It's Raining, It's Pouring
Nursery rhyme
| "It's Raining, It's Pouring" | |
|---|---|
| Nursery rhyme | |
| Recorded | 1939 |
Children's literature portal
"It's Raining, It's Pouring" is an English language nursery rhyme and children's song of American origin. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 16814.[1]
Origins
The first two lines of this rhyme can be found in The Little Mother Goose, published in the US in 1912.[2] The melody is associated with "A Tisket, A Tasket" and "What Are Little Boys Made Of?"[3]
The earliest known audio recording of the song was made in 1939 in New York by anthropologist and folklorist Herbert Halpert and is held in the Library of Congress.[4] Charles Ives added musical notes 1939,[citation needed] and a version of it was copyrighted in 1944 by Freda Selicoff.[5][6]
The lyrics of the poem (song) goes as follows:[7]
- It's raining, it's pouring,
- The old man is snoring,
- He went to bed and bumped his head,
- And couldn't get up in the morning.
Interpretation
It has been suggested that the verse is a "classic description" of a head injury ("bumped his head"), followed by a lucid interval and an inability to resume normal activity ("couldn't get up in the morning").[7] Andrew Kaye in Essential Neurosurgery suggested that, in regard to the first verse at least, the rhyme is an interpretation of an accidental death.[7]
References
- ^ "English Folk Dance and Song Society: The National Organisation for the Development of the Folk Arts". Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
- ^ Anon, The Little Mother Goose (1912, Dodd, Mead & Company, 3rd edn., 1918), p. 169.
- ^ Hayes, Bruce P.; MacEachern, Margaret (1998). "Quatrain Form in English Folk Verse". Language. 74 (3): 480–481. doi:10.2307/417791. ISSN 0097-8507. JSTOR 417791. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
Our folk song database includes no instances of the parallel long-last construction GG4G, but we know of three of them from our childhoods. Ex: [What are little boys made of] is one (The others are 'It's Raining, It's Pouring' and 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket, A Green and Yellow Basket')
- ^ "It's raining, it's pouring". Library of Congress. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
- ^ Henderson, C. W. (2008). The Charles Ives Tunebook. Indiana University Press. p. 141.
- ^ Catalog of Copyright Entries: Musical compositions. Library of Congress, Copyright Office. 1944. p. 1362. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
- ^ a b c Kaye, Andrew H. (2009). Essential Neurosurgery. John Wiley & Sons. p. 57. ISBN 978-1-4051-4817-7. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
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