How Many Miles to Babylon? explained

How Many Miles to Babylon
Type:nursery
Published:1801

"How Many Miles to Babylon" is an English-language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 8148.

Lyrics

The accepted modern lyrics are:

A longer Scottish version has the lyrics:

Various places have replaced Babylon in the rhyme, including London town, Barberry and Berry Bright.[1]

Origins

The rhyme was not recorded until the nineteenth century, but the reference to Cantelon in the Scottish version has led some to conclude that it refers to Caledon in the time of the Crusades.[2] Babylon may be a corruption of 'Babyland', but the city was a common allusion particularly in seventeenth-century England and 'Can I get there by candlelight?' was a common saying in the sixteenth century. It referred to the time of day at which it was necessary to light a candle as the daylight faded. The question here then is to whether or not Babylon can be reached before the light of day faded and the candles must be lit. Naturally this time changed throughout the seasons.In the 1824 edition of The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia there's a description of the rhyme and the game, giving the distance as "six, seven or a lang eight".

The rhyme was originally accompanied by a singing game in which two lines face each other, with one player in the middle. At the end of the rhyme the players have to cross the space and any caught help the original player in the middle catch the others.[1] The game seems to have fallen out of use in the twentieth century.[3] The game Red Rover, which is first documented in the early twentieth century, has, in its earliest recorded form, the same rules; hypothesizing a connection between the death of the older game and the spread of the new one is therefore natural, though necessarily speculative.

In popular culture

In literature

In television and film

In music

Notes and References

  1. E. H. Linscott and J. M. Carpenter, Folk Songs of Old New England (Courier Dover, 1993), p. 18.
  2. I. Opie and P. Opie (1997), The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford, Second Edition, pp. 73-75.
  3. I.Opie and P. Opie (1997), The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford, Second Edition, pp. 73-75.
  4. I.Opie and P. Opie (1997), The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford, Second Edition, pp.73-75.
  5. K. Wilhelm (1968), The Downstairs Room and Other Speculative Fiction, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, pp. 73-82.
  6. Book: Can I get there by candlelight . 1971 . London . Panther Books. 0586020942.
  7. Magazine of Horror. August 1963.
    1. 1
    . Initiated by Robert A. W. Lowndes for Health Knowledge Inc.

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