Morningtown Ride
All bound for Morningtown, many miles away — rocking and rolling to sleep
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Arrangement: Ian J. Watts / Mike Wilbury · Singalongasong Band / ClassicRocks
Lyrics
Train whistle blowing,
Makes a sleepy noise.
Underneath their blankets
Go all the girls and boys.
Rocking, rolling, riding,
Out along the bay,
All bound for Morningtown,
Many miles away.
Maybe it is raining
Where our train will ride;
All the little travellers
Are warm and snug inside.
Rocking, rolling, riding,
Out along the bay,
All bound for Morningtown,
Many miles away.
Somewhere there is sunshine,
Somewhere there is day,
Somewhere there is Morningtown,
Many miles away.
Rocking, rolling, riding,
Out along the bay,
All bound for Morningtown,
Many miles away.
Traditional lyrics — public domain. Arrangement © Singalongasong Band / ClassicRocks.
History & Background
History & Origin
"Morningtown Ride" was written by American folk singer and activist Malvina Reynolds and published in 1957. Reynolds is best known for "Little Boxes", her satirical song about suburban conformity, but "Morningtown Ride" shows the other side of her talent: a gift for gentle, dreaming melody that speaks directly to the experience of childhood.
The song was recorded by The Seekers in 1964, and their version became enormously popular in Britain and Australia, reaching the top ten in the United Kingdom and becoming one of the best-known lullabies of the 1960s. For a generation of British children, "Morningtown Ride" was the sound of bedtime.
The central conceit is perfectly judged for a lullaby: the train journey. A train is already a naturally soporific experience — the rhythm, the warmth, the sense of moving without effort, the darkness outside. Malvina Reynolds imagines the children's night journey as a train ride, rocking and rolling through darkness towards a destination called Morningtown, which is simultaneously dawn and the awakening from sleep.
The song acknowledges that the journey might take children through rain, but they are warm and snug inside — protected, cared for, insulated from whatever lies outside the window. It is a lullaby that takes the mild anxieties of childhood — the dark, the unknown, the distance — and makes them into a comfort.
