Rock-a-bye Baby

1765. version:
Hush-a-by baby
On the tree top,
When the wind blows
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall,
And down will fall baby
Cradle and all

“The Real Mother Goose” version from 1916:
Rock-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green;
Father’s a nobleman, mother’s a queen;
And Betty’s a lady, and wears a gold ring;
And Johnny’s a drummer, and drums for the king.
 

The First Poem

The most widely accepted explanation of this rhyme is that it may describe the way some Native American mothers soothed their babies. Infants were sometimes placed in cradle boards made of birch bark and hung from low branches where the breeze could gently rock them to sleep. If true, this would make “Rock-a-bye Baby” one of the earliest poems written or recorded in America, reaching back to the seventeenth century.

Luke and his Family

Another theory comes from Derbyshire, England. According to local legend, there once lived a charcoal burner named Luke who raised his family — including eight children — inside a hollowed-out two-thousand-year-old yew tree. A branch of the tree was fashioned into a cradle, giving the rhyme a more literal (and slightly unbelievable) origin story.

Heir to the Throne

A third interpretation connects the rhyme to the political tension surrounding the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In this reading, the baby represents the son of King James II — the heir many believed was secretly smuggled into the birth chamber to secure a Catholic succession. The “wind” would then symbolize the rising Protestant forces from the Netherlands, and the “fall” the loss of power and eventual exile of James.