Golden Slumbers

Where it comes from

This lullaby is over 400 years old. It’s a song from Patient Grissil, a comedy written by Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle and William Haughton around 1600 and printed in 1603. In the play, an old basket-maker sings it to rock his daughter’s twin babies to sleep. That’s why it says “them”.

No music survives from 1603. In the 1850s the music historian William Chappell set the words to an old English dance tune called “May Fair”, and that’s the tune usually printed with it. You can see it in his Popular Music of the Olden Time.

The Beatles borrowed the opening for “Golden Slumbers” on Abbey Road (1969). Their song has its own tune and changes some of the words, so these are the older ones.

Old words

• slumbers: sleep.
• awake (“smiles awake you”): wake you up.
• wantons: playful, wriggly little ones. It was an affectionate word for children then.
• care: worry. “You are care, and care must keep you” means something like: you’re the one I worry about, and worrying will keep you awake, so go to sleep.

How to sing it

• With one baby, you can sing “rock them” as “rock you”.
• The last line of each verse is a lovely place to slow right down and sway.