'Rock-a-bye Baby' is a nursery rhyme and lullaby. The melody is a variant of the English satirical ballad Lilliburlero. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 2768.

[edit] Lyrics

The first printed version from Mother Goose's Melody, has the following 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 the wording:

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.

[edit] Origins

Originally titled 'Hushabye Baby', this nursery rhyme was said to be the first poem written on American soil. Although there is no evidence as to when the lyrics were written, it may date from the seventeenth century and have been written by an English immigrant who observed the way native-American women rocked their babies in birch-bark cradles, which were suspended from the branches of trees, allowing the wind to rock the baby to sleep.^[1]

In Derbyshire, England, local legend has it that the song relates to a local character in the late 1700s, Betty Kenny (Kate Kenyon), who lived with her charcoal-burner husband, Luke, and their eight children in a huge yew tree in Shining Cliff Woods in the Derwent Valley, where a hollowed-out bough served as a cradle. ^[2] However this date is incompatible with the poem's appearance in print in 1765.

Yet another theory has it that the song, like "Lilliburlero", refers to events immediately preceding the Glorious Revolution. The baby is supposed to be the son of James VII and II, who was widely believed to be someone else's child smuggled into the birthing room in order to provide a Catholic heir for James. The "wind" may be that political "wind" or force "blowing" or coming from the Netherlands bringing James' nephew and son-in-law, William III of England, a.k.a. William of Orange, who would eventually depose King James II in the revolution. The "cradle" is the royal House of Stuart.^[3]

[edit] Publication

The song first appeared in print in Mother Goose's Melody (c. 1765), possibly published by John Newbery (1713-1767) in the eighteenth century, which was re-printed in Boston in 1785.^[4] Rock-a-bye as a phrase was first recorded in 1805.^[5]

[edit] Melody

It is unclear though whether these early rhymes were sung to the now-familiar tune [1]. At some time however the tune, the 1796 lyric and the word "Rock-a-bye" must have come together and achieved a new popularity. A possible reference to this re-emergence is in an advertisement in The Times newspaper of Monday 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 be sung...The great American song of ROCK-A-BYE..." (The Moore and Burgess Minstrels appear to have been founded as a British offshoot of the successful Christy's Minstrels, originally a New York entertainment. The principal mover behind the group was George Washington Moore (1820-1909), known as "Pony" Moore, a New York-born British music hall impresario.)

This song, whether substantially the same as the one quoted above or not, was clearly an instant hit: a later advertisement for the same minstrel company in the same paper's October 13 edition promises that "The new and charming American ballad, called ROCK-A-BYE, which has achieved an extraordinary degree of popularity in all the cities of America will be SUNG at every performance."

An article in the New York Times of August 4, 1891 (p.1) refers to 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 Trenton playing "Rock-a-Bye Baby," proceeded up the promenade and countermarched, returning in files of four." Clearly by this date the song was well established in America: how much earlier it first emerged there, in the form we know it today, is still to be determined.

Alternate Lyrics as shown in The Real Mother Goose published 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]

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody
• Eugene Field, Rock-a-Bye Lady

[edit] External links

• Rock-a-bye-baby
• http://www.zelo.com/family/nursery/rock.asp