Ladybird Ladybird

The rhyme

This traditional verse relates to Ladybugs or Ladybirds, brightly coloured insects commonly viewed as lucky. The English version has been dated to at least 1744, when it appeared in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Songbook Vol. 2. The verse has several popular forms, including:

Ladybird, ladybird fly away home, Your house is on fire and your children are gone, All except one, And her name is Ann, And she hid under the baking pan.

A shorter, grimmer version is also widespread:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, Your house is on fire, Your children shall burn!

Ann who hides may also be Nan, Anne or Little Anne. She may have hidden under a warming pan, porridge pan, frying pan or even a pudding pan. Some variants are radically different:

All except one and her name was Aileen And she hid under a soup tureen.

The 'little one' also may not be hiding at all, as in the following:

Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire; Your children all roam. Except little Nan Who sits in her pan Weaving her laces as fast as she can.

And from Peterborough:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, / Your horse is on foot, your children are gone; All but one, and that's little John, / And he lies under the grindle stone.

Several more variants exist, some saying "your children alone". Variants are known in the USA, some attached to Doodlebugs.

From Favorite Poems Old and New, Selected for boys and girls by Helen Ferris (1957):

Lady-bird, Lady-bird, fly away home the field mouse is gone to her nest the daisies have shut up their sleepy red eyes and the birds and the bees are at rest Lady-bird, Lady-bird, fly away home the glow worm is lighting her lamp the dew's falling fast, and your fine speckled wings will flag with the close clinging damp Lady-bird, Lady-bird, fly away home the fairy bells tinkle afar make haste or they'll catch you and harness you fast with a cobweb to Oberon's star

From "Nancy Drew: Ghost of Thornton Hall":

Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home Your house is on fire and your children are gone, All except one, Sweet Charlotte Ann, And she hid under the frying pan.