How Many Miles to Babylon?

"How Many Miles to Babylon" is an English-language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 8148.

This article is about the nursery rhyme 'How many miles to Babylon'. For the novel by Jennifer Johnston, see How Many Miles to Babylon? (novel).

"How Many Miles to Babylon"
Nursery rhyme
Published1801
Songwriter(s)Unknown

Lyrics

The accepted modern lyrics are:

How many miles to Babylon?
Three score miles and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again ...
If your heels are nimble and your toes are light,
You may get there by candle-light[1]

A longer Scottish version has the lyrics:

King and Queen of Cantelon,
How many miles to Babylon?
Eight and eight, and other eight
Will I get there by candle-light?
If your horse be good and your spurs be bright
How mony men have ye?
Mae nor ye daur come and see[2]

Various places have replaced Babylon in the rhyme, including London town, Barberry and Berry Bright.[3]

Origins

The rhyme was not recorded until the nineteenth century, but the reference to Cantelon in the Scottish version has led some to conclude that it refers to Caledon in the time of the Crusades.[4] Babylon may be a corruption of 'Babyland', but the city was a common allusion particularly in seventeenth-century England and 'Can I get there by candlelight?' was a common saying in the sixteenth century. It referred to the time of day at which it was necessary to light a candle as the daylight faded. The question here then is to whether or not Babylon can be reached before the light of day faded and the candles must be lit. Naturally this time changed throughout the seasons. In the 1824 edition of The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia there's a description of the rhyme and the game, giving the distance as "six, seven or a lang eight".

The rhyme was originally accompanied by a singing game in which two lines face each other, with one player in the middle. At the end of the rhyme the players have to cross the space and any caught help the original player in the middle catch the others.[3] The game seems to have fallen out of use in the twentieth century.[5] The game Red Rover, which is first documented in the early twentieth century, has, in its earliest recorded form, the same rules; hypothesizing a connection between the death of the older game and the spread of the new one is therefore natural, though necessarily speculative.

In literature

  • The opening line is used in Robert Louis Stevenson's poem 'Envoys'.[6]
  • It is referenced in Rudyard Kipling's, Rewards and Fairies.
  • It appears in the novel Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll.
  • It is referred to in the novel Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor. (1944)
  • It is sung to Mary, Queen of Scots, by Francis Crawford of Lymond, in the fictional historical novel Queen's Play, the second book of the Lymond Chronicles, by Dorothy Dunnett.
  • The rhyme is used in They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie.
  • It prefaces the essay Goodbye to All That by Joan Didion.
  • It is the title of, and sung throughout, a story by Kate Wilhelm.[7]
  • The rhyme is used a core part of the plot and as a comfort for the main character in Violet Needham’s 1953 novel, How Many Miles to Babylon?
  • It is the title of a family saga by Jennifer Johnston (1974).
  • It is the title of a children's book by Paula Fox (1967) D. White Co., New York OCLC 300829
  • It appears in the novel Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones, where a significantly extended version plays a pivotal role in the plot's resolution.
  • It appears in the novel The Other by Tom Tryon.
  • It appears in the novel Spinsters in Jeopardy by Ngaio Marsh.
  • It appears in Neil Gaiman's novel Stardust and its film adaptation, which each show methods of travel involving a "Babylon Candle."
  • It gives the title to Julius Horwitz's novel of London during World War II, Can I Get There by Candlelight?[8]
  • It is used as a plot point in C.E. Murphy's Urban Shaman.
  • It appears in the foreword of the spy novel Twelve Trains to Babylon by Alfred Connable (1971)
  • It appears in the first story of the short story collection Moon Mirror by Andre Norton.
  • It is used in "The Story of the Amulet" by E. Nesbit.
  • It is used as a plot point in An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire.
  • It appears in Denise Levertov's poem "Candles in Babylon"
  • It is referenced in the children's book Can I Get There by Candlelight? (1982) by Jean Slaughter Doty.
  • It is used in the novel How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston.
  • It is used in the short story Babylon 70M (1963) by Donald A. Wollheim, appearing in the first issue of Robert A. W. Lowndes' Magazine of Horror.[9]
  • The rhyme appears in the novel Hawksmoor (1985) by Peter Ackroyd.
  • The number of miles in the second line, “three score miles and ten”, matches the years of a human lifespan as stated in the Holy Bible (“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”). Psalms 90:10 | KJV.

In television and film

  • It plays a major part in the plot of the 1985 anime film Lupin III: Legend of the Gold of Babylon. The song is repeatedly sung by the character of Rosetta, which helps Lupin figure out how to navigate the traps from within the Tower of Babel and how to find the treasure towards the end of the film. A version of the rhyme is sung in English midway into the film by Naoko Kawai, appearing on the film's original soundtrack as "The Song of Babylon".
  • It is referenced in the TV series Strange Angel. The rhyme is chanted at the beginning of Season 1, Episode 2 whilst the protagonist is sleeping.
  • It is recited in a flashback at the beginning of Season 1, Episode 2 of the TV series Silk Stalkings, the title of which is 'Going to Babylon'.

In music

Notes
  1. I. Opie and P. Opie (1997) The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn.,(revision of 1951 edition) pp. 73-5.
  2. I. Opie and P. Opie (1997), The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford, Second Edition, pp. 73-75.
  3. E. H. Linscott and J. M. Carpenter, Folk Songs of Old New England (Courier Dover, 1993), p. 18.
  4. I. Opie and P. Opie (1997), The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford, Second Edition, pp. 73-75.
  5. I.Opie and P. Opie (1997), The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford, Second Edition, pp. 73-75.
  6. I.Opie and P. Opie (1997), The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford, Second Edition, pp.73-75.
  7. K. Wilhelm (1968), The Downstairs Room and Other Speculative Fiction, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, pp. 73-82.
  8. Can I get there by candlelight. London: Panther Books. 1971. ISBN 0586020942.
  9. "Magazine of Horror". #1. August 1963. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) Initiated by Robert A. W. Lowndes for Health Knowledge Inc.
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