A Tune From 1894!

Max likes for me to sing to him!

Quite often I sing to myself and Max as we are driving on our trips. We were boondocking in New Mexico somewhere of of New Mexico highway 64. I started singing the song "Playmate, Come Out And Play With Me". Max jumped into may lap. Every time I stopped singing, he would make a little begging motion with his front paws. I'm lucky to have a traveling companion with such good musical taste!

This song has been around a long time! It was a big hit for Philip Wingate and Henry W. Petrie in in 1894! The name of the tune is "Playmate", or sometimes "You Can't Play In My Yard". Here are the original words to the first verse:

Say, say, oh playmate,
Come out and play with me
And bring your dollies three,
Climb up my apple tree.
Shout down my rain barrel,
Slide down my cellar door,
And we'll be jolly friends forevermore.

Today's kids, raised on TV and video games, would probably not have the faintest idea about why it was fun to shout down a rain barrel. In fact, they probably have never seen a rain barrel, nor a cellar door, let alone the sloping door that was common in the late 1800's.

According to , Geoff Nunberg, a contributor to the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania's blog, Language Log,  “slide down my cellar door” became a kind of catchphrase to suggest innocent friendship. (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11136)

The song saw a revival of popularity in the 40's and even contemporary musicians such as Willie Nelson have recorded versions of the tune.

Here is my take on the tune.

Jim