Boys and Girls Come Out to Play

DESCRIPTION: "Boys and girls come out to play, The moon doth shine as bright as day. Leave your supper and leave your sheep... Come with a good will or not at all... A halfpenny loaf will serve us all... And we'll have a pudding in half an hour."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1744 (Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book)
KEYWORDS: work nonballad playparty
FOUND IN: US(NE)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Flanders/Brown-VermontFolkSongsAndBallads, p. 187, "An English Round" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 75, "Boys and GIrls Come Out to Play" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #17, p. 34, "(Girls and Boys)"
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 23, "Boys and Girls, Come Out to Play" (1 text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 121, "Boys and Girls Come Out to Play" (1 text)
ST FlBr187 (Full)
Roud #5452
NOTES [94 words]: The first line of this occurs in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, Volume II (1744?), and the Tommy Thumb text occurs in various texts of the period (see Opie-Oxford 75); this may explain why Flanders and Brown call this "An English Round," but I know of no English collections of the actual form in Flanders/Brown-VermontFolkSongsAndBallads, which proceeds "Boys and girls come out to play, You must have a holiday. Heigh-o, heigh-o, have a holiday." "If you want hay sweet and fine, Rake it when the sun doth shine. Heigh-o, heigh-o, when the sun doth shine.". - RBW
Last updated in version 3.3
File: FlBr187

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