"What Can the Matter Be?", also known as "Johnny's So Long at the Fair" is a traditional nursery rhyme that can be traced back as far as the 1770s in England. There are several variations on its lyrics.
Contents
History
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes by Iona and Peter Opie traces this song back to an earlier folk ballad, recorded between 1770 and 1780, whose lyrics are:
Lyrics
The following are given as the traditional lyrics (being chorus and verse) in Cuddon's and Preston's A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory:
Cohen's Folk Music gives a different version of the lyrics:
Raph's American Song Treasury uses the traditional lyrics and adds a second verse:
Raph dates this version of the song to 1795, and notes that while it has been popular in the United States for over 250 years, having made its way across the Atlantic shortly after American Independence, it is really English, having achieved widespread popularity in England around 1792, from being performed as a duet at Samuel Harrison concerts. It was performed in concerts in New York and Philadelphia within a decade of arriving in the U.S.
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes dates the song to a manuscript compiled some time between 1770 and 1780. Chappell's Popular Music dates the song to 1792, when it was first published as sheet music. The notes by Stenhouse in the second volume of Johnson's Scots Musical Museum record a concurrent Anglo-Scottish publication.
Modern usage
In the Rev. W. Awdry's Edward the Blue Engine (1954), a book in the Railway Series, Edward's fireman begins to sing this song but is cut off by the driver.
The tune to which the song is sung has been re-used several times, including in a 1967 popular song "Round, Round" recorded by Jonathan King.
The song was also sung on two episodes of the children's television program Barney & Friends.
Seven Old Ladies was assigned motif number X726.4.1 by Hoffmann. The oldest recovered American text of this song is in "The One, The Only Baker House Super-Duper Extra Crude Song Book" (on pages 1–2) that was probably compiled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology around 1955. Many other versions are in print or have been recorded, including a recording by Oscar Brand in volume 3 of his record series. British variants are recorded as Three Old Ladies in Baring Gould's Mother Goose. One variant, recorded by Laycock, has 21 old women.
Parodies
The song has been parodied several times, the best known of which is the American bawdy song "Seven Old Ladies", sung to the same tune but with different lyrics. Here are the chorus and the first two verses, of seven, as published in Ed Cray's The Erotic Muse:
One suggested precursor to the bawdy song, recorded in William's Upper Thames collection is the following "old morris fragment":
As with many folk songs and tall tales each verse exaggerates one common trait (one so thin she falls through a knot-hole). Suggested alternate lyrics include:
Seven Old Ladies was not the first parody, however. Long before that parody, the song had been parodied for political purposes. One such parody can be found in the Wisconsin State Journal of 1 March 1864. It was written to exhort parents, who during the U.S. Civil War had not taken much interest in public schooling in Madison, to visit the schools of their children. Its lyrics were: