"This is the day we give babies away" (1890s)

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:44 AM -0500 2/18/05, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>What's the origin of the following saying? "This is the day they give
>
>babies away with a pound of butter."
>...
>...
>Subject: Re: origin of this aphorism
>Answered By: _pinkfreud-ga_
>(http://answers.google.com/answers/ratings?user=8557989531679117785)
>on 17 Feb 2005 21:35 PST
>   This line comes from an old song. Apparently the original version had
>
>"half a pound of tea" instead of "a pound of butter." "Half a pound of
>
>cheese" is also sometimes mentioned. According to some sources, the
>
>song may date to the early part of the Twentieth Century. It was
>
>widespread by the 1920s.
>
>
>
>"This is the day we give babies away
>
>  With a half a pound of tea
>
>  You just open the lid, and out pops the kid
>
>  With a twelve month guarantee.
>
>
>
>'The Day They Gave Babies Away,' a story by Dale Eunson that appeared
>
>in the Christmas 1946 issue of Cosmopolitan, their most successful
>
>Christmas story ever. It was published as a book the following year.
>
>The reference also mentioned a soldiers' ditty circulating in the
>
>1940s that went 'Today is the day they give babies away / with a half
>
>a pound of tea. / If you know any ladies who want any babies / Just
>
>send them around to me.'

I have a cassette of folk-singer Rosalie Sorrels doing her "Hostile
Baby Rocking Song", accompanied by a spoken preamble.  It's actually
quite lovely.  I tracked down both the intro and the lyrics on the
web; you'll recognize the quatrain above, in the 1/2-pound-of-tea
version:

==============================
All right, it's 5:30 in the morning.  That kid has not quit howling
now for six hours.  You're getting sort of desperate, breaking out
into a cold sweat because you know that all those other kids are
going to get up in about another half hour and they're going to
demand cereal and peanut sandwiches and milk. And you forgot to get
milk.  Oh, God.  All the paregoric is gone. It's gone because you
drank it.  Things are getting awful bad and you need something else.
Every culture's got one:  it's the hostile baby-rocking song.  You
just can't keep all that stuff bottled up inside yourself.  You need
to let it out some way, or you'd get strange . . . punch the baby in
the mouth . . . and you
can't do that.  You'd get an awful big ticket for it, and it makes
you feel lousy.  So you take that baby and you rock it firmly, smile
sweetly . . . and you sing the hostile baby-rocking song:

This is the day we give babies away
With a half a pound of tea
You just open the lid, and out pops the kid
With a twelve month guarantee.

This is the day we give babies away
With a half a pound of tea
If you know any ladies who want any babies
Just send them round to me

[chorus:]
There's an island way out in the sea
Where babies grow up on the trees
It's oh so much fun, to swing in the sun
But you have to watch out if you sneeze, you sneeze
You have to watch out if you sneeze

You have to watch out if you sneeze
'Cause swinging up there in the breeze
If you happen to cough, you might very well fall off
And tumble down flop on your knees, your knees
And tumble down flop on your knees.
And when the stormy winds wail
And the breezes blow up in a gale
There's oh such a plopping and flopping and dropping
And fat little babies just hail, just hail
And fat little babies just hail.

And the babies lie there in a pile
And grownups come after a while
And they always pass by any babies that cry
They take only babies that smile, that smile
Take triplets or twins if they'll smile

[repeat chorus]
==========
Larry