Polly Put the Kettle On
| "Polly Put the Kettle On" | |
|---|---|
 William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for Polly Put the Kettle On, from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose | |
| Nursery rhyme | |
| Published | 1803 |
"Polly Put the Kettle On" is a popular English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7899.
Lyrics
Common modern versions include:
- Polly put the kettle on,
- Polly put the kettle on,
- Polly put the kettle on,
- We'll all have tea.
- Sukey take it off again,
- Sukey take it off again,
- Sukey take it off again,
- They've all gone away.[1]
Origins
A song with the title: "Molly Put the Kettle On or Jenny's Baubie" was published by Joseph Dale in London in 1803.[2] It was also printed, with "Polly" instead of "Molly" in Dublin about 1790–1810 and in New York around 1803–07.[3] The nursery rhyme is mentioned in Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge (1841), which is the first record of the lyrics in their modern form.[1]
In middle-class families in the mid-eighteenth century "Sukey" was equivalent to "Susan" and Polly was a pet-form of Mary.[1]
The tune associated with this rhyme "Jenny's Baubie" is known to have existed since the 1770s.[1] The melody is vaguely similar to "Oh du lieber Augustin", which was published in Mainz in 1788–89.[3]
Notes
- ^ a b c d I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd ed., 1997), pp. 353–54.
- ^ D. M. Kassler, W. Hawes, D. W. Krummel and A. Tyson, eds, Music entries at Stationers' Hall, 1710–1818: from lists prepared for William Hawes (Aldershot: Ashgate 2004), p. 514.
- ^ a b James J. Fuld, The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk (1966, 5th ed., Dover, 2000), pp. 399–400.