Ladybird Ladybird

"Ladybird Ladybird" (sometimes rendered as "Ladybug Ladybug", particularly in the US) is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 16215.

The rhyme

This traditional verse relates to Ladybugs or Ladybirds, brightly coloured insects commonly viewed as lucky. The English version has been dated to at least 1744, when it appeared in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Songbook Vol. 2.^[1] The verse has several popular forms, including:

Ladybird, ladybird fly away home,

Your house is on fire and your children are gone,

All except one,

And her name is Ann,

And she hid under the baking pan.

A shorter, grimmer version is also widespread:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,

Your house is on fire,

Your children shall burn!

Ann who hides may also be Nan, Anne or Little Anne. She may have hidden under a warming pan, porridge pan, frying pan or even a pudding pan.^[2] Some variants are radically different:

All except one and her name was Aileen

And she hid under a soup tureen.^[3]

The 'little one' also may not be hiding at all, as in the following:

Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home.

Your house is on fire;

Your children all roam.

Except little Nan

Who sits in her pan

Weaving her laces as fast as she can.

And from Peterborough:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, / Your horse is on foot, your children are gone;

All but one, and that's little John, / And he lies under the grindle stone.^[4]

Several more variants exist, some saying "your children alone". Variants are known in the USA, some attached to Doodlebugs.^[5]

From Favorite Poems Old and New, Selected for boys and girls by Helen Ferris (1957):

Lady-bird, Lady-bird, fly away home

the field mouse is gone to her nest

the daisies have shut up their sleepy red eyes

and the birds and the bees are at rest

Lady-bird, Lady-bird, fly away home

the glow worm is lighting her lamp

the dew's falling fast, and your fine speckled wings

will flag with the close clinging damp

Lady-bird, Lady-bird, fly away home

the fairy bells tinkle afar

make haste or they'll catch you and harness you fast

with a cobweb to Oberon's star^[6]

From "Nancy Drew: Ghost of Thornton Hall":

Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home

Your house is on fire and your children are gone,

All except one,

Sweet Charlotte Ann,

And she hid under the frying pan.

Cultural references

• At the outset of Chapter 14 of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain writes: "A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy heights of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said: 'Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, Your house is on fire, your children's alone'..." ^[7]
• The rhyme is alluded to in Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse (1910).
• The rhyme's title was used for a 1994 drama-documentary, Ladybird Ladybird, by Ken Loach about a British woman's dispute with Social Services over the care and custody of her four children.
• The lines "Hey little bird, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children are alone" are used by Tom Waits in the song "Jockey Full of Bourbon" on the 1985 album Rain Dogs.
• The lines "Lady bug, lady bug, fly away home. Your house is on fire, and your children, They will burn, they will burn." are used by Peter, Paul and Mary in the song "It's Raining" from the 1962 album Peter, Paul and Mary.
• Ladybug Ladybug is a 1963 film about the evacuation of a rural elementary school following a (mistaken) alert of an imminent nuclear attack.
• Fly Away Home is a 1996 film about a young girl who, with her father, leads a flock of Canada geese to a wildlife refuge.
• The rhyme is referred to in the 2011 British horror film The Awakening.
• It appears in Chapter 8 of the Czech classic, The Grandmother (Babička). "Adelka placed the lady-bird on her open palm and raised her hand high, chanting: 'Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home-' 'Your house is on fire, and your children are gone!' completed Willie."
• Your House is on Fire, Your Children all Gone' by Stefan Kiesbye takes its name from this rhyme.
• A variant of the song is sung by Charlotte's ghost in the Nancy Drew game from Her interactive, "The Ghost of Thornton Hall". (Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home/ your house is on fire and your children are gone/all except one/sweet Charlotte Ann/ and she hid under the frying pan)
• An excerpt of this rhyme is found on the back doorstep of the printshop in Philadelphia in 1778 at the close of Chapter 111 / Part 7 of "Written in My Own Heart's Blood" by Diana Gabaldon (published June 10, 2014). It is interpreted as a threat on the inhabitants and their children, as declared seditionists in the American Revolution.
• Hawaii Five-0 Season 6, Episode 2. "Lehu a Lehu" "Ashes to Ashes" The poem appears in this episode.
• Combat! Season 3, Episode 6 is titled "Fly Away Home". It features the squad escorting a Carrier Pigeon Company.
• A variant of the poem is used in the novel Carry On as a spell
• In Chapter 39 of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl writes: "The Ladybug, who had been haunted all her life by the fear that her house was on fire and her children all gone, married the Head of the Fire Department and lived happily ever after." ^[8]

Notes