The Bear Went Over The Mountain: A Song History

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"The Bear Went Over the Mountain" is sung to the melody of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," the old French air of "Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre," whose own long history is told on this site's page for that song.[1][2] The Traditional Ballad Index, in its entry for "We Won't Go Home Until Morning," lists the bear song among the texts that share this tune, and there it dates the earliest evidence for the bear words to 1920 while suspecting they are older.[1] The Index's own entry for the song names no author, files it as a humorous camp song found in New England and the Midwest, and gives as its earliest dated text Linscott's Folk Songs of Old New England of 1939.[3] Linscott's notes pass on a claim that crusaders sang the tune in the eleventh century, a claim the Index's editor plainly doubts.[1]

Fine silverpoint drawing of a bear walking to the left, with studies of its paws below

Leonardo da Vinci, A Bear Walking, silverpoint on light buff prepared paper, ca. 1482–85. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

Small-town newspapers show a song of this title being sung well before 1920, although they do not print its words.[4][5] In January 1889 The Caldwell Tribune in Idaho Territory, announcing a Methodist social, teased that one M. R. Gwinn would sing "The Bear went over the Mountain" as a solo and urged readers to come anyway.[4] In November 1894 the People's Voice of Wellington, Kansas, reported that an Order of the Eastern Star entertainment looked set to run all night until two men struck up the song and the young people promptly left.[5] Among its references the Ballad Index also lists two short Iowa texts titled "The Duck Flew Over the Water," and it notes that the folklorist Katharine Briggs likened one of her "endless tales" to the song, though the Index sees little in common beyond the endless repeat.[3] Judy House includes it in Favorite Sing-Along Songs For The Mountain Dulcimer, an 85-page collection of familiar songs in arrangements meant to be neither too simple nor too hard, published by Judy House.[6]

Our book that contains the song "The Bear Went Over The Mountain"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "We Won't Go Home Until Morning".
  2. DulcimerDownloads: "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow: A Song History".
  3. The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Bear Went Over the Mountain".
  4. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: "The Caldwell Tribune (Caldwell, Idaho Territory), January 26, 1889".
  5. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: "People's Voice (Wellington, Kansas), November 22, 1894".
  6. Judy House: "Favorite Sing-Along Songs For The Mountain Dulcimer".
  7. Image: Leonardo da Vinci, A Bear Walking, silverpoint on light buff prepared paper, ca. 1482–85. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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