It's Raining, It's Pouring, The old Man is Snoring
- Deborah Kade
- 12 minutes ago
- 5 min read
The thunderstorm last night cooled the temperature down drastically. Today, however, it is a rainy, cool, damp, and dreary day. Last night, I could see the Mönch and the Jungfrau from the patio. There is hardly any snow atop the mountains. When the sun comes out, I will have to take a picture and compare it to a picture I took last year. Well, the clouds never left the mountains so I will have to wait to take a picture.
My friend Gloria came up with what the red/rust area at the end of the San Francisco Bay was.
"San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds. Famous for their striking, vibrant geometric patchwork of pink, orange, and green colors, these industrial pools harvest sea salt but are actively transitioning back into tidal marshes via the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project." Thanks for the explanation.
It has been raining on and off since last night. It certainly is duck weather!! The rain stops outdoor activity but it is much needed so I'm not complaining.
The trip here to Switzerland was very long and extremely tiring, so I'm staying close to home today.
Lynda, Carolyn, and Keith stopped over for a little while this morning. They are our friends from Preston, England. Lynda's uncle Dave was the first owner of where we are staying. Under his ownership, the bread and breakfast chalet was called Sunny Days. Then, Dave's daughter ran the B&B for a few years. When she sold it to Marc and Thea, the name was changed to Adventure Guesthouse.
My friends have hid ducks all over the Garden House without me noticing. I even found one in my short's pocket. Lynda or Carolyn must have placed it in the pocket when either of them hugged me. I have found five but I now understand there may be more. I have a duck collection and they hid some all over my house when they visited us back in March.
We just had a thunderstorm roll through. Love the sound of the thunder's sound rolling off the mountains.
The nursery rhyme "it's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring" came to mind when I was listening to the rain come down.
"It's Raining, It's Pouring" is an English language nursery rhyme and children's song , seemingly of American origin but later found in the UK. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 16814.
"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. Roud's Index is a combination of the Broadside Index (printed sources before 1900) and a "field-recording index" compiled by Roud. It subsumes all the previous printed sources known to Francis James Child (the Child Ballads) and includes recordings from 1900 to 1975. Until early 2006, the index was available by a CD subscription; now it can be found online on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website, maintained by the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). A partial list is also available at List of folk songs by Roud number."
"The primary function of the Roud Folk Song Index is as a research aid correlating versions of traditional English-language folk song lyrics independently documented over past centuries by many different collectors across (especially) the UK and North America. It is possible by searching the database—for example by title, first line(s), or subject matter (or a combination of any of a dozen fields)—to locate many of the variants of a particular song. Comprehensive details of those songs are then available, including details of the original collected source, and a reference to where to find the text (and possibly music) of the song within a published volume in the EFDSS archive. (The English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS, pronounced 'EFF-diss) is an organization that promotes English folk music and folk dance. EFDSS was formed in 1932 when two organizations merged: the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society. The EFDSS, a member-based organization, was incorporated in 1935 and became a registered charity in 1963.).
A related index, the Roud Broadside Index, includes references to songs which appeared on broadsides and other cheap print publications, up to about 1920. In addition, there are many entries for music hall songs, pre-World War II radio performers' song folios, sheet music, and other sources. The index may be searched by title, first line etc. and the result includes details of the original imprint and where a copy may be located. The Roud number field may be used as a cross-reference to the Roud Folk Song Index itself in order to establish the traditional origin of the work."
The first two lines of the rhyme are found near the start of the 1900s. They appear in a 1909 number of the Princeton University magazine The Outlook as "It's raining - it's pouring - old men are snoring". Then in 1912 the rhyme was recorded in the collection The Little Mother Goose in the form of a couplet,
It's raining, it's pouring,
The old man is snoring.
"The earliest known audio recording of the song was made in 1939 in New York by anthropologist and folklorist Herbert Halpert and is held in the Library of Congress. A musical version of it was copyrighted in 1944 by Freda Selicoff. The melody is the same as "A Tisket, A Tasket" and has been associated with "What Are Little Boys Made Of?", which has a different melody. By this time two more lines had been added about the old man snoring:
He went to bed and bumped his head,
And couldn't get up in the morning."
"The nursery rhyme "It's Raining, It's Pouring" has no deep historical origin. It evolved from a simple 1909 couplet about weather and sleeping. Popular folklore suggests it is a dark cautionary tale about a fatal head injury or heavy drinking, but it was originally just a playful, nonsensical rhyme for children."
"It’s raining, it’s pouring.The old man is snoring.He bumped his head and went to bed,And he couldn’t get up in the morning.
"An old man is napping on a rainy day. He gets up, and in his drowsy state, he hits his head. He then takes himself to bed so he can sleep off his injury. However, he did not wake once morning came. Catchy, concise, and harmless, right? Wrong.
"The nursery rhyme is listed as an example in Andrew Kaye’s Essential Neurosurgery. A section of the medical book discussing “deteriorating conscious state” reads, “This is the most important neurological sign, particularly when it develops after a ‘lucid’ interval. It is essential that the drowsiness that occurs in a patient following head injury is not misinterpreted just as the patient wishing to sleep.”
"In the book, Kaye notes the seemingly innocent rhyme is actually a “classic description of an hematoma [acute hemorrhage] leading to drowsiness and death.”
There is a possibility of thunder showers popping up all week. Who knows then if I will be singing:
Rain, rain, go away
Come again some other day
Rain, rain, go away
Come again some other day.
Staying in Switzerland longer this year. Our dates are August 16th to September 29th. Michael will be working except for two weeks. So, I will be traveling around visiting people and places.
While I took a nap this afternoon, Michael went to the Coop and picked up something for dinner.
We had chicken and a salad. Plus, started eating cheese from our welcome plate.
Love the yogurt here in Switzerland! Michael purchased lemon, vanilla rhubarb (my favorite), pineapple, and cherry. This time of year, the grocery stores will have seasonal choices such as chestnut, grape, blood orange, and hazelnut for example.
Linda T has been wishing for rain back in England, too. Her rain dances haven't been effective so I will end today's writing with a little rain.
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