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The song is commonly thought to be of African-American origin. [1] An early published version is in "A White Dove", [2] a 1903 story for kindergarteners by Maud McKnight Lindsay (1874–1941), a teacher from Alabama and daughter of Robert B. Lindsay. [3] In the story, "a little girl" sings to "her baby brother" what is footnoted as "an old ...
The terms "nursery rhyme" and "children's song" emerged in the 1820s, although this type of children's literature previously existed with different names such as Tommy Thumb Songs and Mother Goose Songs. [1] The first known book containing a collection of these texts was Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, which was published by Mary Cooper in 1744 ...
In 1963, songwriter Lucy Simon wrote a setting (she claimed it was "the first song I ever wrote") [3] that she recorded with her sister Carly as the Simon Sisters. Appearing on their debut album Meet the Simon Sisters (1964), the song became a minor hit for the duo, reaching No. 73 on the Billboard Pop singles chart [4] and No. 20 in Canada. [5]
The first two lines at least appeared in dance books (1708, 1719, 1728), satires (1709, 1725), and a political broadside (1711). It appeared in the earliest extant collection of nursery rhymes, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, published in London around 1744. The 1744 version included the first six lines. [3]
The book was praised by Publishers Weekly, which praised Ray's "pleasingly surreal lines of verse" and, along with The New York Times, likened the book to Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon. [1] The Times and Kirkus Reviews, however, while praising Ray's poetic language, ultimately panned the book. [2] [3]
The earliest printed version of the rhyme is in Tommy Thumb's Little Song Book (c. 1744), but the rhyme may be much older. It may be alluded to in Shakespeare's King Lear (III, vi) [1] when Edgar, masquerading as Mad Tom, says:
"Hush-a-bye baby" in The Baby's Opera, A book of old Rhymes and The Music by the Earliest Masters, ca. 1877. The rhyme is generally sung to one of two tunes. The only one mentioned by the Opies in The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes (1951) is a variant of Henry Purcell's 1686 quickstep Lillibullero, [2] but others were once popular in North America.
A version of the rhyme was published in 1731 in England. [5] A version in Songs for the Nursery 1805 had the longer lyrics: [ citation needed ] Bye, baby Bunting,