"Winkin, Blinkin and Nod" misattribution

[suburbanbanshee]

Don't know where to put this, since I've been away from Librivox so long....

Under the poetry index, "Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod" is listed as being by "Unknown". This is incorrect in more than one way.

First of all, the fishermen are spelled "Wynken, Blynken and Nod".

Second, its author is known. It's a poem by Eugene Field, and it's really titled "Dutch Lullabye".

Third, he died in 1895, so public domain is safe and intact -- as regards the lyrics. In fact, some of his works are on Project Gutenberg. (And Librivox.) A Little Book of Western Verse (1889) is the one which contains "Dutch Lullabye".

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9606

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Field

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wynken%2C_Blynken%2C_and_Nod
"Wynken, Blynken and Nod"

(Btw, the melodies to which this poem is often sung _are_ still in copyright. A lot of folks aren't aware of this.)

I have to admit that Field was strongly influenced by the folk poetic tradition, so this kind of confusion is understandable. But there really are a lot of folk songs and nursery rhymes whose authors are known, and who are often quite recent -- sometimes still within copyright. Just because everybody knows a song or poem is "traditional", doesn't mean the tradition isn't a recent one. So be careful.

[LibraryLady]

Thanks for the info, suburbanbanshee! I've been going through all the old poetry collections and adding in links to the public domain sources for every single poem and that one had me stumped. The person who read it had marked it as unknown and while I found some references to Eugene Field, I couldn't find the poem by him. It all makes sense now that I know it has a different title!