Bingo

Lyrics

The contemporary version generally goes as follows:

Though the first line is ungrammatical in standard English, using an apo koinou construction, it is nearly always sung with the lyrics as stated. The identity of Bingo is formally ambiguous, and it is occasionally suggested that it is the name of the farmer.

Earlier forms

The earliest known dated version of the song is in the 1778 book "The Scots Nightingale: or, Edinburgh Vocal Miscellany", where it bears the heading "Little BINGO. To its own tune."

The song was followed by another, less nursery-friendly one entitled "The Poet's Dog", sung to the same tune:

Another early reference to a form of the song is from the title of a piece of sheet music published about 1780, according to which the song was sung by William Swords, an actor at the Haymarket Theatre of London. Early versions of the song were variously titled "The Farmer's Dog Leapt o'er the Stile", "A Franklyn's Dogge", or "Little Bingo".

A nearly identical version of the song (without a title) dates from the 1785 songbook "The Humming Bird". A similar transcription exists from 1840, as part of The Ingoldsby Legends, the transcribing of which is credited in part to a "Mr. Simpkinson from Bath". This version drops several of the repeated lines found in the 1778 and 1785 versions and the transcription uses more archaic spelling and the first lines read "A franklyn's dogge" rather than "The farmer's dog". A version similar to the Ingoldsby one (with some spelling variations) was also noted from 1888.

The presence of the song in the United States was noted by Robert M. Charlton in 1842. English folklorist Alice Bertha Gomme recorded eight forms in 1894. Highly-differing versions were recorded in Monton, Shropshire, Liphook and Wakefield, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire and Enborne. All of these versions were associated with children's games, the rules differing by locality. Early versions of "Bingo" were also noted as adult drinking songs, as in a version where individual singers were expected to sing a letter from the spelling of the name, and were to take a drink if they failed to do so correctly.

Variations on the lyrics refer to the dog variously as belonging to a miller or a shepherd, and/or named "Bango" or "Pinto". In some variants, variations on the following third stanza are added:

This stanza is placed before or substituted for the stanza starting with "And is this not a sweet little song?"

Versions that are variations on the early version of "Bingo" have been recorded in classical arrangements by Frederick Ranalow (1925), John Langstaff (1952), and Richard Lewis (1960). Under the title "Little Bingo", a variation on the early version was recorded twice by folk singer Alan Mills, on Animals, Vol. 1 (1956) and on 14 Numbers, Letters, and Animal Songs (1972).

The song should not be confused with the 1961 UK hit pop song "Bingo, Bingo (I'm In Love)" by Dave Carey, which originated as a jingle for pirate station Radio Luxembourg.