Does anyone know how the old song / nursery rhyme "Merrily We Roll Along" started?
Does anyone know more lyrics to it than the common

Merrily we roll along,
Roll along, roll along,
Merrily we roll along,
O'er the bright blue sea.          [later variant: "deep blue sea"]

Data: it's called an "old folk song" but it sounds pop.

1. Most recently Stephen Sondheim made a 1980 musical by that name from a 1934 Kaufman-Hart play of the same name.

2. In the DT it appears in several threads as a chorus to "Good Night Ladies." (Probably a recent accretion.)

3. Its most commonly known form has the same tune as Mary Had a Little Lamb.
I thought it was a nursery rhyme but, funny thing, I couldn't find it in the Baring-Gould "Annotated Mother Goose."

4. In the Lester Levy collection appears an interesting song, whose lyrics I've copied below. Maybe this is the original. But it has the sound of a quote, breaking the rhythm of the refrain. I wonder whether its authors picked up the "merrily" part from an earlier pop song.

Can anyone provide any older source?   Could it really just date only to 1906? And if so, where did the "bright blue sea" come from, in place of "come take a skate with me"? Bob

COME TAKE A SKATE WITH ME
(?) Browne & Gus Edwards, 1906
From Lester B. Levy Collection

Not long ago when a girl and her beau
Took an arm and arm trip after dark,
They'd go to a play or a dance to be gay,
Or perhaps they'll hold hands in the park,
That's changed nowadays, roller skating's the craze,
And when "he" and"she" meet ev'ry day
His speech is "Hello, are you ready to go?
If she hesitates, then he will say,

CHO
Come take a skate with me, Katie,
Roll me all over the rink,
We'll show them some twirling, some curling and whirling,
We won't even stop for a drink!
Come on, join the bunch where the music so sweet
Will making forget that you ever had feet,
Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along,
Merrily we roll along, come take a skate with me.

"Bumping the bumps" yes or "jumping the jumps"
As a popular craze are all through,
And automobiles have lost out to the wheels
That can make you think flying's come true,
You don't need the moon for this fine chance to spoon,
For you're arm in arm all of the way,
And if she starts to fall, just get busy, that's all,
It's no wonder that all the boys say:

CHO