"Cricket on the Hearth" is an old-time or Bluegrass breakdown from Arkansas and east Tennessee in D Major. The parts are played AABB. It is a member of a large tune family that includes "Damon's Winder", "The Devil in Georgia", "Drunken Billy Goat", "Grand Hornpipe", "Marmaduke's Hornpipe", "Mud Fence", "Ride the Goat Over the Mountains", "Rocky Mountain Goat" and "Swiss Chalet". The title appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountain fiddle tunes compiled by folklorist/musicologist Vance Randolph, published in 1954. It was printed in Brody's Fiddler's Fakebook (1983), Phillips' Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 1 (1994), Silberberg's Tunes I Learned at Tractor Tavern (2002). It was recorded by Jay Belt on Fiddlin' Jay Belt, Kenny Baker on Portrait of a Bluegrass Fiddler and on Master Fiddler, Smokey Valley Boys on Music of North Carolina (1978), John McCutcheon on The Wind That Shakes the Barley: Hammered Dulcimer Music (1977).