Talk:The Farmer in the Dell

Why
Why does the cow take the dog? What is a cow going to do with a dog? The rest of the choices make sense, but this one baffles me.

What is the dell?

I would also like to know what is the dell?


 * It appears to already be on Wikipedia: Dell (landform) Mscudder 22:43, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

If the cheese is taken by the rat, how can it be standing alone? --Nuffle 15:01, 15 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The article's description does not match my single experience as a 5-year-old in 1957. After each child took an additional child in, the taking child exited the middle and rejoined the circle, so the circle always remained.  Then the cheese is alone in the middle (with no one lower in the hierarchy to take).  The present description implies that you can have 8 children "inside" a "circle" of 1 or 2 children, which seems an unlikely way to do it.  (And, as you said, the cheese isn't alone, unless they leave the cheese out as a circle of one and there happens to be exactly the right number of children.)  --DanwWiki2 (talk) 17:58, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

What is the significance of the cheese standing alone? Does it have any kind of meaning? I hadn't thought about this song in years, but I just started singing "The cheese stands alone" in my head and it's bothering me! Jhayes94 23:21, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Why? Missing verses! After the rat takes the cheese (with all of those characters in the middle of the circle), the next verse is "the Farmer runs away" (leaves the center of the circle, and breaks through the circle to stand outside it), followed by "the wife runs away", "the child runs away", and so on. Note that with the exception of the farmer, all of the characters were TAKEN in, so no self-locomotion needed to be assumed. The cheese, having no legs, cannot "run away"; therefore, it "stands alone".

194.106.43.222 (talk) 09:09, 3 October 2009 (UTC)When I played this game as a child in Lanarkshire, Scotland in the 1950s we sang 'Hey Ho my Daddy-o' in place of 'Ee, I, addio'(Jim Scott).

Circle Game Plagarism?
The circle game paragraph appears to be from: http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/farmer.htm. I think it should be deleted, or at least cited properly. --BekiB 20:28, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Quite Enough Vandalism, Please.
Please stop vandalizing this page. It is not really that funny and other people will have to clean up after your mess. Thanks. 69.61.203.194 (talk) 19:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Dell or Dale
Why is the title "Farmer in the Dell", while throughout the article it's "in the Dale"? On Google hits, "Farmer in the Dell" beats "Farmer in the Dale" by about 350:1 Rojomoke (talk) 08:44, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Surely the line should be, “The farmer’s in the dell” with the “is”, rather than the less appropriate, “The farmer in the dell”? It also should be noted that the traditional British version seems to be “the farmer’s in his den”… Jock123 (talk) 18:54, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Pop Culture
This was also referenced in the first episode of the 3rd season of The Big Bang Theory. 24.176.137.124 (talk) 20:58, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * and in the wire, first season, episode 5--91.97.80.218 (talk) 12:54, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Just heard this on television
On Saturday morning, December 5, 2009 on the Turner Classic Movie Channel (TCM), the last few minutes of a showing had children in the middle of the street in New York singing this song, dancing in a circle around one child. I was taken aback because I thought I heard the children singing "The Farmer kills the wife"; "The wife kills the child", and so on. This might be what they were singing, or I might have heard it wrong. It very well could be what they were singing, since the movie involves a man murdering his wife when he catches her in an adulterous act with the milkman.

I came here to find the lyrics of the song, as I do not remember singing it that way as a child. I think we used "The farmer takes a wife" and so forth. I grew up in Virginia, born in 1960. As a child, this is one of the games that we played in a skipping around circle with one child in the center. I also believe that we would trade out the middle child with each verse. There were six kids in my family, and lots of neighborhood children who would gather daily, as we would entertain ourselves with skip rope jingles, string games, jacks, hand clapping songs and team games. We were very familiar with Mother Goose nursery rhymes; silly tricks and practical jokes were common amongst us.

I went to Turner Classic Movie's website, and found the title of that movie to be "Street Scene". A synopsis of the movie can be found online at http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=91708. This webpage indicates that this movie is not yet available on home video; perhaps it could still be considered a viable documentation source.

I hope you found this interesting to consider. RiverWader (talk) 16:31, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Wedding tradition
There's nothing here about the origins of the wedding tradition of the bride and groom feeding each other wedding cake while the guests sing a verse of this song using the lyrics "the bride/groom feeds the groom/bride." Does anyone know about this?76.210.251.172 (talk) 06:44, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

"Derry-o"?
I learned it as "Hie-Ho, the Merry-O".

Could have been changed to "Dairy-O"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 00:48, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Have also heard "Hie-Ho, the Merry-O". Also "Hie-Ho, the Cherry-O"!  (talk) 19:22, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Farmer in the Dell.
Movie. ‘Street Scene’. 1931 The farmer kills the wife. The wife kills the child. The child kills the nurse. The nurse kills The dog. Hi Ho the derry-o. Is this the original version ? 2600:1017:B12B:17E2:E854:8C30:89FA:665 (talk) 05:19, 25 November 2021 (UTC)