Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was an American musician and actor with a career tha… Read Full Bio ↴Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was an American musician and actor with a career that spanned more than six decades. Ives began his career as an itinerant singer and guitarist, eventually launching his own radio show, The Wayfaring Stranger, which popularized traditional folk songs.

Ives began his career as an itinerant singer and guitarist, eventually launching his own radio show, The Wayfaring Stranger, which popularized traditional folk songs. In 1942, he appeared in Irving Berlin's This Is the Army and became a major star of CBS Radio. In the 1960s, he successfully crossed over into country music, recording hits such as "A Little Bitty Tear" and "Funny Way of Laughin'". Ives was also a popular film actor through the late 1940s and '50s. His film roles included parts in So Dear to My Heart (1948) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), as well as the role of Rufus Hannassey in The Big Country (1958), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Ives is often associated with the Christmas season. He did voice-over work as Sam the Snowman, narrator of the classic 1964 Christmas television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Ives also worked on the special's soundtrack, including the songs "A Holly Jolly Christmas" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", both of which continue to chart annually on the Billboard holiday charts into the 2020s.

The Riddle Song
Burl Ives Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Burl Ives - Riddle Song

I gave my love a cherry
That had no stone
I gave my love a chicken
That had no bone
I told my love a story
That had no end

I gave my love a baby
With no crying.
How can there be a cherry
That has no stone?
And how can there be a chicken
That has no bone?
And how can there be a story
That has no end?
And how can there be a baby
With no crying?

A cherry when it's blooming
It has no stone
A chicken when it's piping
It has no bone
The story that I love you
It has no end

A baby when it's sleeping
It's no crying.

Overall Meaning

The lyrics of Burl Ives's "Riddle Song" present several curious scenarios, which appear paradoxical and illogical. The singer starts off by giving his love a cherry with no stone and a chicken with no bone. He then tells his love a story with no end and gives her a baby with no crying. The chorus consists of a series of rhetorical questions, each demanding an explanation for the unlikely situations presented in the verse.

The song is structured as a riddle, where seemingly contradictory or absurd ideas require a clever resolution. The answers come in the second verse, albeit in a somewhat cryptic form. The cherry with no stone refers to the flowering stage of the fruit, before the pit develops. The chicken with no bone might be a metaphor for a shy or submissive animal that lacks strength and self-assertion. The story with no end is simply the singer's declaration of love, which will never be completed or exhausted. The baby with no crying could signify the peaceful and content state of an infant when asleep.

One interpretation of the "Riddle Song" is that it is a playful and poetic way of expressing the limits of language and metaphor. It shows that words and symbols can be manipulated and stretched to create new meanings, but they also have inherent constraints and boundaries that cannot be ignored. The song also speaks to the power of imagination and creativity to overcome rationality and logic.

Line by Line Meaning

I gave my love a cherry
A cherry when it's blooming It has no stone

That had no stone
A cherry when it's blooming It has no stone

I gave my love a chicken
A chicken when it's piping It has no bone

That had no bone
A chicken when it's piping It has no bone

I told my love a story
The story that I love you It has no end

That had no end
The story that I love you It has no end

I gave my love a baby
A baby when it's sleeping It's no crying

With no crying
A baby when it's sleeping It's no crying

How can there be a cherry
A cherry when it's blooming It has no stone

That has no stone?
A cherry when it's blooming It has no stone

And how can there be a chicken
A chicken when it's piping It has no bone