Published 1906 | ||
"This Old Man" is an English language children's song, counting and nursery rhyme with a Roud Folk Song Index number of 3550.
Contents
Origins and history
The origins of this song are obscure. The earliest extant record is a version noted in Anne Gilchrist's Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (1937), learnt from her Welsh nurse in the 1870s under the title "Jack Jintle" with the lyrics:
Lyrics
A more familiar version goes like this:
Variations
A similar version was included in Cecil Sharp and Sabine Baring-Gould's English Folk-Songs for Schools, published in 1906. It was collected several times in England in the early 20th century with a variety of lyrics. In 1948 it was included by Pete Seeger and Ruth Crawford in their American Folk Songs for Children and recorded by Seeger in 1953. It received a boost in popularity when it was adapted for the film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) by composer Malcolm Arnold as "The Children's Marching Song", which led to hit singles for Cyril Stapleton and Mitch Miller.
The children's show Barney & Friends used the song "I Love You" as its closing song and was sung to the tune of "This Old Man".
In the television series Columbo, the title character often whistled the music to this song, generally when he was happy and closing in on a suspect.
British musical comedy duo Flanders and Swann recorded a satirical version called "All Gall", about French President Charles de Gaulle, replacing the original's refrain with "Cognac, Armagnac, Burgundy and Beaune". A single with a rock version by Bobby Beato and Purple Reign charted in 1975.
In October 1996, The News Huddlines used the tune for a song inspired by Kenneth Branagh's version of Hamlet.