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There Was An Old Woman Tossed Up In A Basket
All Instruments and Vocals: Douglas Milne
From the TwinkleTrax album "Vol. 1: A Sailor Went To Sea - 20 Favourite Nursery Rhymes and Kid's Songs"
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Check out this other version of this classic Nursery Rhyme:
There was an old woman tossed up in a basket
Seventeen times as high as the moon.
Where she was going I couldn't but ask it,
For in her hand she carried a broom.
"Old woman, old woman, old woman," quoth I,
"Where are you going to up so high?"
"To brush the cobwebs out of the sky,"
"May I come with you?"
"Aye, By and by."
Seventeen times as high as the moon.
Where she was going I couldn't but ask it,
For in her hand she carried a broom.
"Old woman, old woman, old woman," quoth I,
"Where are you going to up so high?"
"To brush the cobwebs out of the sky,"
"May I come with you?"
"Aye, By and by."
The earliest known publication of this nonsense rhyme was in the preface to the earliest anthology, "Mother Goose's Melody; or Sonnets for the Cradle" (compiled around 1765, published 1780), with an elaborate mock interpretation connecting it to Henry V's French campaigns.
It is sung to the melody of Henry Purcell's 1689 tune "Lilliburlero". The first appearance of this tune, adopted by Purcell, seems to be in a collection published in London in 1661 entitled 'An Antidote Against Melancholy'.
Origins text ©2011 TwinkleTrax Children's Songs.