Ding, Dong, Bell

DESCRIPTION: "Ding, dong, bell, Pussy's in the well." Johnny Green (or Tam Linn) put her in. Tommy Stout pulls her out. "What a naughty boy was that, To try to drown poor pussy cat, Who never did him any harm, And killed the mice in his father's barn"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1784 (Gammar Gurton's Garland, according to Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: rescue animal youth
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Bord))
REFERENCES (8 citations):
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 190, "The Cat's in the Well" (1 text)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 134, "Ding, dong, bell" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #43, p. 56, "(Ding dong bell)"
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 29, "Ding, Dong, Bell" (1 short text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 97, "Ding, Dong, Bell, Pussy's in the Well" (1 text)
GirlScouts-SingTogether, p. 100, "Jack, Boy, Ho, Boy" (1 short text, 1 tune, a round which looks like a short version of this)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #607, "Who's in the well?" (1 text)
MidwestFolklore, Roger Abrahams, "Ghastly Commands: The Cruel Joke Revisited," Volume 11, Number 4 (Winter 1961) p. 241, "(Ding dong bell)" (1 short text, a travesty of the usual version)
Roud #12853
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Dingle Dingle Doosey" ("cat's in the well" lyric)
NOTES [220 words]: The Baring-Goulds report that Katherine Elwes Thomas believed this to come from Bristol, where there was a tradition of ringing the city bells at any excuse. A plausible speculation, but no more.
The Opies, more reasonably, link this to an item in Ravenscroft's 1609 Pammelia, There are some similarities in the lyrics, but not enough to prove identity, I think. Similarly, the Opies note several uses of the phrase "Ding, dong, bell" in Shakespeare. There might be a link, but we can't prove it.
Cutts, p. 90, has another "ding dong bell" item, from British Library MS. Additional 29481, folio 16:
Downe, downe, affflicted soule and paie thy due
To death and misserie, weepe howle and rue
The crying sines posest the endles night...
[5 lines omitted]
And all thi bewtie into dust
Now ring thy knell,
Dyng dong bell
Dinge dong bell.
I'm also reminded of "Dingle Dingle Doosey" ("Dingle, dingle, doosey, The cat's in the well; The dog's away to Bellingen, To buy the bairn a bell"). Both have a bell, and a cat in the well, and the syllable "Ding." But whether the link means anything I don't know.
The Ravenscroft item reads
Iacke [Jackie] boy, ho boy, newes:
The cat is in the well,
Let vs ring now for her knell.
Ding dong, ding, dong, bell.
Source: Ravenscroft, No. 56/p. 9, "Iacke Boy, Ho Boy" (1 text, 1 tune) - RBW
Bibliography

Cutts: John P. Cutts, Seventeenth Century Songs and Lyrics, University of Missouri Press, 1959
Ravenscroft: (no author listed), Selections from the Works of Thomas Ravenscroft; A Musical Composer of the Time of King James the First, Roxburgh Club, 1822

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File: OO2134

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