Rock Me to Sleep, Mother

DESCRIPTION: "Backward, turn backward, oh time in your flight, Make me a child again just for tonight, Mother, come back from the echoless shore... Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep." There is no love like a mother's
AUTHOR: Words: Elizabeth Akers Allen (source: Felleman) / Tune: Ernest Leslie (source: Heart-Songs)
EARLIEST DATE: 1860 (Dime-Song-Book #8)
KEYWORDS: mother death separation nonballad
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Heart-Songs, p. 432, "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother" (1 text, 1 tune)
Dime-Song-Book #8, p. 47, "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Hazel Felleman, Best Loved Poems of the American People, pp. 371-373, "Rock Me to Sleep" (1 text)
Roud #11721
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Backward, Turn Backward (I)" (tune)
cf. "Cowboy Again for a Day" (tune, lyrics)
NOTES [167 words]: This it is quoted by Laura Ingalls Wilder in chapter 19 of Little Town on the Prairie, but since Laura wrote that book much later, it cannot be used as a date peg.
This is fairly well-known as a poem (Granger's Index to Poetry has ten citations for it), and seems to have been a popular source for parodies. Granger's cites one that begins "Backward, turn backward, O time with your wheels," and J. S. Ogilvie, One Thousand Popular Quotations Comprising the Choicest Thoughts and Sayings of Eminent Writers of All Ages, Together With Nearly Three Hundred Original and Choice Selections, Suitable for Writing in Autograph Albums, J. S. Ogivie, Publisher (New York & Chicago), 1884 (available on Google Books), p. 101, has a piece, "Speed slowly and gently, oh Time, in thy flight, Let thy bounties be great and thy afflictions light. Deal out full measure from thy store of wealth, Give peace and plenty, success and good health."; another variant is on p. 24 of the second part of Ogilvie. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: HeSo432

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