Origins and Interpretations
The final verse may be intended as a math puzzle, or it may be a humorous indication that the woman is considerably older than the protestation of her youth in the refrain seems to indicate. While the tone of the nursery rhyme is ironic and teasing, both the question and answer form and the narrative of the song have been related to Lord Randall, a murder ballad from the British Isles. In Lord Randall, the suitor is poisoned by the woman he visits.
By contrast, Robin Fox uses the song to make a point about cooking and courtship, and observes that:
- Feeding has always been closely linked with courtship. . . With humans this works two ways since we are the only animals who cook: the bride is usually appraised for her cooking ability. (“Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy boy, Billy boy?”) In some cultures this is far more important than her virginity.
Read more about this topic: Billy Boy
Famous quotes containing the words origins and and/or origins:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)