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The Wheels on the Bus

  • Feb. 11th, 2013 at 11:27 PM
Fishy Circumstances
Poll #1895967
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 74

The Wheels on the Bus go round and round [repeat]... What is the last line, repeated every verse?

View Answers
All through the town
17 (23.0%)
All around the town
3 (4.1%)
All Day Long
51 (68.9%)
Something else, to be described in the comments
3 (4.1%)


Wikipedia describes "The Wheels on the Bus" as a mid-20th century anonymous folk song, with three different possible last lines, repeated every verse.

I grew up with "The Wheels on the Bus" going round and round "all through the town". In retrospect, it seems a song of exploration, checking out the variety of humanity which occupies the wide expanse of the town's many neighborhoods, and thus might also be found on the bus, combined with the inevitable annoyance of fellow passengers and a repetitious song. It's a song from the perspective of a cross-town passenger, in which (as I learned it) the driver on the bus features in the inevitable second verse (saying "Move on Back"), thus clearly marking him/her as yet another character, if one of particular interest, to be encountered when exploring by bus.

Where I am now, everyone knows the last line as "all day long", which transforms it into a song about the weariness of a bus driver's long, long work day, and makes me think of transport unions and labor laws. I keep wanting to know if it was ever used as a picketing song for a transport union. The variety of humanity is now for the bus driver to be endured, rather than to be explored from the perspective of a passenger. Indeed, in none of the (many, many) times I have now heard it around here has the driver ever featured as a character within the song, leaving him/her excluded (at least, in my expectation of hearing that verse), an observer throughout that long, long work day.

That last line entirely recontextualizes the song for me.

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Comments

( 41 comments — Leave a comment )
frandowdsofa
Feb. 11th, 2013 11:34 pm (UTC)
I'm really enjoying these explorations. Have you come across monkeys jumping on the bed yet?
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owlfish
Feb. 11th, 2013 11:55 pm (UTC)
I'm glad!

I've come across a couple of "five" songs, but the monkeys were not among them. (Ducks, frogs...) I know I grew up with some animal sleeping in a bed, but now I can't remember what kind it was! Quite possibly monkeys. They were sleeping, not jumping.
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thera_flu
Feb. 12th, 2013 02:31 am (UTC)
This?

10 bears in the bed and the little one said "I'm crowded roll over."
So, They all rolled over and one fell out.
9 bears in the bed and the little one said, "I'm crowded roll over."
So, They all rolled over and one fell out.
8 bears in the bed and the little one said, "I'm crowded roll over."
So, They all rolled over and one fell out.
7 bears in the bed and the little one said, "I'm crowded roll over."
So they All rolled over and one fell out.
6 bears in the bed and the little one said, "I'm crowded roll over."
So, They all rolled over and one fell out.
5 bears in the bed and the little one said, "I'm crowded roll over."
So, They all rolled over and one fell out.
4 bears in the bed and the little one said, "I'm crowded roll over."
So, They all rolled over and one fell out
3 bears in the bed and the little one said, "I'm crowded roll over."
So, They all rolled over and one fell out.
2 bears in the bed and the little one said, I'm crowded roll over."
So, they All rolled over and one fell out.
1 bear in the bed and the little one said, "You know what? I'm lonely."
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lil_shepherd
Feb. 12th, 2013 04:49 am (UTC)
I knew that -- and it was collected originally, I believe -- as "There were ten in the bed and the little one said" (i.e. as humans.) Plainly, with the change in personal circumstances in the Western world, this has been changed to animals. Interesting.
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kashmera
Feb. 12th, 2013 06:08 am (UTC)
I remember the version you do, although perhaps with additional lines added?

There were ten in the bed and the little one said "roll over, roll over",
So they all rolled over and one fell out who bumped his head and gave a shout,
"Please remember, (pause) to tie a knot in your pyjamas"
"Single beds are only meant for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9"

There were nine in the bed etc.

Edited at 2013-02-12 06:09 am (UTC)
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lil_shepherd
Feb. 12th, 2013 08:11 am (UTC)
I don't know that version. Interesting. I wonder when it appeared (the pajamas suggest post War, in any event.)
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del_c
Feb. 12th, 2013 10:03 am (UTC)
If this became a poll, I'd be voting the same variant as lil_shepherd
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frandowdsofa
Feb. 12th, 2013 12:45 pm (UTC)
me too
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pennski
Feb. 12th, 2013 08:56 pm (UTC)
I know Kashmera's version.
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nmg
Feb. 12th, 2013 11:52 am (UTC)
"Please remember, (pause) to tie a knot in your pyjamas"

The line above to be sung to the tune of the first line of Rule, Britannia, obviously.

I've always sung it as "who bumped his head and blood came out", btw.
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sam_t
Feb. 12th, 2013 12:43 pm (UTC)
That's the version I learned at Brownies (80s). The one I'd learnt earlier, from playgroup or my parents or my grandma, didn't have the pyjamas at all and may have gone straight from the falling out to the next verse.
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owlfish
Feb. 12th, 2013 12:51 pm (UTC)
Whereas the version I know doesn't specify how large the bed is. Or what the (bears) might be wearing.
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heleninwales
Feb. 12th, 2013 01:15 pm (UTC)
This is the version my dad taught me when I was small. They were definitely humans in the bed and there weren't any embellishments regarding pyjamas either.
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lil_shepherd
Feb. 12th, 2013 01:57 pm (UTC)
Annoyingly, it isn't in any of the Opies we own, including Nursery Rhymes. Google isn't much help, either, until you notice that it produced more than a score of children's books based on the song/rhyme. Looks like the embellishments probably came from those!
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owlfish
Feb. 12th, 2013 12:50 pm (UTC)
That's it! Thank you!
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saffenn
Feb. 12th, 2013 11:46 am (UTC)
I don't have any concrete evidence of this, but I have heard anecdotally that both the Ten Little Monkeys and the song about the ten bears were originally "tar babies" in intent - if not in actual lyrics.


Edited at 2013-02-12 12:17 pm (UTC)
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gillo
Feb. 11th, 2013 11:48 pm (UTC)
I think the driver is not in the song because it's the old-style double-decker bus with a conductor - who says "Hurry on down". The driver was in his own little cab, with no access from the passenger area. The bell goes "ting-a-ling-a-ling" to signal the next stop, and the movement to go with it - hand overhead, pulling down a cable sharply - shows it is operated by the conductor to signal to the driver.

It goes on "all day long" because it's a regular, frequent and reliable service. (Yes, another world...)
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owlfish
Feb. 11th, 2013 11:56 pm (UTC)
I like your optimism about the last line. A much more positive was to think about it!
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ellid
Feb. 11th, 2013 11:49 pm (UTC)
Uh...would you believe that my mother never sang that one to me?

OTOH, I still sometimes sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" to myself.
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owlfish
Feb. 11th, 2013 11:57 pm (UTC)
I doubt my parents sang this one to me, but clearly I picked it up somehow. Nursery school?

"Itsy Bitsy" is a fine song! I still need to make a followup post to that about my Latin version.
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mirrorshard
Feb. 12th, 2013 09:09 pm (UTC)
For me it was always "Incey Wincey Spider".
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owlfish
Feb. 12th, 2013 10:22 pm (UTC)
Interesting about the "e"s. (As opposed to "Incy Wincy Spider").
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tisiphone
Feb. 12th, 2013 06:27 am (UTC)
I found myself singing "itsy bitsy spider" the other day while I was out for a walk.
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frandowdsofa
Feb. 12th, 2013 12:06 am (UTC)
Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed
One fell off and broke his head.
Mummy called the doctor
And the doctor said
THAT'S what you get for jumping on the bed!

Nine little monkeys...

I always associated it with Wheels on the bus because I first heard it, in its entirety, several times, while stuck on a double decker somewhere near Finsbury.
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retsuko
Feb. 12th, 2013 01:38 am (UTC)
I've also heard "No More monkeys jumping on the bed!" for the last line.
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desperance
Feb. 12th, 2013 12:07 am (UTC)
I never heard this till I was an adult and my adult friends had children. To them, it has been all-pervasive; but either it hadn't achieved that degree of penetration when I was a kid, or some freak of circumstance excluded it from my own particular world. Wiki dates it to "mid-twentieth century", but it might've taken longer to cross the Atlantic...?

However, the version I have heard from all the kids I have known is "All day long."
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owlfish
Feb. 12th, 2013 12:23 am (UTC)
According to the Google NGram viewer, it took off in the mid-1960s overall, but the early 1970s for British English in particular.
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desperance
Feb. 12th, 2013 12:40 am (UTC)
Yup. That would've been too late for me. *creaks with age wisdom*
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frandowdsofa
Feb. 12th, 2013 12:54 pm (UTC)
I am of a similar age, and lived abroad for a lot of the 80s. So it sprang at me fully formed when people I knew started to have children in the late 80s / early 90s. I'd assumed it had come from a tv programme, it had a manufactured sound that real playground songs avoid. Does it make sense to say it felt like something written deliberately by a well-meaning education professional? as opposed to the normal racist, sexist, violent stuff kids perpetuate amongst themselves.
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del_c
Feb. 12th, 2013 02:47 pm (UTC)
I was just thinking how many children's songs (not to mention seaside puppet shows) involve alcoholism and domestic violence, but I don't know whether the adults or the children are responsible for that.
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heleninwales
Feb. 12th, 2013 01:21 pm (UTC)
That fits. I didn't sing Wheels on the Bus as a child, but learned it when my own children were small.

A travelling song that we did sing as children when we were on group outings and travelling on a coach went: "We're off, we're off, we're off in a motor car, 100 coppers are after us and they don't know where we are." Repeat reducing the number of policemen by one each time.
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owlfish
Feb. 12th, 2013 04:41 pm (UTC)
It's not to the same tune as "100 bottles of beer on the wall", is it? It scans reasonably well to it, even if it's not.
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heleninwales
Feb. 12th, 2013 05:54 pm (UTC)
I think calling it a "tune" is something of an exaggeration. :) More a chant really. It's definitely not the same tune as "10 green bottles", but I'm not sure if that's the same as "100 bottles of beer".
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del_c
Feb. 12th, 2013 06:40 pm (UTC)
"100 bottles of beer on the wall" is more American, has a different tune, different scansion, and different words, but the same theme: a diminishing number of bottles on the wall. I was taught the tune by an American as:

Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
Aleph-null bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around,
Aleph-null bottles of beer!

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easter
Feb. 12th, 2013 01:30 am (UTC)
"All over town."
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retsuko
Feb. 12th, 2013 01:38 am (UTC)
I've heard both the first and second options used, but never "all day long".
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lil_shepherd
Feb. 12th, 2013 04:54 am (UTC)
Incidentally, like Chaz this is certainly not one I ever heard as a child but, unlike him, and despite never having had all that much to do with children, it came into my consciousness around the 1980s, probably because Playschool was on the TV as background noise.
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inamac
Feb. 12th, 2013 05:18 am (UTC)
I imagine it's new enough to still be in copyright, so there must be an original version somewhere with a specified last line.
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lil_shepherd
Feb. 12th, 2013 05:39 am (UTC)
Interestingly, the British Council version uses 'All Through the Town' while the BBC version uses 'All Day Long' - confirming, I think, my instinct that I got it originally from the BBC (and also because it is accompanied in my head by a very simple cartoon graphic.)
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tisiphone
Feb. 12th, 2013 06:26 am (UTC)
To clarify my response, I actually have heard several versions, but the oldest one I know (and the one I probably sang myself) is "all around the town".
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sollersuk
Feb. 13th, 2013 06:59 am (UTC)
"All the way to London Town"
(from my childhood in the 1950s)
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( 41 comments — Leave a comment )