Lyrics omitted. The annotations below are reproduced by permission of David Dodd; the song lyrics themselves are copyrighted and are not reproduced here. Read them at the official source: dead.net/songs.
Only performance known: (Thanks, Josh Frankel, for pointing this out): April 26, 1969, at the Electric Theater in Chicago. "What's Become of the Baby" appeared in a monster encore which included drums, "Viola Lee Blues," "Caution Jam," feedback, and "We Bid You Goodnight."
"What'll we do the with baby?
What'll we do with the baby?
What'll we do with the baby?
Oh we'll wrap it up in calico
Oh we'll wrap it up in calico
And send it to its pappy, O."
There's also the line in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, in which the Cheshire Cat asks Alice: "What became of the baby?" She replies that the baby turned into a pig and ran away.
"Xanadu, a kingdom on the coast of Asia where Kubla Khan ordered a stately pleasure dome to be constructed, described as "a miracle of rare device." The caves of ice beneath the sunny dome are particularly enchanting. ... It was in the nearby, ancient forests, in a savage, holy and enchanted places where women can be heard wailing for their demon lovers, that a mighty fountain of water, flung up violently from a deep chasm, was revealed to be the source of the sacred river Alph." (p. 416)Coleridge received the vision of Xanadu, he said, while in an opium-induced trance. He awoke from the trance having been given the poem, which he wrote down, but was interrupted, and only was only to commit a small portion of the poem to page. The introduction which Coleridge wrote for the publication of "Kubla Khan" included a part of another poem, which is mentioned in the annotation to "Ripple".
Kubla Khan (usually Kublai Khan) (1216-1294): Grandson of Ghengis Khan, ruled from Peking, which he founded. Marco Polo visited his court.
"Odin. The Scandinavian name of the god called by the Anglo- Saxons Woden; the god of wisdom, poetry, war, and agriculture. He became the All-wise by drinking from Mimir's fountain at the cost of one eye. His remaining eye is the Sun. [!] ... His two black ravens are Hugin (thought) and Munin (memory)."Mimir seems worth a look as well:
"Mimir. In Norse mythology, a giant water demon. He dwells at "Mimir's Well," the source of all wisdom."
Appears to be etymologically derived from the ancient Semitic root, el, meaning God.
Used in this song, it seems to refer back to the Khan character, who is of non-specific Asiatic derivation.
The other reference to Allah in the Grateful Dead universe is the "Blues for Allah" lyric by Hunter.
"Arabian Nights' Entertainments, The A collection of ancient Persian-Indian-Arabian tales, orginally in Arabic, arranged in its present form about 1450, probably in Cairo. ... Although the stories are discrete in plot, they are unified by Scheherazade, the supposed teller; she postpones her execution by telling her husband, Schahriah, a story night after night, without revealing the climax until the following session." (p. 42)Hunter also refers to the Arabian Nights in "Blues for Allah", with the line, "The thousand stories have come round to one again."