Melody
A melody is recorded for "London Bridge" in an edition of John Playford's The Dancing Master published in 1718, but it differs from the modern tune and no lyrics were given. An issue of Blackwood's Magazine in 1821 noted the rhyme as a being sung to the tune of "Nancy Dawson", now better known as "Nuts in May" and the same tune was given in Richard Thompson's Chronicles of London Bridge (1827). Another tune was recorded in Samuel Arnold's Juvenile Amusements in 1797. E. F. Rimbault's Nursery Rhymes (1836) has the same first line, but then a different tune. The tune now associated with the rhyme was first recorded in 1879 in the US in A. H. Rosewig's Illustrated National Songs and Games.
Read more about this topic: London Bridge Is Falling Down
Famous quotes containing the word melody:
“Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“The song is ended, but the melody lingers on.”
—Irving Berlin (1888–1989)
“Hetty [Burney’s sister] set down to the harpsichord and sung ... we departed this life of anguish and misery, and rested our weary souls in the Elysian field—my papa’s study—there, freed from the noise and bustle of the world enjoyed the harmony of chattering—and the melody of music!”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)