Frog Went A-Courting

"Frog Went A-Courtin'"
Roud #16
Song
English title	The Toads Courtship
Written	Scotland
Published	1548
Form	Nursery rhyme
Writer(s)	Traditional
Language	English

"Frog Went A-Courtin'" (Roud 16, see alternative titles) is an English language folk song. Its first known appearance is in Wedderburn's Complaynt of Scotland (1548) under the name "The frog came 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.

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. (pp. 524–532) constitute probably the best succinct summary available on variants of this piece.

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 (1611, in Melismata, also reprinted in Chappell) 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 (New World Records 239, 1977), 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.

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