Every little wave..

[fajrdrako]

When I was very young - say, three or four years old - I hated having my hair washed. Every once in a while my mother would take me firmly in hand and wash my hair despite my protests and tears, and while she did, she would sing a hair-washing song that I enjoyed despite my distress. I remember it still. It went:

And every little wave had his nightcap on
Nightcap, white cap, nightcap on.
And every little wave had his nightcap on
So very, very early in the morning.

She always sang this when she washed my hair, and she never sang it except when she washed my hair. I have never heard this song in any other venue, and every year or two I do a Google search for it. I came up with nothing until today.

Today, I found it from two sources, both in the Internet Archive. One book is entitled In My Nursery, "a book of nursery rhymes by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards, 1850-1943". The other is Tirra Lirra Rhymes Old And New (1955) by Laura E. Richards, no doubt the same woman. It's called "A Song for Hal". I'd misremembered a word or two, or my mother had; it's "for" not "and", and "its" not "his". My mother had a habit of changing words in poems or songs when she liked 'her way' better.

The Wikipedia article on Laura E. Richards is interesting, and it mentions "Tirra Lirra Rhymes Old And New" (dating it to 1932) but not "In My Nursery". She wrote a lot, and won a Pulizer prize (with her sister, also a writer), and their mother wrote the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Rupublic." She lived in Boston.

Wikipedia links to some of her works on Gutenberg, mostly prose, nothing with the above titles.

So... I'm left with some questions. I know you won't be able to tell me how and where my mother learned it, but

(1) Are any of you familiar with Richards and her works?

(2) Was this song ever recorded? I'm wondering where my mother got the tune, which is not included in the above works. Since I only remember the chorus - and don't recall whether my mother sang the rest of it - I'd be curious to hear what it sounds like. YouTube isn't helping me.

(3) If there is sheet music for it, is it available somewhere?

Another interesting bit, found in Googling for "every little wave" - I found an anecdotal reference to this song online in the Kenyon Review. I say 'interesting' because this the item is in the right era, but also in Toronto, where my mother was born and raised. And the reference is explicitly to a song, not a poem.

The reference, if you're curious enough, is this, by Claire Messud:

In Toronto, in my grandmother’s house, my sister and I were always happy. Which is not to say that we did not bicker, as bickering, from very early on, was our mode of interaction; but that we adored my grandmother, and trusted her absolutely. She was rightly sized for us, at little over five feet, and stout, with pillowy white hair and a pillowy bosom (which we did not then know to be made of foam and removed, nightly) and an array of silky nylon dresses that seemed designed for hugging. She had small but firm arthritic hands that held ours warmly and allowed us the freedom to finger their odd bends and warts and calluses, and the smooth, distinct ridges of her fingernails. In the mornings, in a bedjacket with large buttons and her near-invisible hairnet (which we loved to pluck) upon her curls, she would invite us, one on either side of her, into her high old marriage bed to play games—‘I Spy’, or ‘I packed my bags to go to Boston’—and to sing songs—‘. . . every little wave had its nightcap on, nightcap, white cap, nightcap on . . .’; ‘Roll, those, roll those pretty eyes, eyes, that, I just idolize. . . ’—seemingly for hours. And how she fed us: daily (in memory, at least), she granted us our favorite meals: Campbell’s tomato bisque soup and salami sandwiches, or Chef Boyardee ravioli, eaten on the sun porch overlooking her steeply tiered back garden, my sister and I vying for the privilege of sitting on the stepping stool and so being able, with our feet, to swing its folding steps in and out, in and out, with spooky creaks, throughout the meal.

...Funny how we can think at the age of four that hair should never be washed, while at fourteen we want to wash it all the time.

Comments

Such find memories

[(Anonymous)]

My grandmother is in hospice and I was hoping to sing the full song to her so I googled it and found this site... She Would sing it to me on long car rides and when I would spend the night. The next part of the song is... said the stergon to the ell, just imagine how we feel, just as the morning is a dawning. Why don't people let us know when a sailing they will go, so very very early in the morning. And every little wave etc. Maybe there wasn't any more to the song... but I will keep checking this site from now on as someone out there must be able to help!