Polly Put The Kettle On ~ Nursery Rhyme Song

🫖☕[Lyrics below] In this song clip I'm singing an old nursery rhyme song and dance tune called "Polly put the kettle on". In middle-class families in the mid-eighteenth century "Sukey" was equivalent to "Susan" and Polly was a pet-name for Mary. The tune resembles the German "Ach, du Lieber Augustin".
The song was supposedly used when choosing what to play and the girls wanted to play "house" among themselves - not the boys' soldier games.
The song was published as a broadside "Polly Put the Kettle On" ("I am a merry, happy chap"), C. Sheard (London), 1840-1866 - BS, [Bodleian, Harding B 11(4332)]. It is mentioned ca.1859 in "Popular music of the olden time [...] by William Chappell, W. (1809-1888); and Sir G.A. Macfarren, G. A. (1813-1887). Chappell says it was transformed into a Scotch tune for Johnson's "Scots Musical Museum in 1797 (archive.org/de.... however, it had already been known as the tune "Jenny's Bawbee".
Wikipedia says: " A song with the title: "Molly Put the Kettle On or Jenny's Baubie" was published by Joseph Dale in London in 1803. It was also printed, with "Polly" instead of "Molly" in Dublin about 1790-1810 and in New York around 1803-07.[3] The nursery rhyme is mentioned in Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge (1841), which is the first record of the lyrics in their modern form." (en.wikipedia.o... see Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd ed., 1997), pp. 353-54.
For more info and earlier versions of texts, see: mudcat.org/thr...
Here is an early recording with Jack Arthur & The Song Spinners, undated, possibly the late 1940s:(archive.org/de...)
This version of text and melody that I'm singing was published in 1878, p. 9 in "The baby's bouquet : a fresh bunch of old rhymes & tunes" by Walter Crane, 1845-1915; Crane, Lucy, 1842-1882; Evans, Edmund, 1826-1905 (archive.org/de....
It was also published in 1918, p 47 in "The child's own music book : the largest collection of mothers' and childrens' songs, musical games and piano music ever published, covering completely all phases of child life" by
Albert E. Wier, (1879-1945) (archive.org/de....
The lyrics:
Polly put the kettle on,
Polly put the kettle on,
Polly put the kettle on,
We'll all have tea.
Polly put the kettle on,
Polly put the kettle on,
Polly put the kettle on,
We'll all have tea.
Sukey take it off again,
Sukey take it off again,
Sukey take it off again,
They've all gone away.
Verses X 3
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Kanalen har klipp fra «Ta min hånd" av Siri Randem, Norsk Musikkforlag: notebutikken.n... og "Rundsanger og kanon", red. Siri Randem: notebutikken.n...
De korte sangklippene med stemme er "live-innspillinger"/ øyeblikksbilder. Man får ta dem som det de er. Som Mads Berg sa i «Skolens sangbok»: «Hver fugl synge med sitt nebb!»
#lullabyforbabiestogotosleep #vuggesang #folkballad #cradlesong #nurseryrhymesuk #britishnurseryrhymes #songsforbabies #songsforkids