Lavender Blue

DESCRIPTION: "Lavender's blue, dilly, dilly..." Singer tells his lady that she must love him because he loves her. He tells of a vale where young man and maid have lain together, and suggests that they might do the same, and that she might love him (and also his dog)
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1685 (broadside)
KEYWORDS: courting sex love dog colors
FOUND IN: Britain US(NE)
REFERENCES (11 citations):
Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, pp. 229-230, "Lavender's Blue" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 299, "Lavender's blue, diddle, diddle" (3 texts plus a plate facing page 266 showing the "Diddle Diddle" broadside of c. 1680)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #137, p. 113, "(Lavender blue and rosemary green)"
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 129, "Lavender's Blue" (1 text plus a long text of "Diddle, Diddle")
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 158, "Lavender Blue" (1 text)
Tobitt-TheDittyBag, p.238, "Lavender Blue" (1 text, 1 tune)
Tobitt-YoursForASong, p. 16, "Lavender's Blue" (1 text, 1 tune)
SongsOfAllTime, p. 19, "Lavender's Blue" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, LAVNDER2
ADDITIONAL: Reginald Nettel, _Seven Centuries of Popular Song_, Phoenix House, 1956, pp. 112-113, "(no title)" (1 text)
Walter de la Mare, _Come Hither_, revised edition, 1928; #140, "Lavender's Blue" (1 text)
Roud #3483
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Douce Ballads 1(56a), "Diddle, diddle" or "The Kind Country Lovers ("Lavenders green, didle, didle"), F. Coles, T. Vere, J. Wright, and J. Clark (London), 1674-1679
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "My Dog and I" (some verses)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Diddle, Diddle (Or The Kind Country Lovers)
NOTES [313 words]: When I was four years old, I thought this song was stupid. Forty-five years later, I see no reason to change my mind. - PJS
Hard to argue that point based on the versions that I've heard, but the broadside version in the Digital Tradition hints that there is at least a little more going on behind the scenes. Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland explains that the song, "of English origin, is connected with the amusements of Twelfth Night and refers to the choosing of the king and queen of the festivities." Dolby-OrangesAndLemons says that the broadside version, "Diddle, Diddle, Or the Kind Country Lovers," is from the period 1672-1685, and is about a girl named Nell keeping the singer's bed warm.
Nettel, p. 112, also suggests that the song was originally political, although he doesn't state the political context.
The real problem may be that the version most people know comes from a Disney film. According to David A. Jasen, Tin Pan Alley: The Composers, the Songs, the Performers and their Times: The Golden Age of American Popular Music from 1886 to 1956, Primus, 1988, p. 254, the movie "SO DEAR TO MY HEART (1948) included the gem 'Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly),' composed by Eliot Daniel, who took the melody from a seventeenth-century English folk song, with lyrics by Larry Morey. It was sung twice in the film, first by Dinah Shore and later by Burl Ives, and was a hit record for Sammy Turner on Big Top Records in 1959." It was also recorded by Vera Lynn.
Edward Foote Gardner, Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Volume I -- Chart Detail & Encyclopedia 1900-1949, Paragon House, 2000, p. 500, estimates that this rewrite was the twentieth most popular song in America in 1949, peaking at #4 in February 1949 (#1 for the year being Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Some Enchanted Evening"). Whether anyone sings the pre-Disney version any more I don't know. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: FSWB158A

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography