The rhyme is believed to have first appeared in print in Mother Goose's Melody (London c. 1765),[2] possibly published by John Newbery, and which was reprinted in Boston in 1785.

[5] Modern versions often alter the opening words to "Rock-a-bye, baby", a phrase that was first recorded in Benjamin Tabart's Songs for the Nursery (London, 1805).

[3][6] The scholars Iona and Peter Opie note that the age of the words is uncertain, and that "imaginations have been stretched to give the rhyme significance".

The only one mentioned by the Opies in The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes (1951) is a variant of Henry Purcell's 1686 quickstep Lillibullero,[2] but others were once popular in North America.

An 1887 editorial in Boston's The Musical Herald mentions "Rock-a-bye-baby" as being part of the street band repertoire,[9] while in that same year The Times carried an advertisement for a performance in London by the Moore and Burgess Minstrels, featuring among others "the great American song of ROCK-A-BYE".

[15] Another in St Nicholas Magazine for 1881 and ascribed to M. E. Wilkins begins with the words of the traditional lullaby, which are then followed by fourteen stanzas of more varied form.