Little Tommy Tucker

"Little Tommy Tucker"
Roud #19618

1901 illustration by William Wallace Denslow
Song
Written England
Published c. 1744
Form Nursery rhyme
Writer(s) Traditional
Language English

"Little Tommy Tucker" is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19618.[1]

Lyrics

Common modern versions include:

Little Tom Tucker
Sings for his supper.
What shall we give him?
White bread and butter.
How shall he cut it
Without a knife?
How will he be married
Without a wife?[2]

Origins

The earliest recorded version of this rhyme is from Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (c. 1744), which has only four lines.[2] The full version was produced in Mother Goose's Melody (c. 1765).[2] There are references to various parts of the rhyme in earlier works.[2] To 'sing for one's supper' was a proverbial phrase by the seventeenth century. An excellent new Medley (c. 1620) included the line 'Tom would eat meat but wants a knife'.[2]

Various Thomas Tuckers have been identified, including a Bachelor of Arts who was appointed 'Prince or Lorde of the Revells' at St. John's College, Oxford in 1607, and a 'Tom Tuck' who appears in one of John Herrick's epigrams in Witt's Recreations (1640).[2]

Notes

  1. "Roud Folksong Index S377998 Little Tom Tucker sings for his supper". Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. English Folk Dance and Song Society. Retrieved May 20, 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 416–7.
  3. http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/pl.php?n=17069 Rose: Little Tommy Tucker.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/12/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.