Baby Bye

DESCRIPTION: "Baby Bye, here's a fly, Let us watch him, you and I." "There he goes, on his toes, Tickling baby's nose!" "I believe with those six legs You and I could walk on eggs." "See! he crawls on the walls Yet he never falls."
AUTHOR: Mary H. FOote (source: Swan-BalladsAndFolkSongsFromMorningSunIowa)
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (Brown-MyGrandmothersSongbook)
KEYWORDS: baby bug nonballad
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Brown-MyGrandmothersSongbook 11, "Baby Bye" (1 text, 1 tune)
Swan-BalladsAndFolkSongsFromMorningSunIowa 27, p. 59, "Baby Bye" (1 text)
Roud #22137
NOTES [126 words]: Although this piece seems to be rare, the text in my copy of Brown-MyGrandmothersSongbook has several emendations written in the text -- none of them of any real significance. Was it just the previous owner rewriting the song? Or did that owner know another version? I have no way to tell. It is the only piece so emended. The text of this emended version runs
Baby Bye, here's a fly,
Let us watch him, you and I.
For he crawls up the walls
Yet he never falls.
I believe with six such legs
You and I could walk on eggs.
There he goes, on his toes,
Tickling baby's nose!
Possibly this is by reference to one of the McGuffey Readers; according to Swan-BalladsAndFolkSongsFromMorningSunIowa, this was in one or another edition of McGuffey's Second Reader. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.2
File: BrGr11

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