Young Lady Sat Down to Sleep, A

DESCRIPTION: "Here we go round the strawberry bush This cold and frosty morning." A girl sits down to sleep. She wants a boy to wake her. He writes his name and is called to wake her. She will marry him.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1830 (Newell Massachusetts fragment); 1883 (Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren)
KEYWORDS: courting nonballad playparty
FOUND IN: US(NE,So)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Scarborough-OnTheTrailOfNegroFolkSongs, p. 138, ("Here we go round the strawberry bush") (1 text; Scarborough is reprinting Newell's Texas text)
Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren, #160, "The Sleeping Beauty" (2 texts)
Roud #7889
NOTES [153 words]: I find it hard to imagine how Scarborough's version about a "strawberry bush" arose; strawberries don't grow on bushes. Nonetheless Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren also has a "strawberry bush" version. Of course, mulberries don't grow on bushes either, but a mulberry tree is a lot more bushy than a strawberry plant! Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, commenting about "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush" rather than this piece, suggests that the original may have been a blackberry bush. - RBW
Newell: "It would appear, from the character of the round, that various names are proposed to the sleeping girl, which she rejects until a satisfactory one is presented. At all events, this is the case in a Provençal game which we take to be of the same origin as ours.... We infer, ..., that the game, apparently so natural an invention, originally represented some form of the world-wide story of the 'Sleeping Beauty.'" - BS
Last updated in version 6.0
File: Newe160

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