Today, I got to thinking about a song kids used to sing when I was a kid that goes, “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, Teacher hit me with a ruler.” Specifically, I was wondering who wrote the song, because the version I learned was long and fairly involved. Surely it could not have been the product of one or even several of the first graders I learned it from.
As near as I can tell, the song most likely was the creation of a child or children that evolved and expanded over time. According to this Wikipedia article (which actually did cite the reference I’m about to make) a version of the song existed in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, England, as early as 1959. This begs the question, how has this song, and other child folkways, gotten passed along through generations and sometimes across great distances.¹
As it turns out, I am not the only one who wonders such things. During my research, I came across an interesting article by Nancy McCabe called “Glory, Glory Hallelujah, Teacher Hit Me With a Ruler: Gender and Violence in Subversive Children’s Songs” which discusses numerous children’s songs and their social implications. There are also at least two scholarly journals dedicated to the study of children’s culture, Children’s Geographies and Play and Folklore.
A further point of interest is the history of the tune the song is sung to. The melody originated in a Methodist hymn attributed to William Steffe. This hymn was adapted as a marching song by Union soldiers during the Civil War. The soldiers’ version of the song being about John Brown, was naturally referred to as “The John Brown Song” or “John Brown’s Song” and eventually became known as “John Brown’s Body.” This marching tune shows an interesting evolution in its lyrics, from an early version featuring repetitive verses and a fairly light tone (including a verse about his pet lambs.)² Later versions were more lyrically complex, featuring details of John Brown’s deeds and having a more moralistic tone.
“John Brown’s Body” inspired Julia Ward Howe to write “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” which was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1862.
The tune was further adapted in 1915 by Ralph Chaplin, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, into the labor standard “Solidarity Forever.”
But to bring it all back home with children’s folk songs I’ll leave you with these two ditties:
“Jingle bells. Batman smells. Robin laid an egg. The Batmobile lost a wheel, and Joker got away. Hey!”
“First is the worst. Second is the best. Third is the one with the hairy chest.”³
—
1. One thing that may have helped this song proliferate in its early days was the fact that in 1963 a version of it titled “The Battle Hymn of the Children” was released by Tom Glazer and the Do-Re-Mi Children’s Chorus on Kapp Records. The song was released on a 45-record as the B-side to the hit “On Top of Spaghetti” which may have its own interesting origin story. I’m holding out for some corroboration, though.
2. The light tone of this early version lends some credence to the story that the song originally was created to tease a soldier named John Brown in a Massachusetts infantry regiment, alternately cited as the 2nd or 12th. The story originates with George Kimball who recounted it in The New England Magazine in 1890.
Of course, it could have also been written by Thomas Brigham Bishop as detailed in this article from Time.
Or both of these stories could be attention grabs made by vain men. Who knows?
3. This is the version kids would sing when I was in first grade after someone else got to be first in line. The website the law of the playground has several other versions you can see here.
