The Farmer In The Dell: A Song History
"The Farmer in the Dell" is a singing game, which the Traditional Ballad Index treats as a play-party piece rather than a ballad and files as Roud 6306.[1] The oldest dated text in the Index comes from William Wells Newell's Games and Songs of American Children of 1883, though the Index's compiler suspects the song may be several decades older than that.[1] Newell, who credits his version to the streets of New York, describes a game in which the first child, the farmer, draws the others to his side one by one as the verses run through a wife, a child, a nurse and a string of animals, until the cheese, the final pick, is "clapped out" and becomes the farmer for the next round.[2] In his comparative notes he points to a German version cited from Dunger, also played in New York, and suggests the English rhyme may be a recent translation.[2]
American artist, Farm Scene, watercolor, second half 19th century. A nineteenth-century American farmyard, shown for the game's farmer; the watercolor has no connection to the song.
The Index's compiler suggests that a chorus soldiers sang in 1862, preserved in an 1894 regimental history, went to this melody, which if true would carry the tune back at least that far; that history appears to be the only surviving source for the chorus.[1] The Index records the song from New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, the Southeast and the South, as well as from Ontario, Ireland and Scotland, where collections give it as "The Farmer in the Dale" and "The Farmer in his Den."[1] Some versions share their tune with "A-Hunting We Will Go," and the Index lists a few other songs, mostly parodies, set to the same melody.[1] Early record companies folded it into medleys of children's game songs: Conway's Band included it in a Victor medley recorded in Camden, New Jersey, on September 23, 1915, and Prince's Orchestra in a Columbia medley recorded in New York on October 19, 1916.[3][4]
For dulcimer players, Don Pedi gives it a DGD-tuned setting in Mountain Dulcimer Mother Goose, a book of easy children's songs he publishes himself for players who sing as they play, aimed by its listing at young listeners and older ones alike.[5]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Farmer in the Dell, The".
- Project Gutenberg: "William Wells Newell, Games and Songs of American Children".
- Library of Congress, National Jukebox: "Children's games" (Conway's Band).
- Library of Congress, National Jukebox: "Children's songs and games" (Prince's Orchestra).
- Don Pedi: "Mountain Dulcimer Mother Goose - Old-Time Songs & Nursery Rhymes For All Ages".
- Image: American artist, Farm Scene, watercolor, second half 19th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.