 1765), possibly published by John Newbery(1713-1767) in the eighteenth century, which was re-printed inBoston in 1785.[4]Rock-a-bye as a phrase was first recorded in 1805.[5]
Melody
It is unclear though whether these early rhymes were sung to thenow-familiar tune [1]. At some timehowever the tune, the 1796 lyric and the word 'Rock-a-bye' musthave come together and achieved a new popularity. A possiblereference to this re-emergence is in an advertisement in The Times newspaper ofMonday September 19, 1887 for a performance by a minstrel group,which refers to a new American song called'Rock-a-bye':
'Moore and Burgess Minstrels, St James's-hall TODAY at 3,TONIGHT at 8, when the following new and charming songs will besung...The great American song of ROCK-A-BYE...' (The Moore andBurgess Minstrels appear to have been founded as a British offshootof the successful Christy's Minstrels, originally aNew York entertainment. The principal mover behind the group was George Washington Moore(1820-1909), known as 'Pony' Moore, a New York-born British musichall impresario.)
This song, whether substantially the same as the one quotedabove or not, was clearly an instant hit: a later advertisement forthe same minstrel company in the same paper's October 13 editionpromises that 'The new and charming American ballad, calledROCK-A-BYE, which has achieved an extraordinary degree ofpopularity in all the cities of America will be SUNG at everyperformance.'
An article in the New York Times of August 4, 1891 (p.1) refersto the tune being played at a Baby Parade at Asbury Park, N.J.:'The line of march formed at the Asbury Avenue Pavilion, and,headed by the full band of the United States steamship Trentonplaying 'Rock-a-Bye Baby,' proceeded up the promenade andcountermarched, returning in files of four.' Clearly by this datethe song was well established in America: how much earlier it firstemerged there, in the form we know it today, is still to bedetermined.
Alternate Lyrics as shown in The Real Mother Goosepublished in 1916:
- Rock-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green;
- Father's a nobleman, mother's a queen;
- And Betty's a lady, and wears a gold ring;
- And Johnny's a drummer, and drums for the king.[2]
Notes
![Rock Rock](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ly51CAlUw5E/maxresdefault.jpg)
- ^H. Carpenter and M. Prichard, The Oxford Companion toChildren's Literature (Oxford University Press, 1984), pp.326.
- ^Ambergate Walkleaflet
- ^The Spectator 28 Nov 1998
- ^H. Carpenter and M. Prichard, The Oxford Companion toChildren's Literature (Oxford University Press, 1984), pp.326.
- ^H. Carpenter and M. Prichard, The Oxford Companion toChildren's Literature (Oxford University Press, 1984), pp.326.