Polly Wolly Doodle: A Song History

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Where "Polly Wolly Doodle" came from is uncertain: the Traditional Ballad Index lists its author as unknown and classes it as a nonsense courting song that draws on floating verses shared with other songs.[1]

Japanese woodblock print of a grasshopper on a climbing morning-glory vine

Utagawa Hiroshige, Grasshopper and Morning-glory Vine, woodblock print; ink and color on paper, ca. 1835. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

The earliest printing the Ballad Index records is in Students' Songs, which it dates to 1880.[1] That book, a collection of college songs compiled by William H. Hills of Harvard's class of 1880, went through several editions between 1880 and 1884; its 1884 printing includes "Polly-Wolly-Doodle," but the sources consulted here do not settle which edition first carried it.[2] Early commercial recordings include Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers' "Polly Woddle Doo" (recorded 1926), Vernon Dalhart's Edison disc of 1929, and a 1929 recording by Walter Coon and his Joy Boys.[1] In March 1938 Alan Lomax recorded Lillie and Pete Steele singing it with banjo in Hamilton, Ohio; the original recording is held by the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center.[3] The Steeles were a Kentucky couple who had moved to Hamilton the year before.[4]

The song reached film audiences in The Littlest Rebel (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1935), in which Shirley Temple's character sings it with Union soldiers.[5] The Ballad Index classes it as a camp song and lists several camp songbooks that print it.[1] Lorinda Jones includes it in Traditional Playing Of The Mountain Dulcimer, a book of 22 traditional songs for mountain dulcimer in DAA tuning with play-along tracks, published by Fingers Of Steel.[6]

Our books that contain the song "Polly Wolly Doodle"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Polly Wolly Doodle".
  2. Internet Archive: "Student's Songs" (William H. Hills, 1884).
  3. Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings: "Polly Wolly Doodle".
  4. Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings: "Pete Steele".
  5. AFI Catalog: "The Littlest Rebel (1935)".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Lorinda Jones, Traditional Playing Of The Mountain Dulcimer".
  7. Image: Utagawa Hiroshige, Grasshopper and Morning-glory Vine, woodblock print; ink and color on paper, ca. 1835. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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