Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Away Home

DESCRIPTION: "Ladybug/Ladybird, Ladybug/Ladybird, Fly away home, Your house is on fire, Your children do roam." The extended version may instruct the insect to go to Flanders or elsewhere, and fly to the singer's love
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1951 (Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: bug home fire
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland) US(MW,SE)
REFERENCES (12 citations):
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #467, p. 209, "(Lady Bird, Lady Bird)" (a short version in the text with a long addedum in the notes)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 297, "Ladybird, Ladybird" (1 text)
Montgomerie/Montgomerie-ScottishNurseryRhymes 15, "Ladybird" (1 very full text)
Sackett/Koch-KansasFolklore, p. 120, "(Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home)" (1 text)
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 95, "Ladybird, Ladybird" (1 text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 104, "Ladybird, Ladybird" (1 text)
Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes, p. 16, "Ladybug"; p. 130, "Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home" (2 texts)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #302, "Lady bug, lady bug, fly away home" (1 short text)
Henry-SongsSungInTheSouthernAppalachians, p. 243, (no title) (1 short text)
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, John Foster West, "Folklore of a Mountain Childhood," Vol. XVI, No. 3 (Nov 1968), p. 169, "Doodlebug, doodlebug, get a cup of coffee" (1 text); article reprinted (with text reset) in Vol. LII, No. 3 (Nov 1968), p. 11-12
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, Joseph D. Clark, "North Carolina Popular Beliefs and Superstitions," Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (Jan 1970 Special Issue), p. 59 [#1499], "Doodlebug, doodlebug, get a cup of coffee" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Peter and Iona Opie, _I Saw Esau: Traditional Rhymes of Youth_, #164, "(Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home)" (1 text)
Roud #16215
NOTES [244 words]: Although most if not all of us think of this as a song about a bug, the second half of Opie's version is interesting (the Sackett/Koch-KansasFolklore is similar): All the ladybug's children are gone except "little Ann(e), And she has crept under the warming pan."
The moment I saw that, I couldn't help but think of the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and the Hannoverian Succession of 1714. In 1689, it was alleged that James the Old Pretender had been snuck into the Queen's birth chamber in a warming pan, and had the boy been accepted as legitimate, then Anne, the last of the Stuarts, would never have been Queen.
What's more, the first known mention of this item, from Tom Thumb's Pretty Song Book, is from a period within living memory of the Hannoverian Succession.
I grant that it is almost certainly coincidence. But it's an interesting coincidence. Most of the political meanings assigned to nursery rhymes are based on completely undemonstrable equivalents and hidden names. Here, the names are not hidden.
Katherine Elwes Thomas, The Real Personages of Mother Goose, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1930, p. 281, also suggests this is about James and his family, with Mary of Modena, the second wife of James II (i.e. not the mother of Anne), being the Lady Bird. This probably argues against my hypothesis, since anything Thomas believed is likely to be insane.
Another story, related by Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, is that it is a charm against witches. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: MSNR15

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