__NOTOC__ "It's Raining, It's Pouring" is an English language

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 ...

and children's song. It has a

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 ...

number of 16814.

Origins

The first two lines of this rhyme can be found in ''The Little Mother Goose'', published in the US in 1912. The melody is associated with A Tisket, A Tasket and

What Are Little Boys Made Of? "What Are Little Boys Made Of?" is a nursery rhyme dating from the early 19th century. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 821. The author of the rhyme is uncertain, but may be English poet Robert Southey (1774–1843). Lyrics Here is a re ...

The earliest known audio recording of the song was made in 1939 in New York by anthropologist and folklorist

Herbert Halpert Herbert Halpert (August 23, 1911 – December 29, 2000) was an American anthropologist and folklorist, specialised in the collection and study of both folk song and narrative. Biography Herbert Norman Halpert's interest in folklore emer ...

and is held in the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

Charles Ives Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed f ...

added musical notes 1939, and a version of it was copyrighted in 1944 by Freda Selicoff. The poem goes as follows: :It's raining, it's pouring, :The old man is snoring, :He bumped his head and went to bed, :And couldn't get up in the morning.

Interpretation

It has been suggested that the verse is a "classic description" of a head injury ("bumped his head"), followed by a lucid interval and an inability to resume normal activity ("didn't get up in the morning"). Andrew Kaye in Essential Neurosurgery suggested that, in regard to the first verse at least, the rhyme is an interpretation of an accidental death ("didn't get up in the morning"; indicating that no attempt or ability to get up was made).

References

{{authority control American nursery rhymes Songs about weather Year of song unknown Songwriter unknown