"My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean" is a traditional Scottish folk song which remains popular in Western culture.
Although the song's origin is uncertain, its subject may be Charles Edward Stuart ('Bonnie Prince Charlie'): after the defeat of the Prince at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 and his subsequent exile, his Jacobite supporters could have sung the tune in his honour; and thanks to the ambiguity of the term "bonnie", which can refer to a woman as well as to a man, they could pretend it was a love song.
In 1881, under the duo of pseudonyms H.J. Fuller and J.T. Wood, Charles E. Pratt published sheet music for "Bring Back My Bonnie to Me". Theodore Raph in his 1964 book American song treasury: 100 favorites, writes that people were requesting the song at sheet music stores in the 1870s, and Pratt was convinced to publish a version of it under the pseudonyms, and the song became a big hit, especially popular with college singing groups but also popular for all group singing situations.
There are numerous variations and parodies of the song. Many of these are a result of the song being sung often to children and being a common campfire song for organizations such as the Boy Scouts. These campfire versions are occasionally accompanied by interactive movements, such as sitting down or standing up every time a word that begins with the letter "b" is sung.
My Bonnie leaned over the gas tank,
The height of its contents to see,
I lit a small match to assist her,
O Bring back my Bonnie to me.
Repeat chorus
Last night as I lay on my pillow,
Last night as I lay on my bed,
I stuck my feet out of the window,
In the morning the neighbors were dead.
Repeat chorus
Oh, Dory swam over the ocean,
Oh, Dory swam over the sea,
Oh, Dory swam over the ocean,
Now Dory has swum back to me.
Repeat chorus
My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean,
My Bonnie Lies over the Sea,
My Daddy laid over my Mommy,
And that is how I came to be.
Repeat chorus
My mother, she drowned in the bathtub,
My father, he died from his gin,
My sister she choked on her chocolate,
My stars, what a fix I am in.
Repeat chorus
I tried making beer in the bathtub,
I tried making synthetic gin,
I tried making fudge for a living,
Now look at the shape that I'm in.
Repeat chorus
The Fleischer brothers filmed this song in DeForest Phonofilm, part of their Song Car-Tunes series, released 15 September 1925, and notable as the first film to use the ‘follow the bouncing ball’ technique.
Arthur Housman's drunken character merrily sings this song in the Laurel & Hardy 1932 short Scram! whilst pouring liquor into a jug.
My Bunny Lies Over The Sea, a short ‘Bugs Bunny’ cartoon film whose title parodies the song, was released by Warner Brothers in 1948.
In the Abbott and Costello film The Naughty Nineties (June 20, 1945), Costello auditions for Captain Sam's riverboat show by singing "My Bonnie". Behind him, Abbott shouts directions to the stage crew in setting up a backdrop curtain ("Move it to the left", "Lower", "Higher", "Lift up the right leg", etc.) Oblivious to this, Costello thinks Abbott is directing him and follows his every command, moving to the left, singing higher, lower, and so forth.
The song plays a prominent role in the I Love Lucy episode "The Quiz Show" (first aired November 12, 1951).
Duane Eddy hit the US Top 30 and UK Top 15 in 1960 with an instrumental rock and roll version titled "Bonnie Came Back"
A rock n' roll arrangement of the song, entitled just 'My Bonnie', was recorded in 1961 by Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, peaking at #5 on the Hit Parade in West Germany. (The 'Beat Brothers' were actually The Beatles – record executives felt their not-yet-famous real name was too phonetically similar to a German obscenity – and the recording was re-released on the Anthology 1 compilation album in 1995.)
Episode 13 of Season 1 of the television series Murder She Wrote (1985) is entitled "My Johnny Lies Over The Sea"
On December 20, 2011, JibJab released a video about the year 2011 in review with a song called "2011, Buh-Bye", to the tune of the title song.
Laura Wright recorded a version, featured on her album The Last Rose (2011)
MTV's Jackass Present's Bad Grandpa had the character Billy (Jackson Nicoll) and the Grandpa (Johnny Knoxville) decide to enter Billy as a girl into a girls beauty pageant and perform the song with a dance in one of the rounds.
In How I Met Your Mother (season 6, episode 10), Barney Stinson and Marshall Eriksen sing "My Blitzy Lies Over the Ocean" in reference to the "Blitz phenomenon" by which the "Blitzed" person misses all the amazing events at a party (they occur after the Blitz abandons the party).
