"Polly Put the Kettle On" is a popular English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 nursery rhyme

Nursery rhyme

The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.-Lullabies:...

. It has a Roud Folk Song Index

Roud Folk Song Index

The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 300,000 references to over 21,600 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world...

 number of 7899.

Lyrics

Common modern versions include:

Polly put the kettle on,

Polly put the kettle on,

Polly put the kettle on,

We'll all have tea.

Sukey take it off again,

Sukey take it off again,

Sukey take it off again,

They've all gone away.

Origins

The tune associated with this rhyme "Jenny's Baubie" is known to have existed since the 1770s. The melody is vaguely similar to "Oh du lieber Augustin

Oh du lieber Augustin

"Oh du lieber Augustin" is a Viennese song, composed by Marx Augustin in 1679.At this time Vienna was struck by the bubonic plague and Augustin was a ballad singer and bagpiper, who toured Vienna‘s inns entertaining people...

", which was published in Mainz in 1788–89.

A song with the title: "Molly Put the Kettle On or Jenny's Baubie" was published by Joseph Dale in London in 1803. It was also printed, with "Polly" instead of "Molly" in Dublin about 1790–1810 and in New York around 1803–07.

In middle-class families in the mid-eighteenth century "Sukey" was equivalent to "Susan" and Polly was a pet-form of Mary.

The nursery rhyme is mentioned in Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

' Barnaby Rudge

Barnaby Rudge

Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty is a historical novel by British novelist Charles Dickens. Barnaby Rudge was one of two novels that Dickens published in his short-lived weekly serial Master Humphrey's Clock...

(1841), which is the first record of the lyrics in their modern form.

In popular culture

• It is also the name of an unrelated song (1924) by the American Quartet
  American Quartet (ensemble)
  The American Quartet was a quartet of singers that recorded for various companies from 1899 to 1925. The lineup varied over the years, but the most famous lineup recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company from 1909 to 1913.*John Bieling - first tenor...
  
  .