"It's Raining, It's Pouring" is an English language nursery rhyme and children's song of American origin. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 16814.

Origins

The first two lines of this rhyme can be found in The Little Mother Goose, published in the US in 1912. The melody is the same as "A Tisket, A Tasket" and has been associated with "What Are Little Boys Made Of?", which has a different melody. The earliest known audio recording of the song was made in 1939 in New York by anthropologist and folklorist Herbert Halpert and is held in the Library of Congress. Charles Ives added musical notes in 1939, and a version of it was copyrighted in 1944 by Freda Selicoff. The lyrics of the poem go as follows:

Interpretation

It has been suggested that “it’s raining. It’s pouring” is a metaphor for alcohol liberally flowing. The old man gets drunk causing him to bump his head. It has further been suggested that the verse is a "classic description" of a head injury ("bumped his head"), followed by a lucid interval and an inability to resume normal activity ("couldn't get up in the morning"). Andrew Kaye in Essential Neurosurgery suggested that, in regard to the first verse at least, the rhyme is an interpretation of an accidental death.