![]() ![]() The variants including a woman with an alligator purse urging the baby's mother to vote have been seen as a reference to Susan B. The opening lines now often change to " My mother had a baby." or " I had a little brother." Although the song derives from lyrics about an unwed whore, few children consider that Miss Lucy might be unmarried instead, the concern of the song has shifted to the appearance of new siblings. The verse was first recorded as a joke in the 1920s and as the modern children's song in New York in 1938. Following his declining popularity, the baby is now usually encountered as Tiny Tim, once famous as a Depression-era comic strip and still well known as a character in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. ![]() In those songs, the baby, that was dropped in the chamber pot bathtub, was referencing an enormously popular mascot of Force cereal named Sunny Jim, introduced in the United States in 1902 and in Britain a few years later. These songs were sometimes political, usually openly crude, and occasionally infanticidal. "Miss Lucy" probably developed from verses of much older (and cruder) songs, although the opposite may also be true, most commonly known as " Bang Bang Rosie" in Britain, "Bang Away Lulu" in Appalachia, and " My Lula Gal" in the West. However, several other books and articles show similar versions used as far back as the end of the 19th century. The history of the Miss Susie similar rhyme has been studied, tracing it back to the 1950s, in Josepha Sherman's article published by the American Folklore Society. as the theme to their Looney Tunes cartoons. The song shares much of the same melody as the 1937 " The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" used by Warner Bros. It is a common form in English folk verse, especially in nursery rhymes and jump-rope rhymes. Accentual verse allows for set number of accents regardless of the number of syllables in the verse. The song is often combined or confused with the similar but cruder " Miss Susie had a steamboat", which uses the same tune and was also used as a jump-rope game.Īs in "Miss Susie", the rhyme is organized by its meter, an accentual verse, in trimeter. It has many variations, possibly originating from it, or from its predecessors. Originally used as a jump-rope chant, it is now more often sung alone or as part of a clapping game. " Miss Lucy had a baby.", also known by various other names, is an American schoolyard rhyme. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |