Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

DESCRIPTION: Singer says he knows an old lady who swallowed a fly; "I don't know why she swallowed that fly/Perhaps she'll die." She swallows a succession of animals, each to catch the last. At the end, "I know an old lady who swallowed a horse/She's dead, of course."
AUTHOR: Probaby Rose Bonne (words) and Alan Mills (music)
EARLIEST DATE: 1953 (recording, Burl Ives)
KEYWORDS: death cumulative humorous animal bird bug horse campsong
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (4 citations):
LibraryThingCampSongsThread, post 59, "(Old Woman Who Swallowed A Fly)" (1 mention, from user Tess_W, posted August 31, 2021)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, pp. 110, 392, "The Lady Who Swallowed a Fly"/"There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" (notes only)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #469, "Poor old lady" (1 text)
DT, SWALLFLY*
Roud #9375
RECORDINGS:
Amy Michels, Derek Piotr, "I Don't Know Why She Married A Ward" (Piotr-Archive #164, recorded 05/10/2022)
Pete Seeger, "I Know an Old Lady (Who Swallowed a Fly)" (on PeteSeeger08, PeteSeegerCD02)
Pete Seeger & Sonny Terry, "Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" (on SeegerTerry)
SAME TUNE:
Pete Seeger, "Young Woman Who Swallowed a Lie" [feminist parody] (DT, SWALLLIE; on PeteSeeger45; on PeteSeeger47)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
NOTES [145 words]: Wikipedia credits the pop version of this to Rose Bonne (words) and Alan Mills (music); it looks to me as if that version, recorded by Burl Ives, is the source of all later versions, and that the recordings by Ives and Seeger are responsible for its popularity.
I know nothing about Bonne, but Mills had a role in two books in the Ballad Index, Mills-FavoriteSongsOfNewfoundland and Fowke/Mills/Blume-CanadasStoryInSong. He also released recordings of Canadian songs.
Fascinatingly, this seems to have been folk processed within two years of its composition. The Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes text runs
Poor old lady,
She swallowed a fly.
Poor old lady,
She's going to die....
Also, the Amy Michels version appears to be a humorous parody based on family history: So-and-so married a so-and-so; I don't know why (s)he married a so-and-so; maybe (s)he was something-or-other. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: RcIKAOLW

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