Chiny Doll: A Song History
The Traditional Ballad Index files the children's dialogue song known as "China Doll" or "Chiney Doll" under the title "Milking Pails" (Roud 3515).[1] In the Index's summary a child begs for a china doll, the mother asks where the money will come from, and the child suggests selling Papa's bed, then offers one less practical idea after another until the mother ends the talk.[1] The Index dates the song to 1810, identifying its earliest known version as a milking-pail text in Ritson's edition of Gammer Gurton's Garland, and notes that the British versions were played as a singing game while the American ones seem to have dropped the game.[1]
Doll, ca. 1870. Shown for its subject; the museum record does not say what the doll is made of, and it has no connection to the song.
A note in the Index counts only three verified American collections and suggests that the American texts, with their china-doll wish, may be limited to the Ozarks and the Deep South; the entry's references include Vance Randolph's "Buy Me a China Doll" and Almeda Riddle's "China Doll."[1] Riddle (1898–1986), a ballad singer from Cleburne County, Arkansas, was recorded by Alan Lomax in 1959 and later worked with folklorist Roger Abrahams on A Singer and Her Songs (1970).[2] The Association for Cultural Equity's archive lists a track called "Mama Buy Me A China Doll" from a session held October 2–7, 1959, at Riddle's home in Heber Springs, Arkansas, though the page names no performer for it.[3]
Picture books have carried the song to younger readers, among them Harve Zemach's Mommy, Buy Me a China Doll, illustrated by Margot Zemach (Follett, 1966), which its library record describes as "adapted from an Ozark children's song,"[4] and John M. Feierabend's Momma, Buy Me a China Doll (GIA, 2017), whose heroine is a poor girl from the Ozarks.[5] The song list of Maureen Sellers's My Teaching Book For Appalachian Dulcimer, Volume One, a 48-page instruction book for the Appalachian mountain dulcimer published by Fingers Of Steel, includes a "Chiny Doll" in DAD tuning.[6]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Milking Pails (China Doll)".
- Encyclopedia of Arkansas: "Almeda James Riddle (1898–1986)".
- Association for Cultural Equity: "Greers Ferry 10/59".
- New York Public Library: "Mommy, Buy Me a China Doll" (Harve Zemach, 1966).
- GIA Publications: "Momma, Buy Me a China Doll".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, My Teaching Book For Appalachian Dulcimer, Volume One".
- Image: Doll, ca. 1870. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.