Hush Little Baby: A Song History
Hush Little Baby is a cumulative lullaby in which a parent soothes a child with a growing list of promised presents, beginning with a mockingbird.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index, which files it as Roud 470, records it from the Appalachians, the Midwest, the Southeast and the South, as well as Newfoundland, with its earliest documented date in 1918.[1] That year Cecil Sharp noted it as The Mocking Bird from Lucy Cannady of Endicott, Virginia, in August and from Julie Boone of Micaville, North Carolina, in October.[2] The Index observes that the song itself caught on fairly late, though its chain-of-gifts pattern is much older and turns up as early as Gammer Gurton's Garland of 1784.[1] Sleeve notes from 1960 called it unclear whether the lullaby began among white or Black Southern singers, and the sources consulted here do not settle the question.[2]
Allen & Ginter, Mockingbird, from the Birds of America series (N4), commercial color lithograph, 1888. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A cigarette card, shown for the bird that heads the lullaby's list of promised gifts.
Collectors went on to print it in Sharp's Appalachian collection, the Frank C. Brown collection from North Carolina, Vance Randolph's Ozark volumes and John and Alan Lomax's Our Singing Country.[1] The Index mentions one Ozark version that closes with an unusual verse about a mirror, tied to an old belief about who a looking glass would shine for.[1] In August 1941 Texas Gladden sang it for Alan Lomax as Hush, Baby, Don't You Cry, a field recording that stayed unreleased until Rounder put it on Ballad Legacy in 2001.[3] Jean Ritchie put it on record in 1952, and a long line of revival singers has recorded it since.[2]
In 1963 the brother-and-sister duo Inez and Charlie Foxx turned the children's song into Mockingbird, their first release and a top ten hit.[4]
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