About: Oats Peas Beans and Barley Grow

"Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow" (often sung as "Oats and Beans and Barley Grow") is a traditional British and American folk song, 1380 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The tune normally used goes by the name "Baltimore" and appears in Joshua Cushing's book "The Fifer's Companion" (1790). According to Alice Bertha Gomme's book "The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland" (1894), this is a "play song", in which children perform actions with the song, standing in a ring. In "Notes and Queries" 7th series, number xii (c 1870) it is discussed, but the Columbia State University website claims that the earliest known version of the words is dated 1898 (Gomme).