Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?

Subject: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: wilco
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 05:17 PM

Refresh the memory of a codger please!! What is the right title for:

How old are you my pretty little miss,
How old are you my honey.
She answered with a tee hee hee,
"I'll be fufteen next Sunday."

I think this is a really old folk song.

Thnaks!!!!!

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: nutty
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 05:48 PM

Hi Wilco .....the song is usually known as SEVENTEEN COME SUNDAY

It has been posted here on Mudcat

click here

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: nutty
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 05:54 PM

The words also appear in the Bob Dylan song ... Black Jack Davey

see here

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: nutty
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 06:00 PM

There are a number of broadsides of the song in the Bodleian Library.All date from around 1850.

This is one example ......

I'm seventeen come Sunday

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: Snuffy
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 06:56 PM

'Seventeen come Sunday' in England

'As I Roved Out' in US (and Ireland?)

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 07:52 PM

Collected several times in North America but under different titles. In Cox, Folk-Songs of the South, # 126, "My Pretty Maid," with the line "she answered me so modestly, I'm seventeen come Sunday."
The traditional Ballad Index says "As I Roved Out" generally shows mixture with "Trooper and the Maid" (Child 299).

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 08:49 PM

As I Roved Out is really too common a beginning (or title) to be very helpful. The older folksong collectors reckoned that a good way of getting another few songs out of someone who thought they didn't remember any more was to say "Do you remember that one that starts..." -they almost always did, and it could have been any of quite a large number of completely unrelated songs.

The song in its various forms has been very common throughout the English-speaking world, and persists in tradition to this day under a lot of names. Laws assigned it his category number O17, and it's number 277 in the Roud Folk Song Index.

It was published quite widely on 19th century broadsides, some of which can be seen at the Bodleian Library Broadside Collection, as Nutty has said:

Seventeen Come Sunday

These are mostly of the mid-19th, though the song dates back at least to the late 18th century. There are quite a few previous discussions of it here, which you can find by searching for its various titles through the search engine on the main Forum page. A lot of people are most familiar with the set of which Planxty recorded an arrangement; if I remember right, that was actually a traditional English version, though the song is certainly found in Irish tradition as well.

A previous thread you started on the subject can still be seen at Tune Req: How old are you my pretty little miss

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: toadfrog
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 09:06 PM

I had always thought of it as The Lady and the Soldier or alternatively The Soldier and the Lady. In most versions, a rather unpleasant story. The most agreeable one I know is on NLCR, Rural Delivery #1.

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: Richie
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 09:50 PM

Does anyone know if there is a connection with "Fly around my Pretty Little Miss?"

A version entitled, "Where Are You Going, My Pretty Fair Maid?"
was collected in the Catskill Mountains, New York.

From my notes I have the tune based on the old melody "Boyne Water." Lucy Broadwood traces the melody to the dance tune "The Collier's Bonnie Lassie," printed in William Thompson's Orpheus Caledonius 1725, but Cazden finds the resemblance quite remote.

-Richie

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 01:07 AM

"The Soldier and the Lady" is an entirely different song, toadfrog. My father sang both, probably had several versions. I'll "trace" this thread and post more if I find anything new in his notes.

SRS

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: Shonagh
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 08:40 AM

I know this song as "As I roved out". I learned it off an Irish cd though, and in the version I sing, "shes sixteen years next monday morning!"

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 06:17 PM

Here's the starting verses of Dad's version:

Where are you goin my pretty little miss,
Where are you goin my daisy?
O, if I don't get me a young man soon
I think I'm a-goin crazy.

Cho:Hi rinktum-a-dinktum-a-diddle diddle dum,
    Hi rinktum-a-dinktum-a-doody;
    Hi rinktum-a-dinktum-a-diddle-diddle dum,
    Hi rinktum-a-dinktum-a-doody.

How old are you my pretty little miss,
How old are you my honey?
Well, if I don't die of a broken heart
I'll be sixteen next Sunday!

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: wilco
Date: 19 Jan 03 - 06:47 PM

Thanks Catters!!!!!!

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 11:46 AM

Yes, as Shonagh notes, the song varies down the years from 17 to 16. American versions of "Sixteen Come Sunday" are not uncommon.

I was going to say, Looks like lasses ripen a year earlier in America? (Ireland too, it seems; no wonder the contraception laws had to be eased.)

This could be of strong significance for social science, especially given the spate of articles since the 1990s, including one Time cover, lamenting? early puberty in our day of hormones in everything.

I assume, though, that "Fifteen Come Sunday" would be against the statutes.

Bob

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: Alec
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 11:52 AM

Prior to 1884, in Britain, the age of consent was 12.
Now 16.The old days weren't all good & our times are far from being all bad.

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 11:42 PM

If anyone remembers the early days of TV back in the 1950 era there was a children's show called "The Merry Mailman" and the host whose name I forgot (he passed away last year), used to sing this to the little kids. The lyrics of course were much more innocent.

How old are you my pretty little girl
How old are you my honey
Did I hear you say you were seven years old
Seven years old this Monday

                                                 SOL ZELLER

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: SouthernCelt
Date: 09 Feb 07 - 01:53 PM

nutty said: "The words also appear in the Bob Dylan song ... Black Jack Davey"
Isn't that song just another of many variations of "Gypsy Davey" (I have that one by Woody Guthrie on an old recording.)
I think Dylan's version was another example of taking older songs and plucking out lyrics and "plot" lines to create a new version that might be copyrightable in arrangement if not literal lyrics.
And to go far afield on this -- such re-doing of songs to me isn't the folk process, it's just a way to lay claim to something to which you may have no real right.
SC

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: GUEST,conkap_1
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 02:38 PM

in the '50's I grew up with some little records ... How Old are You was one of them ... I think my sister ended up with the record ... and I believe 3 Little Fishes was on the other side of the little red record ...

How old are you my pretty little miss
How old are you my darling
Did I hear you say you were seven years old
Seven years old this Monday

I can't remember how the second verse went ... it was for a little boy ...

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: Airymouse
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 03:26 PM

There's an interesting version on You tube sung by Bertha Hubbard Beard . There it is called "New Orleans", but my guess that name was supplied by the youtubers because Bertha probably had no name for it. (The idea that old time songs always had names is wrong.) One interesting line is
"She answered me with a modesty,'I'll be 16 next Sunday." "Modesty" isn't used that way any more, but it's a perfectly good use of the word.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyuRLQlYevo

AS you can see, I haven't mastered the blue-click, perhaps cut and paste is different from copy and paste.

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 04:49 PM

http://mainlynorfolk.info/louis.killen/songs/seventeencomesunday.html

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: GUEST,Malcolm Storey
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 05:08 PM

Sarah Makem (18 October 1900 – 20 April 1983) a native of Keady, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, was a traditional Irish singer. She was the wife of fiddler Peter Makem, mother of musicians Tommy Makem and Jack Makem, and grandmother of musicians Shane Makem, Conor Makem and Rory Makem. Sarah Makem and her cousin, Annie Jane Kelly, were members of the Singing Greenes of Keady.

In the 1950s, song collectors from the United States toured Ireland recording its musical heritage. Makem was visited and recorded by, among others, Diane Guggenheim Hamilton, Jean Ritchie, Peter Kennedy and Sean O'Boyle. Her rendition of "As I Roved Out" opened the BBC Radio folk music programme of the same name in the 1950s.

I found this in quick time on the net.

I find that most questions, other than personal ones, are easily answered and usually more accurately than on this forum.

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 05:25 PM

"I found this in quick time on the net."

Did you post it to the correct thread?

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: GUEST,Malcolm Storey
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 06:43 PM

Yes - it is about a version of the song mentioned and the programme was my first memorable introduction to folk song.

It was also the very first song I ever sang in a folk club about a dozen or so years later with Lal and Norma Waterson sitting in the audience - ah, the arrogance of youth!

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 07:56 PM

Gotcha, thanks :-)

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: Richie
Date: 18 Jul 16 - 07:47 PM

Hi,

The song titled, The Wakeful Mother, echoes the standard "How old are you" lines with different questions and was collected from Martha Crosbie about 1788.

A WAUKRIFE MINNIE.

"I picked up the old song and tune from a country girl in Nithsdale. I never met with it elsewhere in Scotland." (Robert Burns)

I. 'Whare are you gaun, my bonie lass?
Whare are you gaun, my hinnie?'
She answer'd me right saucilie:
— 'An errand for my minnie!'

II. 'O, whare live ye, my bonie lass?
O, whare live ye, my hinnie?'
'By yon burnside, gin ye maun ken,
In a wee house wi' my minnie!'

III. But I foor up the glen at e'en
To see my bonie lassie,
And lang before the grey morn cam
She was na hauf sae saucy.

IV. O, weary fa' the waukrife cock,
And the foumart lay his crawin!
He wauken'd the auld wife frae her sleep
A wee blink or the dawin.

V. An angry wife I wat she raise,
And o'er the bed she brought her,
And wi' a meikle hazel-rung
She made her a weel-pay'd dochter.

Richie

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: Richie
Date: 11 Feb 18 - 08:27 PM

Hi,

I have three Scottish children's song versions. One is from Mudcat and it's in the DT however, I can find no source for it other than the poster says it was collected in 1964. Anyone know more about this?

Whaur Are Ye Gaun, My Bonnie Wee Lass?

    1.
    Whaur are ye gaun, ma bonnie wee lass,
       Whaur are ye gaun, ma dearie?
    Whaur are ye gaun, ma bonnie wee lass?
       A message for ma mammie.

    Will I come wi you, ma bonnie wee lass,
       Will I come wi you, ma dearie?
    Will I come wi you, ma bonnie wee lass?
       I'll hae to ask ma mammie.

    What did she say, ma bonnie wee lass,
       What did she say, ma dearie?
    What did she say, ma bonnie wee lass?
       She'll tell me come next Sunday.

    Will you marry me, ma bonnie wee lass,
       Will you marry me, ma dearie?
    Will you marry me, ma bonnie wee lass,
       And never heed your mammie?

    I'll marry you, ma bonnie wee lad,
       I'll marry you, ma dearie,
    I'll marry you, ma bonnie wee lad,
       But I'll hae to bring ma mammie.

Richie

Subject: RE: Origins: How old are you my pretty little miss?
From: leeneia
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 12:04 PM

This would make a good bumpersticker:

If you have to ask her age, she's too young.