"Ladybird! Ladybird!" is the first line of an

English-language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

nursery rhyme A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes. From t ...

that also has German analogues. It is included in the

Roud Folk Song Index The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London ...

as number of 16215.

The rhyme

This traditional verse relates to

ladybirds Coccinellidae () is a widespread family of small beetles ranging in size from . They are commonly known as ladybugs in North America and ladybirds in Great Britain. Some entomologists prefer the names ladybird beetles or lady beetles as they ...

, brightly coloured insects commonly viewed as lucky. The English version has been dated to at least 1744, when it appeared in '' Tommy Thumb's Pretty Songbook'' Vol. 2. The verse has several popular forms, including: :Ladybird, ladybird fly away home, :Your house is on fire and your children are gone, :All except one, and her name is Ann, :And she hid under the baking pan. A shorter, grimmer version concludes: :Your house is on fire, :Your children shall burn! The child who hides may also be named ''Nan'', ''Anne'' and ''Little Anne'' and she has hidden under a "warming pan", "porridge pan", "frying pan" or even a "pudding pan". Alternatively, her name may be ''Aileen'' and her hiding place a "soup tureen". A widely varying Peterborough version makes the remaining child a boy: :Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, / Your horse is on foot, your children are gone; :All but one, and that's little John, / And he lies under the grindle stone.

Insect names

The insect goes by a variety of other names in British dialect rhymes. One Yorkshire version recorded in 1842 begins “Ladycow, Ladycow, ply thy way home”, while Charlotte Brontë calls it a “lady-clock”. In Scotland a rhyme from the same period is recorded as ::Dowdy-cow, dowdy-cow, ride away heame, ::Thy house is burnt, and thy bairns are tean. American names include “ladybug”, first recorded in 1699, although the equivalent rhyme is not mentioned until the 19th century, as in '' The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876). Also in the USA, doodlebugs are substituted for ladybugs and are exhorted to “Come out of your hole”. The name ladybird contains a reference to

Mary, mother of Jesus Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jews, Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Jose ...

, often referred to as Our Lady, a convention that occurs in other European cultures where the insect is similarly addressed. In Germany it is the Marienkäfer, where a nursery rhyme runs “Marybug, fly away, your house is on fire, your wee mother weeps” (''Marienkäferchen, fliege weg! Dein Haüschen brennt, Dein Mutterchen flennt''). In a similar rhyme it is addressed as Himmelsküchlichen: “Sky-winger, fly away, your house is in flames, your children together in tears” (''Deiner Kinder weinen alle miteinander''). In Sweden the religious connection was maintained by calling the insect Jungfru Marias Nyckelpiga (Virgin Mary’s keyholder), but with a slightly different rhyme.

Adult's and children's lore

Because of the religious connotation of such names, one speculation would date the rhyme back to the 16th century and have it sung as a warning at a time when there was legislation against Catholics. Another connects it with a story that after prayers for help Our Lady brought the insect to destroy a plague of plant-destroying pests. According to other lore, farmers recite the rhyme to save the insects who do them this service before setting fire to stubble fields. Among children, it is common to place the ladybird on their hand or blow it from their clothing and make a wish while reciting the rhyme. A literary variation on the rhyme was written by Mrs Southey early in the 19th century and appeared in an 1827 issue of Blackwood's Magazine. This was a poem beginning ::Lady-bird, Lady-bird, fly away home, ::The field mouse is gone to her nest, ::The daisies have shut up their sleepy red eyes ::And the birds and the bees are at rest and continuing with much the same formula and similar natural details for a further eight stanzas. The poem, or excerpted stanzas from it, went on to appear in various publications through the next century and beyond. One stanza was also included at the head of an unpublished poem by

Emily Brontë Emily Jane Brontë (, commonly ; 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, ''Wuthering Heights'', now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poet ...

on a completely different subject.''The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë'', poem XLVII, dating from 1838
p.291
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Bibliography

* I. Opie and P. Opie, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes'' (Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 1997), pp. 308–310

References

{{authority control 1744 songs English nursery rhymes German nursery rhymes Coccinellidae Songwriter unknown English folk songs German folk songs English children's songs German children's songs Traditional children's songs Songs about insects de:Marienkäfer#Marienkäfer in der Dichtung