The King of France went up the hill,
With twenty thousand men:
The King of France came down the hill,
And ne'er went up again—
was composed before 1588, It occurs in an old tract called Pigges
Corantoe, 1642, where it is entitled "Old Tarlton's Song," referring to
Tarlton the jester, who died in 1588. The following one belongs to the
seventeenth century:
As I was going by Charing Cross,
I saw a black man upon a black horse;
They told me it was King Charles the First;
Oh dear, my heart was ready to burst!
[Footnote 7: An early variation occurs in MS.
Sloane 1489:
The king of France, and four thousand men,
They drew their swords, and put them up again.]
Political nursery-rhymes, or rather political rhymes of a jingling
character, which, losing their original application, are preserved only
in the nursery, were probably common in the seventeenth century. The two
just quoted have evidently an historical application. The manuscript
miscellanies of the time of James I. and Charles I. contain several
copies of literal rhymes not very unlike "A, B, C, tumble-down D." In
the reign of Charles II. political pasquinades constantly partook of
the genuine nursery character. We may select the following example, of
course put into the mouth of that sovereign, preserved in MS. Douce 357,
f. 124, in the Bodleian Library:
See-saw, sack-a-day;
Monmouth is a pretie boy,
Richmond is another,
Grafton is my onely joy,
And why should I these three destroy
To please a pious brother?
"What is the rhyme for porringer?" was written on occasion of the
marriage of Mary, the daughter of James Duke of York, afterwards James
II., with the young Prince of Orange: and the following alludes to
William III. and George Prince of Denmark:
William and Mary, George and Anne,
Four such children had never a man:
They put their father to flight and shame,
And call'd their brother a shocking bad name.
Another nursery song on King William is not yet obsolete, but its
application is not generally known. My authority is the title of it in
MS. Harl. 7316:
As I walk'd by myself,
And talked to myself,
Myself said unto me,
Look to thyself,
Take care of thyself,
For nobody cares for thee.
I answer'd myself,
And said to myself
In the self-same repartee,
Look to thyself,
Or not look to thyself,
The self-same thing will be.
To this class of rhymes I may add the following on Dr. Sacheverel,
which was obtained from oral tradition:
Doctor Sacheverel
Did very well,
But Jacky Dawbin
Gave him a warning.
When there are no allusions to guide us, it is only by accident that we
can hope to test the history and antiquity of these kind of scraps, but
we have no doubt whatever that many of them are centuries old. The
following has been traced to the time of Henry VI., a singular doggerel,
the joke of which consists in saying it so quickly that it cannot be
told whether it is English or gibberish:
In fir tar is,
In oak none is,
In mud eel is,
In clay none is,
Goat eat ivy,
Mare eat oats.
"Multiplication is vexation," a painful reality to schoolboys, was found
a few years ago in a manuscript dated 1570; and the memorial lines,
"Thirty days hath September," occur in the Return from Parnassus, an old
play printed in 1606. Our own reminiscences of such matters, and those
of Shakespeare, may thus have been identical! "To market, to market, to
buy a plum-bun," is partially quoted in Florio's New World of Words,
1611, in v. 'Abómba.' The old song of the "Carrion Crow sat on an Oak,"
was discovered by me in MS. Sloane 1489, of the time of Charles I., but
under a different form:
Hic, hoc, the carrion crow,
For I have shot something too low:
I have quite missed my mark,
And shot the poor sow to the heart;
Wife, bring treacle in a spoon,
Or else the poor sow's heart will down.
"Sing a song of sixpence" is quoted by Beaumont and Fletcher. "Buz,
quoth the blue fly," which is printed in the nursery halfpenny books,
belongs to Ben Jonson's Masque of Oberon; the old ditty of "Three Blind
Mice" is found in the curious music book entitled Deuteromelia, or the
Second Part of Musicke's Melodie, 1609; and the song, "When I was a
little girl, I wash'd my mammy's dishes," is given by Aubrey in MS.
Lansd. 231. "A swarm of bees in May," is quoted by Miege, 1687. And so
on of others, fragments of old catches and popular songs being
constantly traced in the apparently unmeaning rhymes of the nursery.
Most of us have heard in time past the school address to a story-teller:
Liar, liar, lick dish,
Turn about the candlestick.
Not very important lines, one would imagine, but they explain a passage
in Chettle's play of the Tragedy of Hoffman, or a Revenge for a Father,
4to. Lond, 1631, which would be partially inexplicable without such
assistance:
_Lor._ By heaven! it seemes hee did, but all was vaine;
The flinty rockes had cut his tender scull,
And the rough water wash't away his braine.
_Luc._ Lyer, lyer, licke dish!
The intention of the last speaker is sufficiently intelligible, but a
future editor, anxious to investigate his author minutely, might search
in vain for an explanation of _licke dish_. Another instance[8] of the
antiquity of children's rhymes I met with lately at Stratford-on-Avon,
in a MS. of the seventeenth century, in the collection of the late
Captain James Saunders, where, amongst common-place memoranda on more
serious subjects, written about the year 1630, occurred a version of
one of our most favorite nursery songs:
I had a little bonny nagg,
His name was Dapple Gray;
And he would bring me to an ale-house
A mile out of my way.
[Footnote 8: A dance called _Hey, diddle,
diddle_, is mentioned in the play of _King
Cambises_, written about 1561, and the several
rhymes commencing with the words may have been
original adaptations to that dance-tune.]
"Three children sliding on the ice" is founded on a metrical tale
published at the end of a translation of Ovid de Arte Amandi, 1662.[9]
The lines,
There was an old woman
Liv'd under a hill,
And if she ben't gone,
She lives there still—
[Footnote 9: See the whole poem in my Nursery
Rhymes of England, ed. 1842, p. 19.]
form part of an old catch, printed in the Academy of Complements, ed.
1714, p. 108. The same volume (p. 140) contains the original words to
another catch, which has been corrupted in its passage to the nursery:
There was an old man had three sons,
Had three sons, had three sons;
There was an old man had three sons,
Jeffery, James, and Jack.
Jeffery was hang'd and James was drown'd,
And Jack was lost, that he could not be found,
And the old man fell into a swoon,
For want of a cup of sack!
It is not improbable that Shakespeare, who has alluded so much and so
intricately to the vernacular rural literature of his day, has more
notices of nursery-rhymes and tales than research has hitherto elicited.
I am only acquainted with one reference to the former, "Pillicock sat on
Pillicock hill," which is quoted by Edgar in King Lear, iii. 4, and is
found in Gammer Gurton's Garland, and in most modern collections of
English nursery-rhymes. The secret meaning is not very delicate, nor is
it necessary to enter into any explanation on the subject. It may,
however, be worthy of remark, that the term _pillicock_ is found in a
manuscript (Harl. 913) in the British Museum of the thirteenth century.
English children accompanied their amusements with trivial verses from a
very early period, but as it is only by accident that any allusions to
them have been made, it is difficult to sustain the fact by many
examples. The Nomenclator or Remembrancer of Adrianus Junius, translated
by Higins, and edited by Fleming, 8vo. 1585, contains a few notices of
this kind; p. 298, "βασιλινδα, the playe called one penie, one
penie, come after me; χυτρινδα, the play called selling of
peares, or how many plums for a penie; p. 299, χοινοφιλινδα,
a kinde of playe called
Clowt, clowt,
To beare about,
or my hen hath layd; ιποστρακισμος, a kind of sport or play
with an oister shell or a stone throwne into the water, and making
circles yer it sinke, &c.; it is called,
A ducke and a drake,
And a halfe penie cake."
This last notice is particularly curious, for similar verses are used by
boys at the present day at the game of water-skimming. The amusement
itself is very ancient, and a description of it may be seen in Minucius
Felix, Lugd. Bat. 1652, p. 3. There cannot be a doubt but that many of
the inexplicable nonsense-rhymes of our nursery belonged to antique
recreations, but it is very seldom their original application can be
recovered. The well-known doggerel respecting the tailor of Bicester may
be mentioned as a remarkable instance of this, for it is one of the most
common nursery-rhymes of the present day, and Aubrey, MS. Lansd. 231,
writing in the latter part of the seventeenth century, preserved it as
part of the formula of a game called _leap-candle_. "The young girls in
and about Oxford have a sport called Leap-Candle, for which they set a
candle in the middle of the room in a candlestick, and then draw up
their coats into the form of breaches, and dance over the candle back
and forth, with these words:
The tailor of Biciter,
He has but one eye,
He cannot cut a pair of green galagaskins,
If he were to die.
This sport in other parts is called _Dancing the Candle Rush_." It may be
necessary to observe that _galagaskins_ were wide loose trousers.
The rhyme of Jack Horner has been stated to be a satire on the
Puritanical aversion to Christmas pies and suchlike abominations. It
forms part of a metrical chap-book history, founded on the same story as
the Friar and the Boy, entitled "The Pleasant History of Jack Horner,
containing his witty tricks, and pleasant pranks, which he played from
his youth to his riper years: right pleasant and delightful for winter
and summer's recreation," embellished with frightful woodcuts, which
have not much connexion with the tale. The pleasant history commences as
follows:
Jack Horner was a pretty lad,
Near London he did dwell,
His father's heart he made full glad,
His mother lov'd him well.
While little Jack was sweet and young,
If he by chance should cry,
His mother pretty sonnets sung,
With a lul-la-ba-by,
With such a dainty curious tone,
As Jack sat on her knee,
So that, e'er he could go alone,
He sung as well as she.
A pretty boy of curious wit,
All people spoke his praise,
And in the corner would he sit
In Christmas holydays.
When friends they did together meet,
To pass away the time—
Why, little Jack, he sure would eat
His Christmas pie in rhyme.
And said, Jack Horner, in the corner,
Eats good Christmas pie,
And with his thumbs pulls out the plumbs,
And said, Good boy am I!
Here we have an important discovery! Who before suspected that the
nursery-rhyme was written by Jack Horner himself?
Few children's rhymes are more common than those relating to Jack Sprat
and his wife, "Jack Sprat could eat no fat," &c.; but it is little
thought they have been current for two centuries. Such, however, is the
fact, and when Howell published his collection of Proverbs in 1659, p.
20, the story related to no less exalted a personage than an archdeacon:
Archdeacon Pratt would eat no fatt,
His wife would eat no lean;
'Twixt Archdeacon Pratt and Joan his wife,
The meat was eat up clean.
On the same page of this collection we find the commencement of the
rigmarole, "A man of words and not of deeds," which in the next century
was converted into a burlesque song on the battle of Culloden![10]
Double Dee Double Day,
Set a garden full of seeds;
When the seeds began to grow,
It's like a garden full of snow.
When the snow began to melt,
Like a ship without a belt.
When the ship began to sail,
Like a bird without a tail.
When the bird began to fly,
Like an eagle in the sky.
When the sky began to roar,
Like a lion at the door.
When the door began to crack,
Like a stick laid o'er my back.
When my back began to smart,
Like a penknife in my heart.
When my heart began to bleed,
Like a needleful of thread.
When the thread began to rot,
Like a turnip in the pot.
When the pot began to boil,
Like a bottle full of oil.
When the oil began to settle,
Like our Geordies bloody battle.
[Footnote 10: The following nursery game, played
by two girls, one personating the mistress and
the other a servant, was obtained from Yorkshire,
and may be interpreted as a dialogue between a
lady and her Jacobite maid:
_Lady._ Jenny, come here! So I hear you have
been to see that man.
_Maid._ What man, madam?
_Lady._ Why, the handsome man.
_Maid._ Why, madam, as I was a-passing by,
Thinking no harm, no not in the least, not I,
I did go in,
But had no ill intention in the thing,
For, as folks say, a cat may look at a king.
_Lady._ A king do you call him? You rebellious slut!
_Maid._ I did not call him so, dear lady, but—
_Lady._ But me none of your buttings, for not another day
Shall any rebel in my service stay;
I owe you twenty shillings—there's a guinea!
Go, pack your clothes, and get about your business,
Jenny.]
The earliest copy of the saying, "A man of words and not of deeds," I
have hitherto met with, occurs in MS. Harl. 1927, of the time of James
I. Another version, written towards the close of the seventeenth
century, but unfitted for publication, is preserved on the last leaf of
MS. Harl. 6580.
Many of the metrical nonsense-riddles of the nursery are of considerable
antiquity. A collection of conundrums formed early in the seventeenth
century by Randle Holmes, the Chester antiquary, and now preserved in
MS. Harl. 1962, contains several which have been traditionally
remembered up to the present day. Thus we find versions of "Little Nancy
Etticoat in a white petticoat," "Two legs sat upon three legs," "As
round as an apple," and others.[11]
[Footnote 11: A vast number of these kind of
rhymes have become obsolete, and old manuscripts
contain many not very intelligible. Take the
following as a specimen:
Ruste duste tarbotell,
Bagpipelorum hybattell.—_MS. Harl._ 7332, xvij. cent.]
During the latter portion of the seventeenth century numerous songs and
games were introduced which were long remembered in the English nursery.
"Questions and Commands" was a common game, played under various systems
of representation. One boy would enact king, and the subjects would give
burlesque answers, e. g.:
_K._ King I am!
_S._ I am your man.
_K._ What service will you do?
_S._ The best and worst, and all I can!
A clever writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1738, says this was
played during the Commonwealth in ridicule of sovereignty! He humorously
adds, continually quoting games then current: "During all Oliver's time,
the chief diversion was, 'The parson hath lost his fuddling-cap,' which
needs no explanation. At the Restoration succeeded love-games, as 'I
love my love with an A,' a 'Flower and a lady,' and 'I am a lusty
wooer;' changed in the latter end of this reign, as well as all King
James II.'s, to 'I am come to torment you.' At the Revolution, when all
people recovered their liberty, the children played promiscuously at
what game they liked best. The most favorite one, however, was 'Puss in
the corner.'" The same writer also mentions the game of "I am a Spanish
merchant."
The following nursery-rhyme is quoted in Parkin's Reply to Dr.
Stukeley's second number of the Origines Roystonianæ, 4to. 1748, p. 6,
but I am not aware that it is still current:—
Peter White will ne'er go right,
And would you know the reason why?
He follows his nose where'er he goes,
And that stands all awry.
The tale of "Old Mother Hubbard" is undoubtedly of some antiquity, were
we merely to judge of the rhyme of _laughing_ to _coffin_ in the third
verse.[12] "There was an old woman toss'd up in a blanket" is supposed
to be the original song of "Lilliburlero, or Old Woman, whither so
high?" the tune to which was published in 1678.[13] "Come, drink old ale
with me," a nursery catch, with an improper meaning now lost, is found
in MS. Harl. 7332, of the seventeenth century. "Round about, round
about, magotty-pie," is probably as old, magot-pie being an obsolete
term for a magpie. For a similar reason, the antiquity of "Here am I,
little Jumping Joan," may be inferred. Jumping Joan was the Cant term
for a lady of little reputation.[14] The well-known riddle, "As I was
going to St. Ives," occurs in MS. Harl. 7316, of the early part of the
last century; and the following extract from Poor Robin's Almanack for
1693, may furnish us with the original of the celebrated ballad on Tom
of Islington, though the latter buried his troublesome wife on Sunday:
"How one saw a lady on the Saturday, married her on the Sunday, she was
brought to bed on the Monday, the child christened on the Tuesday, it
died on the Wednesday, was buried on the Thursday, the bride's portion
was paid on the Friday, and the bridegroom ran clear away on the
Saturday!"
[Footnote 12: The first three verses are all the
original. The rest is modern, and was added when
Mother Hubbard was the first of a series of
eighteen-penny books published by Harris.]
[Footnote 13: Chappell's National Airs, p. 89.]
[Footnote 14: Beaumont and Fletcher, ed. Dyce,
viii. 176. The tune of Jumping Joan is mentioned
in MS. Harl. 7316, p. 67.]
The antiquity of a rhyme is not unfrequently determined by the use of
an obsolete expression. Thus it may be safely concluded that the common
nursery address to the white moth is no modern composition, from the use
of the term _dustipoll_, a very old nickname for a miller, which has
long fallen into disuse:
Millery, millery, dustipoll,
How many sacks have you stole?
Four and twenty and a peck:
Hang the miller up by his neck!
The expression is used by Robin Goodfellow in the old play of Grim, the
Collier of Croydon, first printed in 1662, but written considerably
before that period:
Now, miller, miller, dustipole,
I'll clapper-claw your jobbernole![15]
[Footnote 15: "Oh, madam, I will give you the
keys of Canterbury," must be a very ancient song,
as it mentions chopines, or high cork shoes, and
appears, from another passage, to have been
written before the invention of bell-pulls. The
obsolete term _delve_, to dig, exhibits the
antiquity of the rhyme "One, two, buckle my
shoe." _Minikin_ occurs in a rhyme printed in the
Nursery Rhymes of England, p. 145; _coif_, ibid.
p. 150; _snaps_, small fragments, ibid. p. 190;
_moppet_, a little pet, ibid. p. 193, &c.]
A very curious ballad, written about the year 1720, in the possession of
Mr. Crofton Croker, establishes the antiquity of the rhymes of
"Jack-a-Dandy," "Boys and girls come out to play," "Tom Tidler's on the
Friar's ground," "London bridge is broken down," "Who comes here, a
grenadier," and "See, saw, sacradown," besides mentioning others we have
before alluded to. The ballad is entitled, "Namby Pamby, or a Panegyric
on the New Versification, addressed to A. F., Esq."
Nanty Panty, Jack-a-Dandy,
Stole a piece of sugar-candy,
From the grocer's shoppy shop,
And away did hoppy hop.
In the course of the ballad, the writer thus introduces the titles of
the nursery rhymes,—
Namby Pamby's double mild,
Once a man, and twice a child;
To his hanging sleeves restor'd,
Now he fools it like a lord;
Now he pumps his little wits
All by little tiny bits.
Now, methinks, I hear him say,
Boys and girls, come out to play,
Moon do's shine as bright as day:
Now my Namby Pamby's[16] found
Sitting on the Friar's ground,
Picking silver, picking gold,—
Namby Pamby's never old:
Bally-cally they begin,
Namby Pamby still keeps in.
Namby Pamby is no clown—
London Bridge is broken down;
Now he courts the gay ladee,
Dancing o'er the Lady Lee:
Now he sings of Lickspit Liar,
Burning in the brimstone fire;
Lyar, lyar, Lickspit, lick,
Turn about the candlestick.
Now he sings of Jacky Horner,
Sitting in the chimney corner,
Eating of a Christmas pie,
Putting in his thumb, oh! fie!
Putting in, oh! fie, his thumb,
Pulling out, oh! strange, a plumb!
Now he acts the grenadier,
Calling for a pot of beer:
Where's his money? He's forgot—
Get him gone, a drunken sot!
Now on cock-horse does he ride,
And anon on timber stride,
Se and saw, and sack'ry down,
London is a gallant town!
[Footnote 16: Namby Pamby is said to have been a
nickname for Ambrose Phillips. Another ballad,
written about the same time as the above, alludes
to the rhyme of "Goosy Goosy, Gander."]
This ballad is a very important illustration of the history of these
puerile rhymes, for it establishes the fact that some we might aptly
consider modern are at least more than a century old; and who would have
thought such nonsense as,
Who comes here?
A grenadier!
What do you want?
A pot of beer!
Where's your money?
I've forgot!
Get you gone,
You drunken sot!
could have descended in all its purity for several generations, even
although it really may have a deep meaning and an unexceptionable moral?
Having thus, I trust, shown that the nursery has an archæology, the
study of which may eventually lead to important results, the jingles and
songs of our childhood are defended from the imputation of exclusive
frivolity. We may hope that, henceforth, those who have the opportunity
will not consider it a derogatory task to add to these memorials. But
they must hasten to the rescue. The antiquities of the people are
rapidly disappearing before the spread of education; and before many
years have elapsed, they will be lost, or recorded only in the
collections of the antiquary, perhaps requiring evidence that they ever
existed. This is the latest period at which there is a chance of our
arresting their disappearance. If, unfortunately, the most valuable
relics of this kind are wholly lost, many, doubtlessly, remain in the
remote districts sufficiently curious to reward the collector; and it is
to be hoped they will not be allowed to share the fate of Wade and his
boat Guingelot.