Row, Row, Row Your Boat: A Song History

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The words of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" were in print three decades before the round people sing now. In 1852 the New York music publisher Firth, Pond & Co. issued Row, Row Your Boat, or, The Old Log Hut, a song for voice, chorus and piano with music by R. Sinclair, advertised as sung by a "Master Adams" of Kunkel's Nightingale Opera Troupe.[1][2] The Johns Hopkins sheet-music collection files another song issued under the troupe's name, from 1853, under the subject headings minstrel shows and ethnic stereotypes.[3] The 1852 sheet names no lyricist, its tune is not today's, and the early words differ from those of the round; another tune for the words appeared in 1854.[4]

Thomas Eakins painting of a rower in a single scull on a calm river in autumn, with a bridge in the distance

Thomas Eakins, The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull), oil on canvas, 1871. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A rower on a river; it has no connection to the song.

The familiar melody was first published in 1881,[4] the year it appeared as a round in the Franklin Square Song Collection, selected by J. P. McCaskey and published in New York by Harper & Brothers. Its index credits the round to E. O. Lyte.[5] Whether that credit makes Lyte the composer is uncertain: the Ballad Index's notes, which draw on Fuld's Book of World-Famous Music, describe it as a credit that does not necessarily mean he wrote it.[4] Eliphalet Oram Lyte (1842-1913) was a Lancaster native and Civil War veteran who began teaching at the Millersville normal school in 1866 and became its principal in 1887. Millersville University still credits him with composing the song.[6][7]

The Ballad Index finds the round in scouting, 4-H and summer-camp songbooks, along with a crop of parodies.[4]

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Sources

  1. The Morgan Library & Museum: "Row, row your boat, or, The old log hut" (Firth, Pond, c1852).
  2. Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection, Johns Hopkins University: "Row, Row, Your Boat, or, the Old Log Hut".
  3. Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection, Johns Hopkins University: "The Melodies of Kunkel's Nightingale Opera Troupe (Second Series). Oh Take Me Back to Tennessee".
  4. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Row, Row, Row Your Boat".
  5. Internet Archive: "Franklin Square Song Collection," selected by J. P. McCaskey (Harper & Brothers, 1881).
  6. Millersville University Archives: "Millersville State Normal School Faculty Meeting Minutes, 1910-1912".
  7. Millersville University News: "7 People You Didn't Know Were MU Alumni".