There Were Two Birds Sat on a Stone

DESCRIPTION: "There were two birds sat on a stone, Fa la la lal de, One flew away and then there was one, Fa la la... The other flew after, and then there was none... And so the poor stone was left all alone." The (birds/crows) then fly back
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1767 (Newbery)
KEYWORDS: bird
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1680, "The Twa Corbies" (1 text, 1 tune)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #49, pp. 59-60, "(There were two birds sat on a Stone)"
Montgomerie/Montgomerie-ScottishNurseryRhymes 19, "(There were two crows sat on a stone)" (1 text)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 51, "There were two birds sat on a stone" (2 texts)
Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes, p. 17, "Birds on a Stone" (1 text)
DT, CRAWSTAN
ADDITIONAL: Robert Chambers (Edited by Norah and William Montgomerie), Traditional Scottish Nursery Rhymes (1990 selected from Popular Rhymes) #13, p. 17, ("There were twa craws sat on a stane, Fal de ral")
Roud #8906
NOTES [82 words]: Sounds like "The Twa Corbies" told from the standpoint of their original perch. But there are just enough mentions of it that I thought it had better go in the Index.
Charles Kingsley quoted two stanzas of this in The Water Babies. (1863):
Two little birds they sat on a stone,
One swam away, and then there was one,
With a fal-lal-la-lady.
The other swam after, and then there was none,
And so the poor stone was left all alone,
With a fal-lal-la-lady.
The quotation is in chapter seven. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.4
File: BGMG049

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