Rock-a-bye Baby

The first printed version from Mother Goose's Melody (London, c. 1765), has the following lyrics:

Rock-a-bye baby

in the tree top.

When the wind blows

the cradle will rock.

When the bough breaks,

the cradle will fall.

And down will come Baby,

Cradle and all.

"Hush-a-bye baby" in The Baby's Opera A book of old Rhymes and The Music by the Earliest Masters, ca. 1877

The version from Mother Goose's Melody or Sonnets for the Cradle (London, 1791) contains the wording:[1]

Hush-a-bye baby

on the tree top...

The version from Songs for the Nursery (London, 1805), contains the wording:

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

Alternate Lyrics as shown in The Real Mother Goose (Rand McNally & Co., Chicago) published in 1916:[2]

Rock-a-bye baby, thy cradle is green;

Father's a nobleman, mother's a queen;

And Aggy's a lady, and wears a gold ring;

And Johnny's a drummer, and drums for the king.

The most common version used today is:

Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree tops,

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,

When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,

And down will come baby, cradle and all.

The 'full' version's lyrics are:

Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top

When the wind blows the cradle will rock

If the bough breaks, the cradle will fall

Mother will catch you, cradle and all

Baby is drowsing, cosy and fair

Mother sits near in her rocking chair

Forward and back, the cradle she swings

Though baby sleeps, he hears what she sings

“Rock-a-bye baby, do not you fear

Never mind, baby, mother is near

Wee little fingers, eyes are shut tight

Now sound asleep until morning light”

Another alternative is:

Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.

Softly you sway and softly you sleep,

And drift into Dreamland, sweet and deep.

The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951) identifies the rhyme as the first English poem written on American soil, suggesting it dates from the 17th century and that it may have been written by an English colonist 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.[3][4] The words appeared in print in England c. 1765.

In Derbyshire, England, local legend has it that the song relates to a local character in the late 18th century, Betty Kenny (Kate Kenyon), who lived with her 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.[5]

Yet another theory has it that the lyrics refer 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 Roman Catholic heir for James. The "wind" may be that Protestant "wind" or force "blowing" or coming from the Netherlands bringing James' nephew and son-in-law William of Orange, who would eventually depose King James II in the revolution (the same "Protestant Wind" that had saved England from the Spanish Armada a century earlier). The "cradle" is the royal House of Stuart.[6] The earliest recorded version of the words in print appeared with a footnote, "This may serve as a warning to the Proud and Ambitious, who climb so high that they generally fall at last",[7] which may be read as supporting a satirical meaning.

Yet another theory is that the song is based around a 17th-century ritual that took place after a newborn baby had died. The mother would hang the child from a basket on a branch in a tree and waited to see if it would come back to life. The line “when the bough breaks the baby will fall” would suggest that the baby was dead weight, so heavy enough to break the branch.

Yet another theory is that the song is from the 17th-century British navy to describe the 'tree top, or cradle' (now commonly referred to as the crows nest) the powder boys (or cabin boys) had to climb up too to keep a look out. If you keep in mind this was the highest point in the ship and read the lyrics with this thought the Nursery Rhyme makes perfect sense. "When the wind blows, the cradle will rock", The highest point of the ship will rock the most. "When the bough breaks,the cradle will fall". The Bough is the front of the ship, and the bough breaking describes the front of the ship breaking over a wave. "And down will come Baby,Cradle and all". It was almost common place that the cradle would break during a storm.

Another possibility is that the words began as a "dandling" rhyme - one used while a baby is being swung about and sometimes tossed and caught. An early dandling rhyme is quoted in The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book which has some similarity:

Catch him, crow! Carry him, kite!

Take him away till the apples are ripe;

When they are ripe and ready to fall,

Here comes baby, apples and all, woop woop.[8]

The words first appeared in print in Mother Goose's Melody (London, c. 1765), possibly published by John Newbery (1713–1767), and which was reprinted in Boston in 1785.[4] Rock-a-bye as a phrase was first recorded in 1805 in Benjamin Tabart's Songs for the Nursery, (London, 1805).[4][9]

It is unclear though whether these early rhymes were sung to either of the now-familiar tunes. At some time, however, the Lillibulero-based tune and the 1796 lyric, with the word "Hush-a-bye" replaced by "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 in 1887 for a performance in London by a minstrel group featuring 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..."[10]

This minstrel song, whether substantially the same as the nursery rhymes quoted above or not, was clearly an instant hit: a later advertisement for the same company in the paper's November 8 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."

If this is, in fact, the same song, then this implies that it was an American composition and already popular there. An article in the New York Times of August 1891 (p. 1) refers to the tune being played in a parade in Asbury Park, N.J.[11] and clearly by this date the song was well established in America. Newspapers of the period, however, credit its composition to two separate persons, both resident in Boston: one is Effie Canning (later referred to as Mrs. Effie D. Canning Carlton[12][13] and the other the composer Charles Dupee Blake.[14]

The melody also has echoes of the opening of Max Reger's variations on a theme by Mozart, Opus 132.

• Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody
• Eugene Field, Rock-a-Bye Lady
• Rockabye (song) A song based on the lullaby from Clean Bandit, Sean Paul & Anne-Marie

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