Origins: riddle song (I Gave My Love a Cherry)

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: Margo
Date: 22 Aug 99 - 07:00 PM

I love it! A baby with no end, and NO diapers! I was under the impression that "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" was the early version of this song, except his prize for answering the questions was to take her to bed and she'd sleep next to the wall. In that song, the impossible riddles are posed by the young lady and meant to keep him from his goal, since she didn't think he could answer the riddles. He does.

Margarita

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 22 Aug 99 - 06:58 PM

Thanksfor bringing this thread up again, Maelgwyn.

The discussion has helped me clarify my original question, which was, Why does this song seem so stupid and the riddles not connected?

A cherry is a ripe fruit (like a newborn baby) that started with an unfertilized flower.

A chick starting to hatch (ripe, not quite born) is "pipping,"

The story of I love you/this ring of gold I give you/the story that we'll marry, etc.,

same thing

A baby just conceived, not conceived, or almost born, doesn't cry.

So only the final riddle was actually bowdlerized, and the rest of it does in fact hang together.

Ta Da! I love research.

M.

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: Frank Hamilton
Date: 22 Aug 99 - 06:07 PM

I remember being at a local "hoot" one night and a demure young lady (Baezish) was singing this and forgot the lines. She sang, "I gave my love a baby that had no end." Some smart aleck yelled out, "That's the only way to have 'em!"

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: Maelgwyn
Date: 22 Aug 99 - 05:41 PM

Hi all, my boss and I were listening to a recording of the riddle song at work the other day and he says that he's heard it as 'I gave my love a river that has no end'. Anyone know anything about that?

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: Jerry Friedman
Date: 26 Mar 99 - 01:31 PM

Incidentally, Jo77, this thread seems to suggest that a travel(l)ing person isn't the same as a gypsy. However, I believe the word "cove" (for man, fellow) comes from Romany--or was it a typo for "love"?

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: Jerry Friedman
Date: 26 Mar 99 - 01:21 PM

I was surprised to see in the Oxford English Dictionary that the first recorded use of "cherry" in the sexual sense dates only to the early 1900s. As Bruce pointed out, the "Riddle Song" is centuries older. So T.C.'s version very probably is fairly recent.

I tend to think that taboo versions are the "real" ones, which somebody later cleaned up. I easily forget that love, riddles, and trying to get the baby to sleep are as basic to human nature as ribald jokes are.

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: j0_77
Date: 12 Mar 99 - 11:34 AM

I heard this song from a travelling Fiddler in England. A travelling person is a gypsie. The first line of it as I reacall is 'I gave my kove a cherry that has no stone'

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: Philippa
Date: 12 Mar 99 - 10:23 AM

You're no romantic, Maelgwyn; the words are "the story of our love it has no end"
thanks to everyone else for improving on "a baby when it's sleeping", the line which is most problematic since babies can't always be sleeping

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: catspaw49
Date: 12 Mar 99 - 01:09 AM

Did you read the "Condom Thread," Parts 1 & 2...be happy to pull it back up and continue along. ***GRIN***

catspaw

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: Maelgwyn (inactive)
Date: 12 Mar 99 - 01:06 AM

I found a version of this somewhere with only the first verse, but instead of a ring it was a story. So, how can there be a story without an end?

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: catspaw49
Date: 12 Mar 99 - 12:49 AM

Oh Yeah...really STUPID freakin' song!!!!!!!!

catspaw

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: catspaw49
Date: 12 Mar 99 - 12:47 AM

Just to keep this thread at a highly educational level, I'd like all of you to have the full advantage of my fine liberal arts colllege education. Bert already knows this as it came up in another thread.

Remove all extraneous worry from your mind as this song is indeed about humans and not 'possums. As you correctly point out Mary Ann, a laddies' cock is boneless. Were the song written about 'possums, this could not be said as they have an "Ospenis" (read:Bony Peter).

Just wanted to help out.

catspaw, Resident Wise-Ass

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 11 Mar 99 - 05:33 PM

I think it was "Pop" Maynard who sang the rollicking "Never go a-Rushing, maids, I say" version in an English pub in the 1950s, but it may have been another singer. Anyway, the final verse included the line "A baby when it's making, there's no crying!" I always thought that made pretty good sense.

Sandy

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: Bert
Date: 11 Mar 99 - 04:30 PM

Mary Ann,

That makes a LOT MORE SENSE. I had always thought of it as a particularly stupid song but your version clears up a lot of questions.

All I can say is; If you are not correct then you bloody well ought to be.

Bert.

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: Dr John
Date: 11 Mar 99 - 03:46 PM

I've heard the verse "A baby in the making has no crying" rather than sleeping.

Subject: RE: riddle song
From: Bruce O.
Date: 11 Mar 99 - 03:20 PM

A facsimile of the song in BL MS Sloan 2593, c 1430, is Plate XVI, a (p. 463), 2nd ed. 1997 (and in the 1951 edition) of the Opie's 'The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes'

Subject: riddle song
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 11 Mar 99 - 03:08 PM

The Data Base has the classic (and to me boring) riddle song in it -- no flames please; I just think it's boring -- and it mentions an earlier version in a 15th century manuscript.

I brought this song up on another list I belong to, as my old friend T.C. in Chicago had what he claimed was an ur-verse of the riddle answers which actually had the song making sense; namely:

A lassie has a cherry without no stone
A laddie has a cock without no bone
dee dumm dee dum dee dee dee (sex or marriage; take your pick)
A baby nine months young, has no cryin'.

Does this make sense to people? that the answer to the riddle is actually woman-man-sex-baby? and we got the bowdlerized version as impressionable youth? Is this the mss version referred to in the DB?

or did everybody else in the world justknow this but me? Mary Ann
^^