Country Music Lyrics
A busy day on the farm is told in sounds: the cock crowing, the cows lowing, the sheep baa-ing and the pigs squeaking. Brooks babble, bells ring, a grindstone turns, and Carrie goes on teaching amid all the noise.
Country Music
The cock is crowing,
The cows are lowing;
The sheep are baa-ing,
The boys ha-ha-ing;
The birds are singing,
The bells are ringing;
The brook is babbling,
The geese are gabbling;
The pigs are squeaking,
The barn-door creaking;
Sally is churning,
The grindstone turning;
John is sawing,
Willie hurrahing;
The peacock screeching,
And Carrie teaching
Amid all the noise.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/country-music/
- Type
- Animal Rhymes, Poems for Children
- Tune
- Quick and chanting, one sound per beat, slowing for the last line
- Best for ages
- 2 to 6 years
Hand Motions and Actions
| When you sing | Do this |
|---|---|
| The cock is crowing | Tuck your hands into your armpits and flap your elbows like wings. |
| Sally is churning | Stir an imaginary tall churn with both hands. |
| John is sawing | Move one arm back and forth like a saw. |
What Does Country Music Mean?
There is no story here, only a list of sounds, and the pleasure is in how many different ones fit into seventeen lines. Seven kinds of animal and bird are named: the cock, the cows, the sheep, the birds, the geese, the pigs and the peacock. The rest is people at work and everyday farm sounds: boys laughing, the brook babbling, bells ringing, a barn door creaking.
Two jobs are worth explaining. Churning is stirring cream hard until it turns into butter. A grindstone is a round stone wheel that is turned to sharpen knives and tools. Gabbling is fast, noisy talk, here the geese. Almost every line ends on a word ending in -ing, and the lines rhyme in pairs, which makes the poem easy to chant and easy to copy.
The last line, Amid all the noise, leaves Carrie teaching in the middle of it. The poem does not say what is being taught.
History and Origin
The poem appears in a children's anthology put together in 1884 and revised in 1911. Farm-sound lists like this one are useful for early talkers, since each line asks a child to name a sound.
Learning Activities
- Sound walk: go outdoors, stand still for one minute and list every sound you hear, then match them to lines of the poem.
- Add a line: make up a new short line for something at home, such as the kettle boiling or the dog barking.
- Guess the animal: make one farm sound and ask which line it belongs to.
- Butter shake: shake a small jar of cream until lumps of butter form, which shows what churning does.