I grew up singing. My mum had a vocal group with her siblings and they would sing pop songs that my uncle arranged for them. Later, my uncle started a larger choir which was open to "the public", which included us, his nieces and nephews. It was the absolute best to be singing his beautiful compositions with the voices of my family all around me: cousins and uncles behind me, aunts and my mother beside me, our voices all blending in together making the air vibrate with the magical, impossible harmonies that he had imagined.
Like my own mother did for us, my mother's mother was always singing with and for her children. She used to sing Dutch folk songs, especially the ones about Sinterklaas - those generally have a good waltzing rhythm on which she could send her babies to sleep. My grandfather was also a good singer and especially loved to write new lyrics for old folk songs. But I think most of the Dutch folk songs I know came from my grandmother. Some came straight from her, because she would be singing them all the time and it was impossible not to pick them up; some from my mother; and others from my godmother, who was also my first music teacher. I could talk about this for many pages, because all of my family memories revolve around music. But for now I'm going to move on to the song in question.
As I told you in my previous post here, I recently discovered Trad Song Tuesday. And this week's theme was 'summer'. The first song that came to mind was 'Wild Mountain Thyme', but I thought it might be too obvious and probably other people would have sent that in already. And when I picked up my guitar to play it anyway and see which other song I could do, 'Drie Kleine Kleutertjes' came up. This was one of my grandmother's favourite songs and she would always be singing it in summer, when the beautiful sky-blue cornflowers are in bloom and the crickets are chirping in the tall grass. Although it's a children's song I felt like I should record it now, because the memory of my grandmother was so strong, and I wanted to sing it in her honour. I feel almost silly singing this without harmonies, I hope to be able to record a version with my mother or my siblings soon!
So it's a children's song, a nursery rhyme if you will, and the lyrics are about three little toddlers, sitting on a fence, on top of a fence, on a beautiful summer's day in September. Second verse: what do they talk about, on top of that fence (repeat); Third verse: it was about crickets and cornflowers blue. And that's it! I never knew the origins of this song until today. It turns out that the rhyme was originally English, written by Victorian writer and artist Catherine Greenaway. A Dutch composer and singer, Catharina van Rennes, translated the words and put them to music in 1897. So when my grandmother learned this song, I suppose at primary school, the song was just about three decades old. You can hear my impromptu version here:
I'd love to know what you think of it! I might do a few more Dutch ones soon...