Talk:There's a Hole in My Bucket

I just stumbled upon this page, and it was in rather bad shape. The most important thing that needs to be done is more cross-linkage to songs in this genre, along with some cleanup up the format and presentation of the page. Rctbone 01:22, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I have cleaned up the formatting somewhat and drawn attention to the apparent lack of sense in the song. 10 April 2006. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.235.2.82 (talk • contribs) 10 April 2006

The song refers not to "a straw", but rather "straw" the coarse grass used for livestock bedding. By packing the hole with straw cut slightly longer than the thickness of the wooden staves of the bucket and filling the bucket with water, the fiberous straw will swell and seal the leak. b.hinson 04 April 2006 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.132.225.130 (talk • contribs) 20 April 2006

I reckon this is one of those so-called Mandela moments for me. When I was in elementary school in 1960's Kentucky, the interlocutors were Dear Liza and Willie, You Silly. We whet the knife with a stone and wet the stone with water. I had no idea the song went all the way back to 1700's Germany! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.130.61.234 (talk) 19:19, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Context
Who originally wrote the song (and when, and where?) Who sang it? 217.155.20.163 00:03, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It's an American Traditional childrens song, notably recorded by Pete Seeger and I think Harry Belafonte or Burl Ives (or both) had a hit record with it in the early 60's. Vera, Chuck &amp; Dave 23:03, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Can i use it without paying? Is it still within copyright and that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.63.48.253 (talk) 15:50, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

It should be public domain, unless they added a lot of original material to their version. You wouldn't have to pay royalties on "Barbra Allen," for example. (Right? I'm not a music lawyer by any means, but since the original composer's unknown I'm fairly sure on this.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.0.62.91 (talk) 14:25, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The song is a traditional German song. The English language version may perhaps have developed in America.  I don't think it can be called American Traditional.

Why is this well-known song compared with an obscure song "Found a Peanut"? - that is only known in the USA.203.184.41.226 (talk) 07:50, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately your above comment doesn't represent reality. Found A Peanut is not an obscure song. It is obscure in certain locations of America, but certainly not obscure in the strictest sense of the word. In other words, you should not assume that a song is obscure, simply because it is obscure in your localized environment or personal experience. It certainly was not obscure on my school bus growing up as a child. I had never heard of There's A Hole In My Bucket until adulthood, but since I love to annoy, I would have loved to have known it as a child. Maybe that's because there aren't a whole lot of Pennsylvania Dutch in the deep south, but whatever. 107.147.68.11 (talk) 16:43, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

There's a hole in my bucket.
Okay, my 85 year old grnadmother gave me a CD that held many songs on it.She told me to listne to the songs she listened to when she was young,one of these songs was "Theres a hole in my bucket" So i stumbled on to this page and i searched more about why the song was made and translated by other songs and languages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.9.168.182 (talk) 22:21, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Harry Belafonte and Odetta Holmes performed this song in 1960 - you can find a recording on youtube. However, when I was boy in the 1950s and being taken to pantomimes I heard a version of the song on stage. I cannot remember which pantomime but I remember hearing Belafonte and Holmes singing it on the radio some years later and thinking that they had changed the names of the two characters and some of the words. No doubt the pantomime version had been anglicised. John Hastings — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.4.254.137 (talk) 18:50, 13 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Belafonte and Odetta performed this on May 2, 1960, in Carnegie Hall. It became track 9 on his live double album Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall (entirely recorded that day). This YouTube of their duet is from a year earlier, a 1959 TV show "Tonight With Belafonte". – •Raven .talk 10:10, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Flanders and Swann
There's also Flanders and Swann's parody. Marnanel (talk) 05:27, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The link is dead and the filename and_hole.html suggests nothing to me, but I am reminded of another song by F&S: my gas wasn't working so I called a gasman, who "tore out all the skirting-boards to try and find the main" so I called a carpenter, who nailed through a power cable so I called an electrician, who broke a window so I called a glazier, and then the wall needed repainting so I called a painter, who painted over the gas valve. —Tamfang (talk) 18:03, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Hole in the bucket 2010 version
A new Children's music group named AJ and the Flip Flops has remade this song and it is really really good. I'm a huge fan of the original song and this version has pretty much stayed true to the original concept with also spicing it up and making it new. Unlike the 1994 release by spearhead which basically just puts the chorus into their song (which I like by the way). The new version it in a upbeat bluegrass style that really rocks. If you like this song then you have to check it out. I originally found them on facebook and at the time their website said under construction but it may be up by the time some of you read this. www.ajandtheflipflops.com

-wonkaba (pat) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wonkaba (talk • contribs) 17:23, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

pocket version
I heard a pop song/monologue about twenty years ago with a similar theme – and the refrain "There's a hole in my pocket, dear Liza, dear Liza" – but a different meter. The narrator goes to buy thread to sew up the hole in his pocket; on the way, he reaches into his pocket to give a coin to a beggar, but the pocket is empty because of the hole, "and then I remembered why I needed thread." Worth mentioning, I think, if someone knows who recorded it. —Tamfang (talk) 00:37, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I've heard that somewhere before too I think. It might be a reinterpretation of the song...e.g. changing the straw to a rope as mentioned below, or in this case changing the bucket to a pocket... 107.147.68.11 (talk) 16:50, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I believe you are talking about the version by Spearhead, from their album [|Home] in 1994. The title is still "Hole in the Bucket" and the lines "hole in the bucket, dear Liza, Dear Liza" is still the chorus. But you are correct that the verses describe a man who grapples with giving his change to a beggar and then when he finally decides to give money, he realizes the whole point of his errand was to mend a hole in his pocket, and his own money is now gone. Wikiwikitimbo (talk) 18:20, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Kojak
This was added and deleted:


 * The reggae artist Nigger Kojak and his partner Liza recorded a version of There's A Hole in My Bucket in 1978 for producer Joe Gibbs. It was released on the same rhythm track as Dennis Brown's "Ain't That Loving You" on the Joe Gibbs label.

It appears to be genuine, for whatever that's worth. —Tamfang (talk) 22:27, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Lyrics
I learned it as a child with the characters Liza and Georgie. Also, they used a rope, not straw, in my version. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.112.163.85 (talk) 20:11, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Probably just a reinterpretation... we cannot use unaccredited plausible reinterpretations in the article without any reliable sourcing, sorry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.147.68.11 (talk) 16:52, 27 October 2014 (UTC) I learned it also with an axe, not a knife. And the to sharpen it, she ends the third time saying "Hone it". That makes sense since it will be on a stone.
 * Interesting. I'd love to find my old music book because it absolutely did not use Henry. It was Liza and Johnny... so dear Johnny, dear Johnny. It also used a knife as opposed to an axe. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:47, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

The version we sang involved Liza and Henry, and used a knife not an axe, and straw not a rope. Mhkay (talk) 18:57, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Simpsons Hole-In-The-Bucket
I noticed that my revision including the Bart Simpson variation was removed. Perhaps I forgot to include references to this variant, other than to the quoted book, itself. Can anyone shed light on why it was removed? (Michael Bednarek?) Here are some online sources mentioning it: http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?p=970982 http://www.gaiaonline.com/journal/?mode=view&post_id=5568049&u=1447436 http://www.gpforums.co.nz/threads/132039-Best-Looker-s Dmutters (talk) 17:04, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The sources you you quote fail Wikipedia's standard for reliable sources. I might have been less inclined to remove those lyrics if a link for Bart Simpson's Guide to Life had been provided. Still, it's not clear that the Simpsons' version is notable enough to be included – it would need some reliable sources that show a significant coverage. This article suffers already from uncited tidbits, including for the text itself; it doesn't improve by adding more. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:21, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Melody
There's probably no definitive answer to this, but the way we sang this as children, the note on "There's" (both occasions) was a G rather than an A. Mhkay (talk) 18:55, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

FWIW...
The 'plot' does not start through Henry complaining that he has a hole in 'his' bucket.

Liza tells Henry to go and 'fetch some water', which is also historically accurate for the provenance of the song, an era before domestic plumbing was common, and water was sourced from a well or village pump, even a stream.

Henry says he can't fetch any water for Liza because there is a hole in THE (not 'his') bucket. Henry wants nothing to do with buckets.

And so the dialogue progresses.

It is a comic scenario of ancient lineage: busy wife with lazy husband, a man who can invent a dozen excuses for not getting up off his keister and getting to work.

There remains the mystery (for us today) of how to fix a hole in a wooden bucket with a heap of straw, and the confusion for many between 'wet' and 'whet' (he needs to wet the stone so he can whet the axe).

FWIW: If Henry cut and laid a 'mat' of straw on the bottom of the bucket, it would absorb some of the water, swell, and form a reasonably water-tight barrier over the hole. This would last until he brought home a bucketful. This is a quick-fix well known in the sailing vessel era as 'fothering.' If a wooden hull was holed by a rock, coral reef, or cannon-shot, it was covered with a sail filled with rope, straw, and anything else that would swell up and plug it until repairs could be carried out in a dock-yard.

2001:44B8:3102:BB00:EC3B:4F82:8FD0:A48B (talk) 21:52, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Czech
The Czech version keeps the "rhyme". What rhyme?--Jack Upland (talk) 00:45, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
 * We might instead say "rhythm" or "structure", but of course lines consistently ending with the addressees' given names will always rhyme. You can hear the song and see the lyrics for yourself, on the YouTube page newly cited for that paragraph. – •Raven .talk 22:53, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Tom Manders
There are some links to pages on Tom Manders, Dorus Show, and Saint Germain de Prés, but they appear to be dead. There appears to be a reference to The Dorus Show on IMDB IMDB. However, this indicates 1969 instead of 1963. An image on Alamy does mention the year 1963. It appears that perhaps "de Prés" should be "des Prés". There is a Wikipedia page on Tom Manders which contains relevant information. Crazyengineer (talk) 03:14, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Inline citations
This article would benefit from some online citations I think? Mr Blumenthal (talk) 11:52, 12 May 2024 (UTC)