I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard

DESCRIPTION: Two girls were neighbors and close friends until "one day a quarrel came." The one tells the other "You can't play in our yard;" the other replies, "I don't want to play in your yard"; she will be sorry for all the fun she misses. Then they make up
AUTHOR: Words: Philip Wingate / Music: H. W. Petrie
EARLIEST DATE: 1894 (sheet music by Petrie Music Company)
KEYWORDS: youth fight
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
List-SingingAboutIt-FolkSongsInSouthernIndiana, pp. 92-94, "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard" (1 text, 1 tune, plus a copy of the sheet music on pp. 96-98)
Spaeth-WeepSomeMoreMyLady, pp. 254-256, "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Robert A. Fremont, editor, _Favorite Songs of the Nineties_, Dover Publications, 1973, pp. 132-135, "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard" (1 text, 1 tune, the 1894 sheet music)
Margaret Bradford Boni, editor, _Songs of the Gilded Age_, with piano arrangements by Norman Lloyd and illustrations by Lucille Corcos, Golden Press, 1960, pp. 122-124, "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard" (1 text, 1 tune)

Roud #16802
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "See, See, My Playmate" (theme, lyrics)
NOTES [37 words]: Reported by Spaeth to be "the most popular child's song of the [1890s]" other than the works of Charles K. Harris. It doesn't strike me as something children would sing, though; it's what adults think children would sing. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.3
File: SWM254

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

The Ballad Index Copyright 2024 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.