This song tells the whimsical story of a
goatherd whose
yodeling is heard from far off and by passers-by, until he falls in love with a girl who wears a pale-pink coat, with her mother joining in the yodeling. The original 1959 musical has this as the song
Maria (played by
Mary Martin) sings to comfort the Von Trapp children during a storm. For the
1965 film adaptation, screenwriter Ernest Lehman repositioned this song to a later part of the film wherein Maria (played by
Julie Andrews) and the children sing it as part of a
marionette show they perform for their father. The song in place of "The Lonely Goatherd" was "
My Favorite Things", which was originally sung earlier in the original musical in the office of the Mother Abbess, as a duet between her and Maria. The duet occurs just prior to Maria's departure to work for Captain von Trapp as governess to his seven children. The puppets appear only once in the film, although the song appears later as Georg and Maria are dancing outside during the party. While many stage productions retain the original order as used in the 1959 musical, many other productions have also adapted the changes made in the film, shifting "The Lonely Goatherd" to another scene and adding "My Favorite Things" in its place. In the 1981
West End revival with
Petula Clark, Maria and the children sing it at a fair, and in the 1998
Broadway revival with
Rebecca Luker it is sung at the Salzburg Festival concert, replacing what would have been an intricate Bach-sounding reprise of "Do Re Mi", showing how exemplary the Von Trapp children were at singing difficult choral compositions. Here, the vocal arrangements were by
Jeanine Tesori, giving the audience an idea of how versatile they were. In the 2013 NBC broadcast of
The Sound of Music Live!, it was once again used as it was in the original 1959 production. The lively number reappears later in both the original stage version, the film version and the 2013 NBC special broadcast as a deliberately paced and very Austrian-sounding instrumental, the
Ländler, a dance performed by the Captain and Maria. It then serves as the catalyst to a dramatic juncture in the film, as the young
novice Maria realizes that she is in love with the Captain. The famous
marionette puppetry sequence in the film was produced and performed by the leading puppeteers of the day,
Bil Baird and
Cora Baird. The inspiration for the "Lonely Goatherd" scene came from the famous
Salzburger Marionettentheater. According to
The Sound of Music Companion, Hammerstein had come up with several phrases to rhyme with the word goatherd, such as "remote heard", "throat heard", "moat heard", etc. to add enjoyment to the song. == In popular culture ==