It’s been a puzzle to track the origin of the saying good night, sleep tight, see you on the big drum. Perhaps it’s an innocent mixup that takes from the Robert Burns poem Tam o’ Shanter, which reads, “good night, sleep tight, I’ll see you on the Brigadoon.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “On the Big Drum Followup”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
You may remember a call we had from Sarah Osborne. She lives in Cobham, Virginia, but she grew up in England, and she wanted to know the origin of an odd family saying.
When Sarah was a child, her mother tucked her in every night with the phrase, good night, sleep tight, see you on the big drum. And we were intrigued by this linguistic mystery, but we really didn’t come up with a good answer for her about what in the world that meant.
And something about this phrase piqued the imagination of our listeners. We were deluged with emails speculating about what the big drum might be. But we never did really get an answer.
Sarah herself thought it might have something to do with her family’s military roots, and after that call aired, her 80-year-old mother emailed from England suggesting maybe it had to do with the traditional drumhead religious service held on naval ships because, of course, they didn’t have chapels on naval ships.
And her mother writes, the altar was formed by a pyramid of drums laid there by the drummers from the ship’s naval band. There would be four small drums and the largest drum placed on top and then draped with the Union Jack or military standards.
And indeed, if you Google the phrase drumhead altar, you’ll see lots of instances of this. An improvised altar in the field that’s made from a stack of military drums piled neatly and draped with the colors.
And there’s also such a thing, I didn’t know this, as a drumhead court-martial.
Oh, I didn’t know that either.
Yeah, it’s one that’s held in haste in the field when officers have to deal with the offender right then and there.
So who knows? I mean…
But the relationship between that and the thing that you would say to a child at bedtime is kind of distant.
Well, she was suggesting that maybe if you don’t go to sleep, you’ll get in trouble. You’ll get a court-martial.
Yeah, but who knows?
Well, one that I liked, we got an email from John Vanderpan in Benbrook, Texas, and he suggested, actually it was his wife who tipped him off to the idea, that perhaps it has to do with the Robert Burns poem Tam O’Shanter, which features Brigadoon.
And he suggested, or his wife suggested through him, that perhaps it was a mishearing of Brigadoon, sleep tight and I’ll see you on the Brigadoon instead of Big Drum. Right?
And he suggests that perhaps the mother was reassuring the child of safety since witches or beings of the night can’t follow them on to the Brigadoon.
Yeah, that could be. Interesting, right?
Yeah.
So, John, that was a great email. If you have an idea about what sleep tight and see you on the big drum could possibly mean or where it could come from, let us know.
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