I Had A Rooster: A Song History

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"I Had a Rooster" is a cumulative animal song: each verse adds another farm creature, and the earlier ones are repeated as the list grows.[1][2] The Traditional Ballad Index files it under "I Had a Little Rooster (Farmyard Song)" (Roud 544), a single entry whose references also include versions titled "I Bought Me a Cat," "Fiddle-I-Fee," and "Barnyard Song."[1] The Index gives 1849, citing Halliwell, as its earliest date and lists versions from England, Scotland, Ireland, Newfoundland, and the American South and Appalachians.[1]

Japanese woodblock print of a rooster and hen with small chicks

Shibata Zeshin, Rooster, Hen, and Chicks, color woodblock print, c. 1880s. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

Collectors in the United States wrote it down under many names, among them "I Bought Me a Rooster" in Vance Randolph's Ozark collection, "Barnyard Song" in the Frank C. Brown collection from North Carolina, and "The Farmyard" in Cecil Sharp's collection of English folk songs from the Southern Appalachians.[1] The title "I Had a Rooster" itself appears in the Silbers' Folksinger's Wordbook and on a Pete Seeger recording.[1]

Seeger recorded "I Had a Rooster" on Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Little Fishes, a Folkways album first released in 1955 and later reissued by Smithsonian Folkways.[3] Smithsonian Folkways' notes for its 2016 compilation Classic Folk Songs for Kids, which includes Seeger's performance, call it "a Southern play song."[4] Viking published I Had a Rooster as a picture book, reviewed by Publishers Weekly in October 2001, with illustrations by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, a foreword by Pete Seeger, and a design based on an idea by his stepmother, Ruth Crawford Seeger.[5][2] Aubrey Atwater includes it, in DAD tuning, in Song By Song, Vol. II, her book of dulcimer tablature for traditional songs.[6]

Our book that contains the song "I Had A Rooster"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "I Had a Little Rooster (Farmyard Song)".
  2. Publishers Weekly: "I Had a Rooster: A Traditional Folk Song".
  3. Library catalog record: "Birds, Beasts, Bugs, and Fishes, Little and Big" (Pete Seeger, Smithsonian Folkways SF 45039).
  4. Smithsonian Folkways: "Classic Folk Songs for Kids" (Pete Seeger), liner notes.
  5. Cooperative Children's Book Center, University of Wisconsin–Madison: CCBC-Net archives, December 2001.
  6. Aubrey Atwater: "Song By Song, Vol. II".
  7. Image: Shibata Zeshin, Rooster, Hen, and Chicks, color woodblock print, c. 1880s. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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