-Joe Offer-
Here's the Traditional Ballad Index entry on this song:
Grandfather's Clock
DESCRIPTION: A description of the relations between grandfather and clock. The clock ran for the entire length of the old man's life, celebrating happy occasions and never complaining. "But it stopp'd -- short -- never to go again When the old man died."AUTHOR: Henry Clay Work
EARLIEST DATE: 1876 (sheet music published by C. M. Cady of New York)
KEYWORDS: technology family nonballad
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (9 citations):
WorkSongs, pp. 177-180, Grandfather's Clock" (1 text, 1 tune, a copy of the original sheet music)
Stout 72, pp. 94-96, "Grandfather's Clock" (2 texts plus 2 fragments)
Neely, pp. 219-220, "Grandfather's Clock" (2 texts)
RJackson-19CPop, pp. 76-79, "Grandfather's Clock" (1 text, 1 tune)
Scott-EnglishSB, pp. 124-125, "My Grandfather's Clock" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Emerson, pp. 67-68, "Grandfather's Clock" (1 text)
Silber-FSWB, p. 251, "Grandfather's Clock" (1 text)
DT, GRANCLOK*
ADDITIONAL: Martin Gardner, editor, _Famous Poems from Bygone Days_, Dover, 1995, pp. 168-169, "Grandfather's Clock" (1 text)
ST RJ19076 (Full)
Roud #4326
RECORDINGS:
Carolina Buddies, "Grandfather's Clock" (Decca 5142, 1935)
[?] Clark & [Walter] Scanlan, "Grandfather's Clock" (Edison 50979, 1922)
Frank Crumit, "Grandfather's Clock" (Victor 19945, 1926)
Edison Male Quartette, "Grandfather's Clock" (CYL: Edison 8967, 1905)
Chubby Parker, "Grandfather's Clock" (Supertone 9732, 1930)
Tom & Roy, "Grandfather's Clock, Part 1/Part 2" (Montgomery Ward M-4242, 1933)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "My Grandfather's Cock" (tune, form)
cf. "His Grandfather's Hat" (tune, form)
NOTES: Soon after the Civil War, Henry Clay Work retired from songwriting (presumably because of the poor pay). In 1871, however, the Chicago fire burned down the offices of Root and Cady (the publishing firm), and Chauncy M. Cady asked his friend Work to write some songs to help him re-establish his business.
One of the songs Work turned in was "Grandfather's Clock," which had been gathering dust in his files for some years. The song sold some 800,000 copies, and earned Work about $4,000 in royalties (at that time, easily enough to retire on). He dedicated it "To my Sister Lizzie."
Folklore has it that, until this song was published, floor clocks were just "floor clocks" or "tall clocks." Since then, they have been known as "Grandfather clocks." This strikes me as more reasonable than many folk derivations, but I cannot verify this from any of my linguistic sources. Partridge, p. 116, says only that the term is from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.
Incidentally, there are famous instances of something rather like this actually happening, though I doubt it inspired Work's song. One story is of the famous Captain Cook and his final voyage of exploration. One of the reasons Cook was such a great explorer was that he was among the first officers to actually be able to tell longitude; in recent decades, enough astronomical data had been gathered to make it possible to navigate by the stars -- plus the chronometer (the first timepieces accurate enough to tell time while at sea) had been invented.
True chronometers were still very rare in Cook's time, since they had to be hand-made with incredible accuracy. John Harrison (1693-1776) had invented the device and built a handful; Larcum Kendall had made a handful in imitation of Harrison. Kendall's first machine, known as K-1, was used by Cook on his voyages. And, according to Sobel, p, 151, "Almost at the instant the captain died in 1779, according to an account kept at the time, K-1 also stopped ticking."
Opie/Tatem, p. 84, tells a tale of the clock at the House of Lords, which should have been wound up, stopping when George III died. They also mention a comment in Notes & Querries, 1864, in which nurses said it was a common occurrence for a clock to stop when someone died. Opie/Tatem have several more references to this type of thing, but all are more recent than the song. - RBW
Parodies of this piece have been common. Paul Stamler tells us of "His Grandfather's Hat," which likely will not make it into this collection: "'His Grandfather's Hat' is a parody of 'Grandfather's Clock,' referring to candidate Benjamin Harrison [elected in 1888, but defeated in 1892], grandson of President William Henry Harrison: 'His grandfather's hat is too big for his head/But Ben puts it on just the same.'" - PJS, RBW
Not all the parodies were political; Finson, pp. 132-133, reports, "Work's vision of the clock as a human servant generated parodies numbering 'upwards of twoscore,' according to Birdseye, who exaggerated little in this case. Alice Dale and George W. Morgan copied Work's song immediately in 'Grandmother's Clock' (1876) which also provides companionship (she talks to the machine throughout) and dies with its owner. B. M. McWilliams came very close to plagiarism in 'The Clock That Struck When Grandpa Died' (1880). And Work himself tried to capitalize on his success with 'Sequel to "Grandfather's Clock"' (1878), in which a relative returns to the old man's house and watches the useless machine chopped up for kindling."
Finson, p. 126, notes that there had been a number of earlier clock songs, often lamenting aging and the passage of time, which (like this song) imitated clock noises. So Work was imitating a popular genre -- but transformed and totally transcended it; those other songs all seem forgotten.
Finson, p. 215, says that the song was popularized by Sam Lucas: "Lucas (1848-1916), born of former slaves in Fayette County, Virginia, enjoyed one of the most distinguished careers on stage of any nineteenth-century entertainer, at first as a member of the Original Georgia Minstrels (an all-black troupe which also include [James] Bland) and later in reviews, plays, and vaudeville." - RBW
Bibliography
- Opie/Tatem: Iona Opie and Moira Tatem, editors, A Dictionary of Superstitions, 1989 (I use the 1999 Barnes & Noble edition)
- Finson: Jon W. Finson, The Voices That Are Gone: Themes in Nineteenth-Century American Popular Song, Oxford University Press, 1994
- Partridge: Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (combined fifth edition with dictionary and supplement), Macmillan, 1961
- Sobel: Dava Sobel, Longitude, 1995 (I use the 2007 Walker edition with a foreward by Neil Armstrong)
File: RJ19076
Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List
Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography
The Ballad Index Copyright 2016 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.
And the Digital Tradition lyrics:
GRANDFATHER'S CLOCK
(Henry Clay Work)
My grandfather's clock was too tall for the shelf
So it stood ninety years on the floor
It was taller by half than the old man himself
But it weighed not a pennyweight more
It was bought on the morn on the day that he was born
It was always his treasure and pride
But it stopped, short, never to go again
When the old man died
Ninety years without slumbering
Tic toc tic toc
His life's seconds numbering
Tic toc tic toc
It stopped, short, never to go again
When the old man died.
In watching its pendulum swing to and fro
Many hours he had spent when a boy
And through childhood and manhood, the clock seemed to know
And to share both his grief and his joy
For it struck 24 when he entered at the door
With a blooming and beautiful bride,
But it stopped, short, never to go again
When the old man died
CHORUS
My grandfather said that of those he could hire
Not a servant so faithful he'd found,
For it kept perfect time and it had one desire
At the close of each day to be wound
At it kept to its place, not a frown upon its face
At its hands never hung by its side
But it stopped, short, never to go again
When the old man died
CHORUS
It rang an alarm in the still of the night,
An alarm that for years had been dumb
And we knew that his spirit was pluming for flight
That his hour of departure had come
Still the clock kept the time
With a soft and muffled chime
As we silently stood by his side
But it stopped, short, never to go again
When the old man died
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Before this song became popular, the floor standing clocks were
known merely as tall clocks, and became known as grandfather
clocks as a result of the singing of this song.
recorded by Trickett on Streams of Time
filename[ GRANCLOK
TUNE FILE: GRANCLOK
CLICK TO PLAY
DC
And the sequel (from the Digital Tradition)
SEQUEL TO GRANDFATHER'S CLOCK
(Henry Clay Work)
Once again have I roamed thro' the old-fashioned house,
Where my grandfather spent his ninety years.
There are strangers in charge, and the change they have wrought
Oh! it saddens me, even to tears.
Dear old clock! when they found you were speechless from grief,
Then they went and swapped you off, case and all.
For that vain, stuck-up thing
(tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick),
For that vain, stuck-up thing on the wall.
cho: Grandfather sleeps in his grave;
Strange steps resound in the hall!
And there's that vain, stuck-up thing
(tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick),
There's that vain, stuck-up thing on the wall.
While we talked of the old clock they all ran it down.
Tho' they claimed that it couldn't be made to run.
It was useless they said-- it was quite out of style;
Built, no doubt, just about the year One.
And the words echoed round, with a faint, mocking sound,
As if some one gave assent to it all;
'Twas that vain, stuck-up thing
(tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick),
'Twas that vain, stuck-up thing on the wall.
From the clock-peddler's cart to the junk-shop it went,
Where its cog-wheels were sundered one by one;
And the brass-founder joked as they writhed in the flames
"Melt'em up," says he; "then they will run."
There is grief in my heart, there are tears in my eyes.
Yet indignantly the sight I recall
Of that vain, stuck-up thing
(tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick),
Of that vain, stuck-up thing on the wall.
"An extremely hard case!" said the junk-dealer's wife,
As she carved it for kindling wood and sighed
That mahogany case, with its quaint, figured face,
Which so long was my grandfather's pride.
"There is hope for the small; there's a chance for us all;
For the mighty ones of Time, they must fall!"
Says that vain, stuck-up thing
(tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick),
Says that vain, stuck-up thing on the wall.
Words and music by Henry Clay Work, 1878
Source: Levy Sheet Music Collection, Johns Hopkins University
The original "Grandfather's Clock" was published in 1876.
@nostalgia @aging
filename[ GRANCLO2
TUNE FILE: GRANCLOK
CLICK TO PLAY
JRO MS