Girls and Boys Come Out To Play
"Girls and Boys Come Out to Play"
Roud #5452 |
| Written by |
Traditional |
| Published |
1708 |
| Written |
England |
| Language |
English |
| Form |
Nursery rhyme |
'Girls and Boys Come Out to Play' or 'Boys and Girls Come Out to Play' is a nursery rhyme that has existed since at least 1708. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 5452.
Lyrics
The most common versions of the rhyme are very similar to that collected by James Orchard Halliwell in the mid-nineteenth century:
- Girls and boys, are come out to play,
- The moon doth shine as bright as day;
- Leave your supper, and leave your sleep,
- And come with your playfellows into the street.
- Come with a whoop, come with a call,
- Come with a good will or not at all.
- Up the ladder and down the wall,
- A halfpenny roll will serve us all.
- You find milk, and I'll find flour,
- And we'll have a pudding in half an hour.[1]
Other versions often put boys before girls in the opening line.[2]
History
The verse may date back to the time when children were expected to work during the daylight hours, and play was reserved for late in the evening. The first two lines at least appeared in dance books (1708, 1719, 1728), satires (1709, 1725), and a political broadside (1711). It appeared in the earliest extant collection of nursery rhymes, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book published in London around 1744. The 1744 version included the first six lines.[3]
In popular culture
- Girls and Boys Come Out To Play is featured in the 1960s television series The Prisoner in the episodes 'The Girl Who Was Death' and 'Once Upon a Time'.
- The song plays part of the storyline in the movie Tale of a Vampire starring Julian Sands. The vampire, Alex, sings it to the child Annabell during a flash back and later the librarian who looks like her starts to sing it on her way home from work.
- An atonal chiptune of Girls and Boys Come Out To Play features in the Sinclair ZX Spectrum game Skool Daze.
- Lyrics were used in a song by The Incredible String Band.
- The melody is also repeatedly used in the mini-series Jekyll starring James Nesbitt. The melody was playing at the very first time Hyde was invoked and it became his theme.
- One of the graphic British public information films of the Keep Matches Away From Children series in 1975-76 showing severely burnt girls and boys in hospital wincing in pain as doctors and nurses tend to their wounds has a grim parody of the song which says girls and boys come out to play for heaven's sake keep all your matches away.
Notes
- ^ James Orchard Halliwell, The nursery rhymes of England (London, 1846), p. 206. (at books.google.com)
- ^ I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 99-100.
- ^ William S. Baring-Gould and Ceil Baring-Gould, The Annotated Mother Goose, p. 35.