Here We Go Up (Hey My Kitty)

DESCRIPTION: "Here we go up, up, up, up, up, Here we go down, down, downy; Here we go over and over and over, And here we go round, round, roundy." "O, my kitty, my kitty, my kitty, O my kitty my dearie, Never was such a kitty as this, Never so far nor neary."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1740 (Tea-Table Miscellany, according to Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: nonballad animal lullaby
FOUND IN: US(NE,SE) Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (8 citations):
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 203, "Here We Go Up, Up" (1 text)
Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, pp. 209-210, "Here We Go Up" (1 text, 1 tune)
Morris-FolksongsOfFlorida, #231, "Hey. My Kitten" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 288, "Hey, my kitten, my kitten" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #560, p. 228, "(Oh my Kitten a Kitten)"
Montgomerie/Montgomerie-ScottishNurseryRhymes 51, "(Hey my kitten, my kitten)" (1 text)
Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes, p. 93, "How We Go" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Allan Ramsay, The Tea-Table Miscellany: or, A Collection of Choice Songs, Scots and English (in two vols) (London, 1788 (seventeenth edition) ("Digitized by Google")), Vol. I, pp. 439-440, "The Nurse's Song" ("Hey! my kitten, a kitten") (1 text)
Roud #3748
NOTES [89 words]: Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland claims this is a lullaby. The second verse, perhaps; the first seems more like a rhyme a parent would use while swinging a child through the air. In Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes, the "My Kitten" verse stands alone. Possibly the two should be split. Especially since the Opies find several other sorts of verses tacked onto the "My Kitten" rhyme.
Gloria Delamar claims to have written the Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes version. But it's just this with the "kitten" verses cut out. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.4
File: Lins209

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