jenny put the kettle on

here i am to document a song research rabbit-hole. this post is going to have a lot of video embeds and a lot of links. i suggest you get your headphones before you read it. you should watch most of the versions i embed, they're almost all good. some of the other songs i link are also worth it.

today i decided to listen to nora brown's album long time to be gone. i quite like the first song, and while it was playing it occurred to me i could try and cover it. i know it's a clawhammer banjo song, but i figured i could probably work something with my guitar.

nora brown's jenny put the kettle on

i went home and looked it up on ultimate guitar and the only option was jean ritchie's version. it had slightly different lyrics, but this is often the case with folk songs so i thought i'd give it a shot. i tried playing it, and it didn't really sound right. rather than doing the sensible thing (going and listing to jean ritchie's version) i decided to look up nora brown playing it on youtube to see if i could find a guitar version. she's not a super well known artist, so there were only a couple live versions of her with her banjo. there weren't many results that weren't her that had guitar, but i clicked on one of the few that did and gave it a watch.

kitty, daisy, and lewis's polly put the kettle on

this is pretty much the same song, but it's a very different take and has a different name. at this point, i decide to search the song on the wider internet, and make my way to the wikipedia page. wikipedia says polly put the kettle on is an english nusery rhyme, but neither version of the song i've encountered (appalachian-style clawhammer, blues) matches this. at this point i make my way over to the video tab, and find a terrrible thing. you probably don't want to listen to this for very long.

appuseries's polly put the kettle on

this hard to watch but it's definitely the same song, albeit simplified. now we have a new character of sukey as well. shit's getting complicated. if you want another, older, troubling in a different way version of the nursery rhyme here you go.

from here, i look further into versions using the name polly and find my way to dom flemons.

 dom flemons' polly put the kettle on

this is similar to kitty, daisy, and lewis's version and sort of bridges the gap to nora brown in my mind. it's very clearly from tennesse, and i know nora brown is from new york but learns from appalachian musicians. jean ritchie, who i have been ignoring a little too much up to this point is from kentucky. at the start of this video, the singer mentions sonny boy williamson i and that's where i go next.

 sonny boy williamson i's polly put your kettle on

sonny boy williamson i is from tennesse. clear heritage here. that's useful. looking at his wikipedia, i learn that he pioneered the blues harp as a solo instrument. that's cool. i think it's time to finally go back to jean ritchie.

 jean ritchie's jenny, put the kettle on

i was very surprised to find the recording was only 23 seconds, and when i listened something clicked. this is the nursery rhyme. there is a connection. but we still have a bluesy version unaccounted for, and i want to know more about how it got from england to the united states.

back to wikipedia! i really was all over the place. wikipedia answers my name questions (sukey is susan, polly is mary, molly isn't to far off, idrc about jenny people love to change names). it also gives me a few leads: a strongly related tune known as jenny's baubie and a loosely related melody known as o du lieber augustin. i look up jenny's baubie and find a few fiddle players, a bagpiper, and a scottish folk dance society. i assume the different spellings are different ways of phoneticising an accented pronunciation of baby.

berkhamsted strathspey and reel club's jenny's bawbee

 

i give up on this lead and head to the mainstay of anyone doing research on folk music, the beautiful mudcat.org. i want more details. the first thread i find has an interesting allusion to the song being sung in british columbia in 1861, but no further details. i love mudcat, because people will just name random people as sources and i have no clue who they are.

the second thread i find has a lot more information. it gives me another alternate spelling (jinny) and through this a find a loc recording even more firmly linking the song to jenny's bawbie. this thread also mentions o du lieber augustin, and i give a few versions a listen. this vocal performance doesn't sound quite right, but this orchestral one does. mudcat claims that dickens may be responsible for the change from molly to polly via the raven grip in barnaby rudge. they also say jrr tolkein used the tune to make a song arguing for philology in literature. cool random facts.

they go back and forth on if it was scottish first or english first. given that i'm disinclined to trust english nationalists about scotland, i'm gonna go with it being from scotland in 1778. they also correct my notion about babies, and inform me that a bawbee was a scottish coin worth half an english penny. references to the german predecessor continue (apparently the beatles played it), as well as the children's songs the more we are together and did you ever see a lassie which i'm sure you've heard. lastly, it mentions a song called old molly hare. this sounds pretty similar, but definitely has some embellishment.

all the predecessors are in waltz time (3/4) but jenny is in reel time (4/4). no one knows when the change occurred. my last bit of info from mudcat is that leadbelly's song ha ha this a way has a similar tune, but this is really just an excuse for me to listen to leadbelly.

casting out again, i make my way to a page calling it jenny hang the kettle on, that corroborates wikipedia's references. i find a reference to another name, bring me a bottle. the leake county revellers have a version of this, and it pretty much sounds the same as jenny.

that's pretty much it. i know a lot more than i did at the start, but i don't have any answers for the migration of the song to the US or when the melody changed from 3/4 to 4/4. i also don't know how to play it on guitar. my fiddle has a broken string and i couldn't play it if it didn't. guess that's all there is. sometimes folk music is just like that. good song. i'll leave you with a couple more versions.

virgil anderson's jenny hang the kettle on

the skillet lickers' molly put the kettle on

 

i'm worried i need a banjo.