Kid's Songs, Lullabies and Nursery Rhymes For Your Little Stars

Tweet

Bobby Shafto's gone to sea
Silver buckles on his knee
He'll come back and marry me
Bonnie Bobby Shafto

Bobby Shafto's bright and fair
Combing down his yellow hair
He's my love for ever more
Bonnie Bobby Shafto

Bobby Shafto's tall and thin
Always dressed so neat and trim
All the lassies peek at him
Bonnie Bobby Shafto

---

The earliest printed version of this nursery rhyme dates from 1805.

The rhyme is about Robert Shafto (c. 1730-97), an eighteenth-century British Member of Parliament (MP) for County Durham , and later the borough of Downton in Wiltshire. There is a portrait of Shafto in his home, Whitworth Hall in County Durham, in which he is represented as very young and very handsome with golden hair.

The song tells the story of how he broke the heart of Bridget Belasyse of Brancepeth Castle, County Durham, when he married Anne Duncombe of Duncombe Park in Yorkshire. Bridget Belasyse is said to have died two weeks after hearing the news.

Shafto was a celebrated courtier and a man of fashion in his day and is said to have squandered a good deal of the money that his wife brought to him.

Origins text ©2011 TwinkleTrax Children's Songs.