Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be?

History & Origin

"Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be?" is an old English folk song of uncertain origin, known in various forms since at least the mid-eighteenth century. The scenario is a simple domestic comedy: a young woman waiting impatiently for her sweetheart to return from the fair, growing increasingly agitated at his delay, while listing the gifts he promised to bring her.

The fair in pre-industrial England was a major social event — a market day elevated into a festival, with entertainment, commerce, gossip, and the opportunity to see and be seen. Young men going to the fair were expected to bring back gifts for their sweethearts: ribbons, flowers, trinkets. Johnny's promises are generous — blue ribbons, posies, lilies, red roses, a straw hat — which makes his failure to return all the more pointed.

The repeated chorus — "oh dear, what can the matter be?" — captures both genuine anxiety (something might have happened to him) and mounting exasperation (he has simply been distracted and forgotten the time). The ambiguity between these two readings gives the song its comic quality: the singer wants us to take her worry seriously, but the accumulation of promised gifts suggests that her real concern is whether she will get her ribbons.

"To tie up my bonnie brown hair" is a lovely closing detail — the ribbons are not merely decorative but specifically imagined, in a specific colour, for a specific purpose.