Re: "Corn" in BrE

Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[re Oats and beans and barley grow...]

Older than I would have thought. It first shows up in Google Books in
Davy Crockett's 1833 autobiography, in a dance called "We are on our
way to Baltimore":

Nothing seemed to give more enjoyment than a play termed, "We are
on our way to Baltimore." This, from its title, was probably
picked up by David, during his wanderings; and derived its chief
charm from the circumstance, that every couple who composed it,
had to kiss each other at stated pauses. It consisted of a wild
and irregular dance, during which, with measured steps, the
following lines were sweetly chanted:

"We are on our way to Baltimore,
With two behind, and two before;
Around, around, around we go,
Where oats, peas, beans and barley grow,
In waiting for somebody.

(A kiss.)

"'Tis thus the farmer sows his seed,
Folds his arms, and takes his ease,
Stamps his feet, and claps his hands,
Wheels around, and thus he stands,
In waiting for somebody."
(Another kiss.)

Davy Crockett, _Sketches and Eccentricities of
Col. David Crockett, 1833

"*How* oats, peas, beans and barley grow" is first attested in the
same year in an 1833 letter from William H. Seward from Edinburgh

We were quite amused as we descended the hill, by seeing a merry
bevy of little girls "all in a ring," enjoying identically the
childish play of our infancy, which we had never dreamed was of
trans-Atlantic origin--"How oats, peas, beans, and barley grow."

William Seward, _The Works of William H. Seward_, 1853

and the lack of knowledge is attested in 1870:

It is as true to us as to our fathers, that

"You nor I, nor nobody, knows
How oats, peas, beans, and barley grows."

Edward Everett Hale, _Old and New_, 1870

"Peas" first gets left off in 1883, in _Shropshire Folk-Lore_.

So is Crockett's version a bastardization of an older children's rhyme
or did a dance morph into a children's rhyme (as was the case with
"Pop! Goes the Weasel") with the original forgotten?

I think you have to call it a "singing game," not strictly a dance or a
children's rhyme. The words that are in the Opies' _The Singing Game_
(1985) are posted in a Mudcat message:
http://www.mudcat.org/Detail.CFM?messages__Message_ID=512917

The Opies didn't know the origin, and didn't know of any versions in
print before the 1880s. They reported various accounts of how it was
sung and danced; kissing was often a feature. They found "peas" to be in
American versions, as opposed to "Oats and beans and barley grow" or
"Where the wheat and barley grow."

They describe quite similar versions in other European languages. For
example, the Danish farmer of 1879 sows the oats, claps his hands,
stamps his feet, and turns around. The oldest record in this group that
they report is Swedish, 1842.

Where the Crockett version stands in the flow of the folk process will
probably never be known, unless a lot more records turn up.

I learned the song from Canadian friends, actually, and maybe it was
more commonly done there.

--
Best -- Donna Richoux
An American living in the Netherlands


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