"Green Grow the Rushes, O" (alternatively "Ho" or "Oh") (also known as "The Twelve Prophets", "The Carol of the Twelve Numbers", "The Teaching Song", "The Dilly Song", or "The Ten Commandments"), is an English folk song (Roud #133). It is sometimes sung as a Christmas carol. It often takes the form of antiphon, where one voice calls and is answered by a chorus.
The song is not to be confused with Robert Burns's similarly titled "Green Grow the Rashes".
It is cumulative in structure, with each verse built up from the previous one by appending a new stanza. The first verse is:
:I'll sing you one, O
:Green grow the rushes, O
:What is your one, O?
:One is one and all alone
:And evermore shall be so.
There are many variants of the song, collected by musicologists including Sabine Baring-Gould and Cecil Sharp from the West of England at the start of the twentieth century. The stanzas are clearly much corrupted and often obscure, but the references are generally agreed to be both Biblical and astronomical.
Lyrics
The twelfth, cumulated, verse runs:
:I'll sing you twelve, O
:Green grow the rushes, O
:What are your twelve, O?
:Twelve for the twelve Apostles
:Eleven for the eleven who went to heaven,
:Ten for the ten commandments,
:Nine for the nine bright shiners,
:Eight for the April Rainers.
:Seven for the seven stars in the sky,
:Six for the six proud walkers,
:Five for the symbols at your door,
:Four for the Gospel makers,
:Three, three, the rivals,
:Two, two, the lily-white boys,
:Clothed all in green, O
:One is one and all alone
:And evermore shall be so.
Origins
The lyrics of the song are, in many places, exceedingly obscure, and present an unusual mixture of Christian catechesis, astronomical mnemonics, and what may be pagan cosmology. The musicologist Cecil Sharp, influential in the folklore revival in England, noted in his 1916 One Hundred English Folksongs that the words are "so corrupt, indeed, that in some cases we can do little more than guess at their original meaning".
The song's origins and age are uncertain: however, a counting song with similar lyrics, but without the 'Green grow the rushes' chorus, was sung by English children in the first half of the 19th century.