Frog Went a-Courting


"Frog Went a-Courtin is an English-language folk song. Its first known appearance is in Wedderburn's Complaynt of Scotland under the name "The Frog cam to the Myl dur", though this is in Scots rather than English. There is a reference in the London Company of Stationers' Register of 1580 to "A Moste Strange Weddinge of the Frogge and the Mouse." There are many texts of the ballad; however the oldest known musical version is in Thomas Ravenscroft's Melismata in 1611.

Summary

Frog rides to ask Miss Mouse to marry him. She is willing but must ask permission of Uncle Rat. In other versions such as "King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O" by Chubby Parker, Frog fights and kills Miss Mouse's other suitors after they interrupt his proposal. Uncle Rat's permission received, the two work out details of the wedding. Some versions end with a cat, snake or other creature devouring the couple and wedding guests. Sometimes Frog gets away, but is later swallowed by a duck. See "" at Wikisource for one version of the lyrics.
Usually, the final verse states that there's a piece of food on the shelf, and that if the listener wants to hear more verses, they have to sing it themselves.
The notes on this song in Cazden et al. constitute probably the best succinct summary available on variants of this piece.

Origin

Spaeth has a note claiming that the original version of this was supposed to refer to François, Duke of Anjou's wooing of Elizabeth I of England; however, this was in 1579 and the original Scottish version was already published. If the second known version were the oldest, this might be possible — there are seeming political references to "Gib, our cat" and "Dick, our Drake." But the Wedderburn text, which at least anticipates the song, predates the reign of Queen Elizabeth by nine years, and Queen Mary by four. If it refers to any queen at all, it would seemingly have to be Mary Stuart. Evelyn K. Wells, however, in the liner notes to the LP Brave Boys; New England traditions in folk music, suggests that the original may have been satirically altered in 1580 when it was recorded in the register of the London Company of Stationers, as this would have been at the height of the unpopular courtship.
According to Albert Jack in his book "Pop Goes the Weasel, The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes", the earliest known version of the song was published in 1549 as "The Frog Came to the Myl Dur" in Robert Wedderburn's "Complaynt of Scotland". He states that in 1547 the Scottish Queen Consort, Mary of Guise, under attack from Henry VIII, sought to marry her daughter Princess Mary, "Miss Mouse" to the three-year old French Prince Louis, the "frog". The song resurfaced a few years later, with changes, when another French wooing caused concern—that of the Duke of Anjou and Queen Elizabeth I in 1579. Elizabeth even nicknamed Anjou, her favorite suitor, "the frog".
Another theory traces the song to Suffolk: "Roley, Poley, Gammon and Spinach" refer to four families of Suffolk notables, Rowley, Poley, Bacon and Green.

Popular culture

The song has been heard by many people in the 1955 Tom and Jerry cartoon Pecos Pest, which uses a version arranged and performed by Shug Fisher, in character as "Uncle Pecos." In Pecos Pest, Jerry's Uncle Pecos stays with him while getting ready for a television appearance, and continues to pluck Tom's whiskers to use as guitar strings throughout the cartoon. It is an improvised version with many lyrics that are unintelligible, and many changed. For example, he stutters and gives up when he tries to say "hickory tree" and says "way down yonder by the...", stammers out the names of several types of trees, finally settling on "eucalyptus". He also mentions while continuing the music "That's the hard part right in there, n-n-n-n-nephew!" and "there's a yodel in thar somewhar, but it's a little too high f'r me."
Some refer to this song as "Crambone", as it is repeated at the end of many lines and said more clearly than the other words in this version. For example, the line is "Froggie went a-courtin' he did ride/Crambone". Fisher, in character as Pecos, delivers the coda with a glottal stutter on the letter c. Woody Guthrie's version used "Hey-hey", and Bob Dylan's version used "uh-huh" in the same way after several lines.
Other examples in film and TV include:
The song has been recorded by Almeda Riddle, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and many others. Folk singer Burl Ives performed perhaps the most well-known and kid-friendly version, in which Frog and Miss Mousie are wed.