Old McDonald Had a Farm

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"Old McDonald Had a Farm" is a children's song about a farmer named McDonald (or MacDonald) and the various animals he keeps on his farm. Each verse of the song changes the name of the animal and its respective noise. In many versions, the song is cumulative, with the noises from all the earlier verses added to each subsequent verse.

1 Lyrics
2 Early versions
3 Translations
- 3.1 Portuguese Brazil
- 3.2 Mandarin Chinese
4 Recordings
5 "Old McDonald Had a Band"
6 Technical humor
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Lyrics

In the version commonly sung today, the lyrics allow for a substitutable animal and its respective sound.

Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O.

And on that farm he had a [animal name], E-I-E-I-O.

With a [animal noise twice] here and a [animal noise twice] there

Here a [animal noise], there a [animal noise], everywhere a [animal noise twice]

Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O.

For example, a verse using a cow as an animal, and moo as the cow's sound would be:

Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O.

And on that farm he had a cow, E-I-E-I-O.

With a moo moo here and a moo moo there

Here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo moo

Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O.

[edit] Early versions

The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, published between 1952 and 1964, includes a song called "McDonald's Farm", collected from a Miss Mary Scarborough of Dare County "in 1923 or thereabouts." It has lyrics very close to the common modern version:

Old McDonald had a farm,

E-i ei o

And on that farm he had some chicks,

E-i ei o

With a chick chick here and a chick chick there,

And a here chick, there chick, everywhere chick chick.

Old McDonald had a farm,

E-i ei o.

In the 1917 book, Tommy's Tunes, a collection of World War I era songs by F. T. Nettleingham, the song "Ohio (Old Macdougal Had a Farm)" has quite similar lyrics--though with a slightly different farmer's name and refrain:

Old Macdougal had a farm in Ohio-i-o,

And on that farm he had some dogs in Ohio-i-o,

With a bow-wow here, and a bow-wow there,

Here a bow, there a wow, everywhere a bow-wow.

The Traditional Ballad Index consider the "Tommy's Tunes" version to be the earliest known version of "Old Macdonald Had a Farm", though it cites numerous variants, some of them much older.[1]

Two of these variants were published in Vance Randolph's Ozark Folksongs in 1980. One was "Old Missouri", sung by a Mr. H. F. Walker of Missouri in 1922, a version that names different parts of the mule rather than different animals:

Old Missouri had a mule, he-hi-he-hi-ho,

And on this mule there were two ears, he-hi-he-hi-ho.

With a flip-flop here and a flip-flop there,

And here a flop and there a flop and everywhere a flip-flop

Old Missouri had a mule, he-hi-he-hi-ho.

The other variant from Ozark Folksongs was sung by Mr. Doney Hammondtree of Arkansas in 1942. He said he had learned the song around 1900 and that he "thinks it is the ancestor of another build-up song known as 'Old MacDonald Had a Farm'."

Old Massa had a very fine hog,

In the merry green fields of the lowland,

He turned him in to be seen

In the merry green fields of the lowland,

And it's oink here, and an oink there,

Naff-naff-naff and ev'rybody laugh as they go past

In the merry green fields of the lowland.

George Christy sang a similar version, "In the Merry Green Fields of Oland", in 1865.^{[citation needed]}

A British version of the song, called "The Farmyard, or The Merry Green Fields," was collected in 1908 from a 74-year-old Mrs. Goodey at Marylebone Workhouse, London, and published in Cecil Sharp's Collection of English Folk Songs.

Up was I on my fa-ther's farm

On a May day morn-ing ear-ly;

Feed-ing of my fa-ther's cows

On a May day morn-ing ear-ly,

With a moo moo here and a moo moo there,

Here a moo, there a moo, Here a pret-ty moo.

Six pret-ty maids come and gang a-long o' me

To the mer-ry green fields of the farm-yard.

Perhaps the earliest recorded member of this family of songs is a number from an opera called The Kingdom of the Birds, published in 1719-1720 in Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy:

In the Fields in Frost and Snows,

Watching late and early;

There I keep my Father's Cows,

There I Milk 'em Yearly:

Booing here, Booing there,

Here a Boo, there a Boo, every where a Boo,

We defy all Care and Strife,

In a Charming Country-Life.

[edit] Translations

The lyrics have been translated into other languages and modified slightly to fit rhythmic and cultural requirements. It is still sung as a children's song to the same tune. An Egyptian Arabic version of the song exists, with Amu Ali (Uncle Ali, Egyptian Arabic: عمو على) being the farmer character. The Italian version is Nella vecchia fattoria. In Spanish it's En la granja de Pepito or En la vieja factoría.

[edit] Portuguese Brazil

O seu McDonald tinha um sitio, iaiao
e neste sitio ele tinha um cachorrinho, iaiao
era "au au" pra ca, "au au" pra la, iaiao

neste sitio ele tinha uma vaquinha, iaiao
era "Mu" pra ca, "Mu" pra la, iaiao

[edit] Mandarin Chinese

As with English, many different versions and adaptations exist. The example verse below talks of small chickens and their 'zi zi' sound. Other animals are given different sounds: geese 'gu gu', goats 'mie mie' and dogs 'wang wang'.^{[citation needed]}

Traditional	Simplified	Pinyin	English translation
王老先生有塊地依啊依啊喲他在田邊養小雞呀依啊依啊喲這裡吱吱叫那裡吱吱叫這裡吱　那裡吱到處都叫吱吱王老先生有塊地依啊依啊喲	王老先生有块地依啊依啊哟他在田边养小鸡呀依啊依啊哟这里吱吱叫那里吱吱叫这里吱　那里吱到处都叫吱吱王老先生有块地依啊依啊哟	Wáng lǎo xiānsheng yǒu kuài dì yī a yī a yo tā zài tián biān yǎng xiǎojī ya yī a yī a yo zhèlǐ zī zī jiào nàli zī zī jiào zhèlǐ zī, nàli zī dàochù dōu jiào zī zī Wáng lǎo xiānsheng yǒu kuài dì yī a yī a yo	Old Mr Wang had a piece of land E I E I O In the field he raised chicks E I E I O They call 'zi zi' here they call 'zi zi' there Here 'zi', there 'zi' calling 'zi zi' everywhere Old Mr Wang had a piece of land E I E I O

[edit] Recordings

The oldest version listed in The Traditional Ballad Index is the Sam Patterson Trio's "Old MacDonald Had a Farm," released on the Edison label in 1925. This was followed by a version by Gid Tanner & His Skillet Lickers, "Old McDonald Had a Farm" (Columbia Records, 1927) and "McDonald's Farm" by Warren Caplinger's Cumberland Mountain Entertainers (Brunswick Records, 1928). In 1954, the composition was arranged for accordion sextet and recorded for RCA Thesaurus transcriptions by John Serry, Sr. in the United States. [2] Sophie Ellis-Bextor has performed a short excerpt of the song acoustically, live. Other popular versions are by Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Flatt & Scruggs, The Three Stooges, Sesame Street cast, and Gene Autry.

[edit] "Old McDonald Had a Band"

The children's singer and songwriter Raffi recorded a version of the song with barn animals sounds changed to sounds of different instruments "in the band." This version is the last track on his 1976 album Singable Songs for the Very Young.

[edit] Technical humor

Renowned computer scientist Donald Knuth jokingly shows the song to have a complexity of $\textstyle O(\sqrt{n})$ in "The Complexity of Songs," attributing its source to "a Scottish farmer O. McDonald."