"Three Little Maids from School Are We", sometimes listed as "Three Little Maids", is a song from Act I of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado.
Background
In an 1885 interview with the New-York Daily Tribune, W. S. Gilbert said that the short stature of Leonora Braham, Jessie Bond and Sybil Grey "suggested the advisability of grouping them as three Japanese school-girls", the opera's "three little maids". He also recounted that a young Japanese lady, a tea server at the Japanese village, came to rehearsals to coach the three little maids in Japanese dance.[1] On 12 February 1885, one month before The Mikado opened, The Illustrated London News wrote about the opening of the Japanese village noting, among other things, that "the graceful, fantastic dancing featured ... three little maids!"[2]
Synopsis and analysis
The song is a trio for three female characters, the schoolgirls Yum-Yum, Peep Bo and Pitti-Sing. Near the beginning of the opera, Nanki-Poo, disguised as a poor minstrel, but secretly the son of the Mikado (the emperor of Japan), has returned to the Town of Titipu to inquire about his beloved, Yum-Yum, who is a ward of Ko-Ko, the town's Lord High Executioner. Pooh-Bah, a high officer of state, informs Nanki-Poo that Yum-Yum is scheduled to marry Ko-Ko on the very day that he has returned. Ko-Ko arrives, soon followed by Yum-Yum, Peep-Bo, Pitti-Sing and their schoolmates, and they introduced themselves with this song.
The characters sing that they are "filled to the brim with girlish glee", find "fun" in life and "come from a ladies' seminary". The three schoolgirls note, arithmetically, that the "total sum" of three little maids is reached by adding the bride, Yum-Yum, to the two others who are "in attendance" on her for her wedding, and that if the bride is subtracted from the three, the other two "remain". The lyrics' rhyme scheme is as follows: AAAB, CCCB, DDDB, EEEB, FFFB, with a choral reprise of DDDB.[3]
The Capitol Steps performed a parody titled "Three Little Kurds from School Are We"[15] about conditions in Iraq and "Three little wives of Newt", a 2012 lampoon of candidate Newt Gingrich's marital issues.[16]