Swapping Song: A Song History
"The Swapping Song" is a comic cumulative song in which a young man fetches a wife from London, wheels her home in a barrow, and then swaps his way through a series of animals, each worth less than the last, until he is left with only a mole, which escapes underground.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index files it as "The Swapping Boy" (Roud 469) and lists many other names for it, among them "The Foolish Boy," "Wing Wang Waddle" and "Went to the River."[1] Most versions seem to join two pieces that may once have stood apart, a rhyme about the London wife and a run of losing bargains, and the Index notes that the London episode appears by itself in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book around 1744.[1] Sources differ on early printings: the Index gives Gammer Gurton's Garland of 1810 as its earliest date, while a note quoted on Mainly Norfolk points to a closely related text in Mother Goose's Melody, printed by John Newbery around 1765.[1][2] The Index also compares the string of bad trades to the Grimm tale "Hans im Glück," which it dates to 1818.[1]
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Liber Studiorum: The Farmyard with the Cock, etching and mezzotint, published 1809. An English farmyard with a cart, hens and pigs, the kind of goods the song's trader swaps away; the print has no connection to the song.
In England, Harry Greening of Dorchester sang it as "Wim Wam Waddles" on a 1936 BBC recording, and Alfred Williams printed a Wiltshire text in his 1923 Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames.[2] In Kentucky, Cecil Sharp noted a version called "The Foolish Boy" from Fitzhugh Droghan, a Berea College student, at Berea on May 22, 1917.[2] Commercial recordings came early in the United States: Bradley Kincaid cut "The Swapping Song" in 1928, and the Canova family recorded it in 1930 as "The Poor Little Thing Cried Mammy."[1] Burl Ives also sang it on the Columbia Radio School of Air program, a performance preserved in the Abrams Folksong Collection at Appalachian State University.[3]
Jean Ritchie sang it for Alan Lomax in New York City on May 5, 1949, and the same session includes an interview with her about the song.[4] She recorded it again for her 1957 Folkways album Children's Songs and Games from the Southern Mountains, whose notes say she had known it since early childhood and describe it as "two completely distinct nursery rhymes" with British roots.[5] Her 1952 collection of 21 songs, Jean Ritchie's Swapping Song Book, with photographs by George Pickow, was reissued by the University Press of Kentucky in 1999.[6] Later singers who have recorded it include Shirley Collins and Peggy Seeger.[2] Aubrey Atwater's self-published book of dulcimer tablature, Song By Song, Vol. II, includes it, set in DAA tuning, among its traditional songs.[7]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Swapping Boy".
- Mainly Norfolk: "The Swapping Song / The Foolish Boy".
- Appalachian State University Libraries, Abrams Folksong Collection: "The Swapping Song" (Burl Ives).
- Association for Cultural Equity, Lomax Digital Archive: "Jean Ritchie I 5/49".
- Smithsonian Folkways: "Children's Songs and Games from the Southern Mountains" (liner notes, FC 7054).
- Vaughan Williams Memorial Library Catalogue: "Jean Ritchie's Swapping Song Book".
- Aubrey Atwater: "Song By Song, Vol. II".
- Image: Joseph Mallord William Turner, Liber Studiorum: The Farmyard with the Cock, etching and mezzotint, published 1809. The Cleveland Museum of Art.