<P> The UK variant has the nurse and the dog, it ends by patting the dog . </P> <P> The rhyme is first recorded in Germany in 1826, as "Es fuhr ein Bau'r ins Holz," and was more clearly a courtship game with a farmer choosing a wife, then in turn the selecting of a child, maid, and serving man, who leaves the maid after kissing . This was probably taken to North America by German immigrants, where it next surfaced in New York City in 1883 much in its modern form and using a melody similar to "A Hunting We Will Go". From here it seems to have been adopted throughout the United States, Canada (noted from 1893), the Netherlands (1894) and Great Britain; it is first found in Scotland in 1898 and England from 1909 . In the early twentieth century it was evident as wide as France ("Le fermier dans son pré"), Sweden ("En bonde i vår by"), Australia, and South Africa . </P> <P> A dell is a wooded valley . In the Dutch language, the word deel means, among other things, the workspace in a farmer's barn . The use of dell in this song may be a bastardisation of this term . </P> <P> Like most children's songs, there are geographic variations . </P>

What's a dell from farmer in the dell