Oy. Take my advice: leave out lyrics from your books. Unless you research it all ahead of time and the scene just would not be the same without it, leave it out.
In BGCFA, there is a scene where Kelly is laying on the floor, working on a door jamb. She’s feeling weird being in the customer’s house alone so she sings a song. It is during this song that the customer comes home and startles her. The scene is very important and, to me, having her just “sing a ditty” just didn’t do it.
At first, Kelly sang “Get Along Little Dogies”. You know, “Yippee ti yi yay, get along little dogies/it’s your misfortune and none of my own”. Anyway, because it would appear in a commercial item (i.e. a published book), I needed permission to print it.
The first place to go is Public Domain Music site.
The second place is the US gov’t copyright office.
I did a search for the title at the PD site. Nothing. Not a good sign.
I did a search at the Copyright Office and got me 6 results. Skip the “summary” option and go straight to the “full”. The results won’t tell you much other than someone has something copyrighted. For a fiction book, that’s all you need to know. Go no further, change the scene or song. I did poke around some more though, because my curiosity was up. I found, via Wikipedia, that Tex Ritter’s first recording was of “Get Along Little Dogie” and “Sam Hall” way back in 1935. PBS did a show where the song was mentioned and they say the song is from 1868-1874, which is old enough to be public domain. But since so many people own copyrights to adaptations, etc, it wasn’t worth the risk.
Then I figured, heck, who would own the copyright to “On Top of Spaghetti”? Right? Wrong. A man by the name of Tom Glazer owned the copyright (now his estate does) and it was first recorded in 1963. The Boy Scouts list the lyrics on their website but don’t mention copyright. Again, it was Wikipedia that led me to the right place. “On Top of Spaghetti” was Mr. Glazer’s best selling recording.
Okay, now I was getting frustrated. I needed a certain kind of song, you know? So I came up with another: “Barbara Allen”. Success at last!
According to Public Domain Music site, it is given the creation date of 1666. The way PD works is they find and make copies of any sheet music that refers to the copyright date. They then sell those copies so that you can have physical proof of the copyright. “Barbara Allen” is available either individually or in a book. I just may order the book later.
Further research at, you guessed it, Wikipedia, gave me some interesting information about this song and folk songs in general. By the way, I love folk songs. “Barbara Allen” was my fave as a kid and it was the second song I learned to play on the guitar.
“Barbara Allen” is an old folk song and was not printed until 1780. The author is unknown and it is believed to be of Ireland or Scotland origin. But the fun began when I learned it is also referred to as “Child Ballad #84”. I thought it odd they would consider it a children’s ballad. Until I realized it was a man named Child who wrote a huge set of books about folk songs and the songs are referred to as “Child Ballads“. These books were five volumes printed in 1882-1898. The Sacred Texts site has almost the entire set of books on-line. I also came across the Folk Music On-line site which will be a great resource. Apparently, Child didn’t just list the lyrics. He researched all of them then made a list of 350 basic ones.
At any rate, I had my song. I used the lyrics I found on Wikipedia but changed them to how I knew the words as a kid.
In Scarlet town, where I was born,
There was a fair maid dwellin’,
Made every youth cry well-a-day
Her name was Barb’ry Allen.
‘Twas in the merry month of May,
The green buds they were swellin’,
Young William on his death-bed lay,
For love of Barb’ry Allen.
So, will I ever try to use a song in a book again? Well, yeah. I already have. And I actually have permission from the band to use lyrics from the chorus. But after that? Probably not. Too big a pain in the arse.