The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #92104   Message #1756874
Posted By: Joe Offer
10-Jun-06 - 03:02 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Little Birdie in the Tree (P. P. Bliss)
Subject: ADD: Little Birdie in the Tree
Hi, Linda Lu-
The Traditional Ballad Index has only one songbook citation for this song:

Little Birdie in the Tree

DESCRIPTION: "Little birdie in the tree, Singing a song to me, Singing about the roses, Singing about the tree; Little birdie in the tree, Singing a song for me."
AUTHOR: Philip Paul Bliss (1838-1876)?
EARLIEST DATE: 1952 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: bird nonballad
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
BrownIII 146, "Little Birdie in the Tree" (1 text)
Roud #5259
NOTES: For more on Philip Paul Bliss, see the notes to "Let the Lower Lights Be Burning." - RBW
File: Br3146

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The Ballad Index Copyright 2011 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.


Roud #5259 - Index Search



So, here's that one example that was cited, #146 from Volume 3 of the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore:
Editor Newman Ivey White notes that the song is "a corruption of a nursery song I heard in my own early childhood and can still sing." The manuscript is marked: "Found in Guilford County near High Point. Sung by Negroes before the Civil War." This fragment is also used as the first stanza of a song pf the same title by P.P. Bliss in the Franklin Square Song Collection dealing with a series of birds - the redbird, snowbird, bluebird, blackbird.
Here's another version, collected by John and Ruby Lomax in 1939:

LITTLE BIRDIE IN THE TREE

Little birdie in the tree, in the tree, in the tree,
Little birdie in the tree,
Sing a song to me.

Sing about the robin,
Way up in the sky;
When you go out callin,
Do your children cry?

(Repeat first verse)

Sung by Ray Wood, Houston, Texas, April 13, 1939.



Library of Congress, American Memory Collection (click to access recording - select "related audio")