Posts
The song comes under other titles, as well. I've seen it as "When the Boat Comes In" fairly regularly, less often as "Dance to Your Daddy-O" and only discovered that it's also known as "Come Here, Me Little Jacky" while googling around for more information on the tune.
The Annotated Horslips , it's a 'dandling or mouth music song from Northumbria.'
(Horslips were a 1970s Irish Celtic rock band that composed, arranged and performed their music based on traditional Irish jigs and reels, according to Wikipedia, and their site seems to be sort of like Mudcat, a great resource for background music and discology of various folk tunes, specifically ones this band performed on their albums)
Dandling, of course, is what you do when playing with the baby, and mouth music is, well, that's an interesting term.
I first heard it on the album Earth Mother Lullabies, where it describes a lullaby from the Hebrides. That lullaby was basically nonsense syllables woven from the child's name and soothingly wrapped around the notes in varying order. I sang the song to one of my own children substituting the five syllables of her own first and middle names for those in the song.
But mouth music isn't just a lullaby, and maybe not even primarily a lullaby:
Genuine puirt-a-beul (pronounced porsht-ah-buhl) has a number of distinctive features which mark it out from standard singing. Mouth music is a primarily rhythmic form of song, where the words are chosen for their rhythmic qualities and the patterns of sound they make. Consequently most of the lyrics are more or less nonsense, but sometimes they take the form of puns or tongue twisters. Some songs contain syllables called “vocables,” which are chosen to sound like a particular instrument, or as a kind of sound effect to fit in with the meaning of the song. One of the reasons that I love mouth music is that it is a truly representative form of folk song; even the poorest of people can afford to use their own voices, so the songs record the everyday lives of ordinary people.
Mouth music was an important part of Gaelic tradition because the Celts used it for dances after the pipes were banned in the wake of the Jacobean uprising. It was also used as working songs, and there are many similarities to some of the Gaelic mouth music songs for working and old cotton picking songs from the south, as well as connections between some old French Creole forms of music. Fascinating stuff.
Contemplator gives these lyrics:
Dance to your daddy,
My little laddie,
Dance to your daddy,
My little man.
Thou shalt have a fish,
Thou shalt have a fin,
Thou shalt have a haddock
When the boat comes in;
Thou shalt have a codling
Boiled in a pan -
Dance to your daddy,
My little man.
Dance to your daddy,
My little laddie,
Dance to your daddy,
My little lamb.
When thou art a man
And fit to take a wife,
Thou shalt wed a maid
And love her all your life;
She shall be your lassie,
Thou shalt be her man
Dance to your daddy, My little lamb.
