Gran’ma’s Star Lights, episode V The Baby Strikes Back

I’s a little pudding, pudding, pooh,

And I ain’t been born very long.

I remember seeing a big round moon,

I remember hearing one sweet song.

When they took me down to the seaside fields,

Where I rolled and tumbled in the sun.

While me Daddy did the working,

Mummy watched me grow

And this is the song she sang.

Go to sleep my little pudding, pudding,

Mummy’s going to shush you if you don’t,

Slumber on the bosom of your darling Mummy J.C.,

Mummy’s going to shush you if you don’t.

Lu la lu, lu la lu la laddie,

Underneath the silver summer moon,

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,

Mummy’s little baby,

Mummy’s little pudding, pudding, pooh

The original version of this that I was taught would not be publicly acceptable now, when it was first introduced to me the first line was “I’s a little alla balla coo” the song went on to mention Daddy picking cotton. The person who taught it to me had had the song passed down through generations where some of the words had obviously got blurred with the passage of time and by being passed via the oral tradition rather than being written down. A bit like Chinese whispers, it never stays exactly how it starts.

I suspect that the original version was perhaps a song from Alabama and the coo a shortened version of an offensive word for someone of Black heritage.

That said it is a pretty little tune and this more appropriate reworking of the words hopefully will give it life for another generation.