A-Hunting We Will Go

DESCRIPTION: "A-hunting we will go (x2) We'll catch a fox and put it in a box." Possible chorus: "High-ho, the derry-o." Additional verses may hunt other animals, such as fish or bear -- e.g. "We'll catch a bear and cut his hair, And then we'll let him go."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1883 (Burne)
KEYWORDS: hunting nonballad animal
FOUND IN: Britain(England(West), Scotland(Aber)) US(MW,So) New Zealand
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1591, "Oh a Hunting" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Sutton-Smith-NZ-GamesOfNewZealandChilden/FolkgamesOfChildren, p. 40, "(There was a jolly miller") (1 text, which open with verses from "The Miller Boy (Jolly is the Miller I)" and continues with "A-Hunting We Will Go"); p. 41, "(Would you lend my mother a saucepan)" (1 text, which also adds this verse to what appears an unrelated game)
JournalOfAmericanFolklore, Emelyn E Gardner, "Some Play-Party Games in Michigan," Vol. XXXIII, No. 128 (Apr 1920), #16 p. 102, "Have You Seen the Sha?" (1 text)
JournalOfAmericanFolklore, Ruth Ann Musick and Vance Randolph, "Children's Rhymes from Missouri," Vol. LXIII, No. 250 (Oct 1950), p. 431, ("A-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go") (1 text)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, pp. 175, 533, "A-Hunting We Will Go" (notes only)
Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes, p. 5, "A-hunting" (1 text)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #4, "A-hunting we will go" (1 text)
MidwestFolklore, Vance Randolph, "Jump Rope Rhymes From Arkansas" Volume 3, Number 2 (Summer 1953), p. 81, "(A-hunting we will go)" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Charlotte Sophia Burne, editor ("from the collections of Georgina F. Jackson"), _Shropshire Folk-lore: A Sheaf of Gleanings_, Trübner & Co., 1883, page 514, “(A-hunting we will go)” (1 text) (available on Google Books)
G.F. Northall, English Folk-Rhymes (London, 1892 ("Digitized by Google")), pp. 386-387, ("A hunting we will go") (2 texts)
Roud #12972
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Noble Duke of York" (tune)
cf. "The Farmer in the Dell" (tune)
cf. "The Plains of Waterloo (VIII)" (tune, per Dallas-TheCruelWars-100SoldiersSongs)
cf. "A-Mumming We WIll Go" (format)
NOTES [449 words]: This is a popular enough children's song that I actually encountered it in my youth, with the "High-ho" chorus and tune related to "The Farmer in the Dell." I don't know if I met it at school or at home; I do note that the Internet reveals many school-related versions, often badly damaged and with utterly sickening lesson plans attached. (I refuse to cite links on the grounds that American education is already too touchy-feely.)
I strongly suspect that the verse about catching a fox and putting it in a box did *not* originally involve letting it go, making me suspect a rewrite. Perhaps this is why, although the song seems to be common in modern children's anthologies, there aren't many traditional collections.
[Burne describes the game:]16. 'A-hunting we will go.' No ring; the players march two and two along the play-ground, and at the end turn from each other to right and left; the two lines march to the other end and meet again, as in the country-dance Sir Roger de Coverley.
Chorus. 'A-hunting we will go,
A-hunting we will go!
We'll catch a little fish,
And put him in a dish,
And never let him go!'
[found in] Ellesmere
[Northall, 1892, apparently copied this information and added another version about a fox.] - JD
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 175, claims this the ancestor of "The Noble Duke of York," but the evidence is pretty strong that the dependence goes the other way. She credits the tune to Thomas Arne in 1777. - RBW
The non-sequitur reply to Gardner's "Have You Seen the Sha?," who "lights his pipe on a starlight night," is the text "A-hunting we will go ... We'll catch a fox ...." Gomme (1.243-244) lists ("O have you seen the Shah") with two other versions of this "A-Hunting We Will Go."
Northall has two versions: one -- "we'll catch a little fish, And put him in a dish" -- from Shropshire, and the other -- "we'll catch a fox ...." -- from Derbyshire. - BS
Katherine Briggs, A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, Part A: Folk Narratives, 1970 (I use the 1971 Routledge paperback that combines volumes A.1 and A.2), volume A.2, pp. 528-530, "The Fox and the Pixies" is a folktale which she thinks might be influenced by this.
Tony Deane and Tony Shaw The Folklore of Cornwall, B. T. Batsford, 1975, p. 68,, has a verse which they say Peter Kennedy collected in Cornwall:
O the Farmers go around and fill their bags tied up with straw,
The miners they go underground and never miss a blaw,
O a-mining we will go, my boys, a-mining we will go,
With picks and shovels in our hands, a-mining we will go.
Deane and Shaw do not give enough information to identify their source, but I suspect their version is from this family. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: GrD81591

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