Collection Information: Good Morn was collected on May
18th, 2014 in Hanover, New Hampshire. It belongs to a sub-genre of
nursery rhymes called wake up songs.
Informant Data: Regan Roberts is an American from Virginia Beach, Virginia. She is 20 years old and while not at college lives with her mother and younger brother. She attends Dartmouth College where she is majoring in economics, while still having many other interests, such as Spanish.
Text:
“Good morn my merry sunshine,
Why do you wake so soon?
You used to wake at twelve o’clock
But now you wake at noon!”
Contextual: To wake up Regan and her brother when they were very
young, her father would run in and sing this two them when it was time
to get up while playing with them to get them out of bed. It is
presumably from when her father was a child, but this is not confirmed,
as she was too young to remember whether it was a family song or not.
Meaning and Interpretation: This wake-up song is very short and simple, with the intent of repetition. There is also clear excitement as indicated by the exclamation point. The themes present in this example follow the expected patterns, including implying the listener is lazy to incite movement, and mentioning the coming day and the act of waking up.
Collector’s Information: Ben Wood, Dartmouth College ’16, Russian 13, Professor Mikhail Gronas, Spring 2014
