Old Farmer Buck - Pearl S Buck (Brass Quintet) Brass Quintet - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.802620

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973; also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu; Chinese: 赛珍珠) was an American writer and novelist. As the daughter of missionaries, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in Zhenjiang, China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces". She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

After returning to the United States in 1935, she continued writing prolifically, became a prominent advocate of the rights of women and minority groups, and wrote widely on Chinese and Asian cultures, becoming particularly well known for her efforts on behalf of Asian and mixed-race adoption.

There are no adult rhymes in this ditty, because this English folk song was written for children. Its three verses each relate the misadventures of a farmer - beginning with Old Farmer Buck - who appear to have been drinking too much. Perhaps they all came up from Somerset where the cider rotted their brains? 

In 1926, an arrangement of this song in 4/4 time by Gerrard Williams was published by J. Curwen & Sons of London. It was still being taught in English schools in the 1960s, and perhaps later.