Nuts in May (rhyme)

Two teams of children face each other in a line and the first team skips forward singing the opening stanza,

Here we come gathering nuts in May,

Nuts in May, nuts in May,

Here we come gathering nuts in May,

On a cold and frosty morning.

They then skip back to their original position and the second team skips towards them repeating a verse in the same form but beginning, “Who will you have for nuts in May?” After the first team has made its choice, they sing “We'll have [name] for nuts in May” and the second team asks next “Who will you send to fetch him/her away?” The first team then sings the final stanza;

We'll send [name] to fetch him/her away,

Fetch him/her away, fetch him/her away,

We'll send [name] to fetch him/her away,

On a cold and frosty morning.

The children chosen then advance to the centre, take hands and try to pull each other towards their own side. The loser has to join the winner's row and the game begins again.[1]

In form the song is close to "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush" and shares the same tune and final line.

The words, rules and tune for "Here we go gathering nuts in May"

Here we are gathering nuts in May; by Elizabeth Adela Forbes

The words and rules of the game were first quoted in the Folk-Lore Record for 1881,[2] followed in 1882 by a similar description among the games for choosing partners in G. F. Northall's English Folk-rhymes.[3] The first of these described the game as played among girls, while Northall says that a girl and a boy are partnered between the participating teams. There are mixed teams also in the description given in Emmeline M. Plunket's Merry Games in Rhyme (London, 1886), which also supplies the music to the words.[4]

Although the rhyme was also known in the U.S. at the same period, it is described as "probably a recent importation from England” in William Wells Newell’s Games and Songs of American Children (New York, 1884).[5] Texts were also recorded later in Canada,[6] among black children in Jamaica,[7] and as being found in New Zealand too.[8]

One of the most comprehensive considerations given the game was by Alice Gomme, who collected variant versions from around Britain in her The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland (1894-8)[9] and speculated on the origin of the game. What is supposed to be gathered is particularly questionable, since nuts do not mature in the spring. Gomme’s preference for the original wording is "knots (flower posies) of may" blossom (in which she follows Northall's suggestions) and refers the game to former May Day ceremonies, which took place early in the morning. The alternative lines "On a fine summer’s morning" and "So early in the morning", as well as Newell's "On a May morning early", all in place of "On a cold and frosty morning", seem to suggest this.

Robert Herrick’s poem "Corinna’s going a’ Maying", with its references to gathering white-thorn blossom and choosing a marriage partner,[10] describes 17th-century rural customs that might lie at the base of what eventually has become a childhood game. But Gomme pointed out that the pairing that went on then was often less than innocent, a connection hinted at in the more modern drinking song,

I took to gathering nuts in May, nuts in May, nuts in May,

Down by the old mill stream.

But instead of gathering nuts in May,

I put her in a family way,

Down by the old mill stream.[11]

The bibliography at the Traditional Ballad Index