There Was an Old Lady...

Every year, I teach this song to my Infant Storytime patrons. Sometimes, I feel a little bit self-conscious because of the lyrics. It's not ha-ha funny to speak of someone dying, certainly. But regardless, I come back to it again and again.


There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - I think she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a spider;
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a bird;
How absurd to swallow a bird!

She swallowed the bird to catch the spider;
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - I think she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a cat;
Imagine that! She swallowed a cat!

She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider;
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - I think she'll die!
There was an old lady that swallowed a dog;
What a hog, to swallow a dog!

She swallowed the dog to catch the cat,
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider;
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - I think she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a goat;
She just opened her throat and swallowed a goat!

She swallowed the goat to catch the dog,
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat,
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider;
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - I think she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a cow;
I don't know how she swallowed a cow!

She swallowed the cow to catch the goat,
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog,
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat,
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider;
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - I think she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a horse;

...She died, of course!

I always worry that someone will complain that this nonsense song is too scary or too dark for children, or that they won't like all the talk of dying. There was a grandmother in my Toddler Storytime many years ago, who said she thought the idea of a person swallowing a dog gave her granddaughter nightmares. I felt so horrible about that, I didn't do the song for a while. But I've started to do it again in my Infant Storytimes, in hopes that the kids in those storytimes probably aren't going to think very hard about the words, but get the benefit of the language. I'm writing this blog post in an effort to justify that choice.

The song is a treasure trove of literacy building exercises. It's got plenty of rhymes (some very witty ones, too!), repetition, and it is what we in the library/education world call a "cumulative song," meaning that each verse adds a line to what we already have. Each verse thus gets longer. It's also got something babies love: tickles! I always do tickles at the spider part. I always teach parents to build up anticipation for the tickles too, by showing their children the wriggly, jiggly spider with their wiggling fingers, waiting for just the right moment to tickle them. Anticipation is an amazing memory building activity for children. First they see the "spider" and remember that tickles are coming--then eventually they hear "She swallowed the bird to catch the spider" and they get excited knowing that the spider is coming next. For all of these reasons, I think it's a valuable brain-building tool for babies and I continue to use it in storytime.

But if I'm being honest, there's also a more personal, sentimental reason this song means a lot to me. And it all comes back to an old lady.

Her name was Anna Skiendzielewska. She was born in Popowa, Poland in 1892. She was my grandmother's mother. She and her husband both immigrated to the United States, though I haven't yet found her immigration records. Her husband died, leaving Anna to raise four children on her own while struggling to learn English and assimilate to a new culture. And just to make her life even more fun, the Great Depression hit! Anna suffered a mental collapse of some kind, and her oldest daughter, my grandmother Mary, had to raise her three younger siblings.

Anna recovered from her mental illness and eventually she must have learned some English, because my father remembers her singing a song to him when he was small: "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly..." This may have been after Pete Seeger recorded the song in an album Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Little Fishes (1955), or even earlier when Burl Ives released it in 1953 on Folk Songs, Dramatic and Humorous. Anna probably owned one of those albums. Listening to it may have even helped her with her English.

Anna did eventually die, of course, on December 6, 1966, at the age of 74. She'd had a hard life, left behind an impoverished country for a cold, alien one, only to be hit with all kinds of new struggles. But she lived a long time anyway, enough to leave her grandson, my father, with good memories.

When I was little my dad sang that song to me, and when I had my first child in 2010, I sang it to her. The song always used to cheer my daughter up any time she was upset or crying. I'd always ham it up. I remember one incident, on a trip in San Francisco in summer 2010, when she was tired from a long day of roaming the gardens at Golden Gate Park. She started crying, her little face scowling, and I just started singing: "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly..."

The change in her features was magical: her scrunched-up, frustrated little baby face suddenly transformed into a toothless smile. She was anticipating the sound of the words, the surprise and excitement of the tickles.

If you don't believe me, I still have the footage of that very moment!




And, although Anna Skiendzielewska had been dead for forty-four years, I like to think of her smiling at that moment, to see how easily the old nonsense song shifted her great-great-granddaughter's mood.

That's why I still sing the song. For me, it represents the power of folk songs to bridge cultures and generations, teach language, and build brains! And, though some of the lyrics might be a bit difficult to "swallow" (ahem), I think their power for literacy is something to smile about.

My daughter trying--and failing--to swallow a butterfly