ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BOAT

ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BOAT

"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" is an English language nursery rhyme and a popular children's song. It can also be an "action" nursery rhyme, whose singers sit opposite one another and "row" forwards and backwards with joined hands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7otAJa3jui8

                                                                      

Origins

It has been suggested that the song may have originally arisen out of American minstrelsy*. The earliest printing of the song is from 1852, when the lyrics were published with similar lyrics to those used today, but with a very different tune. It was reprinted again two years later with the same lyrics and another tune. The modern tune was first recorded with the lyrics in 1881, mentioning Eliphalet Oram Lyte in The Franklin Square Song Collection but not making it clear whether he was the composer or adapter. (Eliphalet Oram Lyte (1842 - 1913) was an American teacher and author of grammar and composition textbooks. He is credited as the composer of the tune to the popular song "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in the publication The Franklin Square Song Collection (1881, New York). It is also indicated that he adapted the lyrics, previously published to a different melody)

Additional or alternative verses

People often add additional verses, a form of children's street culture, with the intent of either extending the song or (especially in the case of more irreverent versions) to make it funny, parody it, or substitute another sensibility for the perceived innocent one of the original.

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