Lavender's Blue: A directed walk through musical history with youtube as our lens
In this post, I'll take a fun walk through youtube to look at one tiny facet of music history and popular culture. I hope you enjoy it, too!
It all started a couple weeks ago, when @cmp2020 asked me, "What does 'dilly dilly' mean?" I responded that I know people have been using the phrase recently, but I have no idea what it means or why they'd been saying it. The only time I had heard the phrase was when I was a very young child. My mother and my grandfather used to sing a song that contained the phrase to me called, "Lavender Blue."
So of course, having remembered a song that I hadn't heard for 40-some years, I had to go see if I could find it on youtube. The first one I clicked on was this 1959 version by Sammy Turner:
It was obviously the same song that I remembered, but with more of a do-wop/Motown sound than the one I was looking for. So, on to the next, by Burl Ives:
And that was it. That was the song I remembered from my childhood. However, this brought a new mystery. What style of music is this? @cmp2020 thought maybe folk, but I wasn't so sure. And of course this did nothing to explain why people are running around saying "dilly dilly" in 2018. Maybe it has nothing to do with this song?
Not so fast, though. It turns out that Disney's 2015 Cinderella sound track included a pop/electronic sounding version of Lavender's Blue:
Nice to hear that the song made a come back, but disappointing to learn that Disney had butchered the title and the lyrics - or so I thought.
That's where things stood for a few days. We had been listening to the Burl Ives version a lot on blue tooth in the car, and talking about whether it was folk music or classical or some other style, when finally @cmp2020 looked it up on wikipedia. And that's where things got really surprising.
- First surprise, the title really is, "Lavender's Blue." Cinderella got it right and Burl Ives got it wrong.
- Second surprise, the song is well over three hundred years old. Historically, it was an English folk song and nursery rhyme.
- Third surprise, the Burl Ives version also came from a Disney Movie - So Dear to My Heart
- Fourth surprise, the modern Disney Lyrics are closer to the historical lyrics than the Burl Ives lyrics. Wikipedia gives us the lyrics from 1849:
Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green,
When I am king, dilly dilly, you shall be queen:
Who told you so, dilly dilly, who told you so?
'Twas mine own heart, dilly dilly, that told me so.
Call up your men, dilly dilly, set them to work,
Some with a rake, dilly dilly, some with a fork;
Some to make hay, dilly dilly, some to thresh corn,
Whilst you and I, dilly dilly, keep ourselves warm.
If you should die, dilly dilly, as it may hap,
You shall be buried, dilly dilly, under the tap;
Who told you so, dilly dilly, pray tell me why?
That you might drink, dilly dilly, when you are dry.
So of course, now we had to hear an actual folk version, and Youtube didn't disappoint. Here is a version by Jackie Oates:
So the only thing left to ask was, who else has recorded this song?
How 'bout Michael Jackson?
How 'bout Dinah Shore?
How 'bout Britney Spears as a young girl?
After all that, I still have no idea what "dilly dilly" means, and despite the wrong lyrics and the wrong title, my favorite version is still the one by Burl Ives. Which one is your favorite?
As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".
Thank you for your time and attention.
According to Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender%27s_Blue) "dilly dilly" is no more than a variant of what was once "diddle diddle" - in other words it doesn't really seem to mean anything. We also learn that when first printed it was "to be sung to the tune of Lavender Green", so that must have been an older version of the lyric. All very strange since in my experience lavender is neither blue nor green but kind of ... lavender. Amazing how bulletproof these really old songs are - one reason they've survived all this time is that you can do just about anything to them and always they live to fight another day. Fun post - thank you.
Ah, I should have read wikipedia more carefully. From the same wiki page, here's why people are running around saying it in 2018.
I've honestly never heard of the words 'dilly dilly' , except in that nursery rhyme. But it was funny to see all the performances of it!
I heard someone use the phrase 'dilly dilly' in a crowd during post-game news coverage of the Superbowl (American football championship game) in January. I just assumed it was a meaningless celebratory exclamation and didn't give it much attention at the time, though.
I think Michael Jackson was my biggest surprise in the videos.