July 2022: Bibble A La Do

Submitted by Kim Wallach

I chose “Bibble A La Do” as the Song of the Month for a number of reasons. I grew up singing along with the mournful “Johnny’s Gone for a Soldier” as sung by Peter, Paul and Mary. Also known as “Buttermilk Hill” and “Shule Aroon,” “Shule a Ghra” and “Siúil a Rún” (and many other names as well), all these songs lament a lad gone for a soldier, sometimes one for whom the singer has sold everything to supply with the tools of war, only for them to die anyway.

While I still love a sad song, there’s something about the jauntiness of the rhythm and the change of modality from minor to major just at the end of “Bibble A La Do” that I love. There are tons of recorded versions of “Johnny’s Gone for a Soldier,” but only two I know of for “Bibble A La Do”—Art Thieme on Thieme04, and Deborah Robins on Home Fires (.99 to buy, but buy the whole CD, it’s worth it!).

Listen to Kim singing “Bibble A La Do:”

Lyrics

Come and listen to my song
Awful pretty and it won’t take long
Sang it all the way from here to Hong Kong
Come a bibble a la do shy dorrie

Chorus:
Shoe rye shoe rye shoe rye roo
suga raka suga raka shoe rye roo
When I saw my little bobolink 
Come a bibble a la do shy dorrie

Gonna buy me an old grey hoss
The Alleghenies I will cross
Gonna find the true love that I lost
Come a bibble a la do shy dorrie

Chorus

I was staying on a South Sea isle
Folk down there all greet you with a smile
I wrote back home, well, I think I’ll stay awhile
Come a bibble a la do shy dorrie

Chorus

My true love has gone to France 
There his fortune to advance
When he comes home gonna have a little dance
Come a bibble a la do shy dorrie

Chorus

Here I sit on Buttermilk Hill
Here I sit and cry my fill
Every tear could turn a mill
Come a bibble a la do shy dorrie

Repeat first verse

Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún
Siúil go socair agus siúil go ciuin
Siúil go doras agus ealaigh lio
Is go dte tu mo mhuirnin slan
Walk, walk, walk, O love, 
Walk quickly to me, softly move; 
Walk to the door, and away we’ll flee, 
And safe may my darling be.