Put Me In My Little Bed

DESCRIPTION: "Oh birdie, I am tired now, I do not care to hear you sing." The child asks the bird to go to sleeps, and requests, "come put me in my little bed." The singer recalls her mother telling her "never, never go astray"
AUTHOR: Words: Dexter Smith / Music: C. A. White
EARLIEST DATE: 1870 (sheet music published by White, Smith & Perry of Boston)
KEYWORDS: orphan bird death mother
FOUND IN: US(Ap,MW,Ro,SE,So)
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Belden-BalladsSongsCollectedByMissourFolkloreSociety, pp. 279-280, "Put Me In My Little Bed" (1 text)
Stout-FolkloreFromIowa 38, p. 53, "Put Me In My Little Bed" (1 text)
Neely/Spargo-TalesAndSongsOfSouthernIllinois, pp. 254-257, "Put Me in My Little Bed" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Hubbard-BalladsAndSongsFromUtah, #95, "Come, Sister, Come" (1 text)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore5 675, "Lullaby" (1 short text, 1 tune, which has the first verse but has lost the point of the song)
Boette-SingaHipsyDoodle, p. 131, ""Old Lullaby" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Dime-Song-Book #29, p. 13, "Put Me in my Little Bed" (1 text)
Roud #4339
RECORDINGS:
Leake County Revelers, "Put Me In My Little Bed" (Columbia 15292-D, 1928)
SAME TUNE:
Parody on: Put Me in My Little Bed ("Oh! once I was a little dreary," by Morris Stransky") (Wolf-AmericanSongSheets p. 124)
NOTES [86 words]: Belden-BalladsSongsCollectedByMissourFolkloreSociety's notes to this song are confused. He claims that Spaeth refers to this song in Read 'Em and Weep -- but there is no such reference, at least in my copy. Spaeth does, however, mention the song in A History of Popular Music in America as one of several hits by C. A. White.
White seems to have had a thing about birds; his first big hit was "Come, Birdie, Come."
Spaeth claims that this song was the forerunner of the more popular "Put My Little Shoes Away." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: Beld279

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