POLITICAL SIGNIFICATIONS OF NURSERY RHYMES.
In 1660, when the Restoration of Charles II. took place, the great
procession of State to St. Paul's Cathedral called forth this rhyme:--
"Come, Jack, let's drink a pot of ale,
And I shall tell thee such a tale
Will make thine ears to ring.
My coin is spent, my time is lost,
And I this only fruit can boast,
That once I saw my king!"
A Roundhead sneer at the man in the street, after the Royalist
rejoicings were over.
In a copy of rhyming proverbs in the British Museum, written about the
year 1680, occurs the following Puritan satire on Charles II.'s
changeability:--
"A man of words and not of deeds,
Is like a garden full of weeds;
And when the weeds begin to grow,
It's like a garden full of snow;
And when the snow begins to fall,
It's like a bird upon the wall;
And when the bird away does fly,
It's like an eagle in the sky;
And when the sky begins to roar,
It's like a lion at your door;
And when the door begins to crack,
It's like a stick across your back;
And when your back begins to smart,
It's like a penknife in your heart;
And when your heart begins to bleed,
You're dead, you're dead, and dead indeed."
Among Marvel's works (vol. i. pp. 434-5) a witty representation of the
king's style of speech is given with the _jeu d'esprit_ so
distinctively peculiar to Marvel:--
"My proclamation is the true picture of my mind. Some may perhaps be
startled and cry, 'How comes this sudden change?' To which I answer,
'I am a changeling, and that's sufficient, I think. But, to convince
men further that I mean what I say, these are the arguments. First,
I tell you so, and you know I never break my word; secondly, my Lord
Treasurer says so, and he never told a lie in his life; thirdly, my
Lord Lauderdale will undertake it for me. I should be loath by any
act of mine he should forfeit the credit he has with you.'"
In England Charles gave his Royal Indulgence to Dissenters, and granted
them full liberty of conscience. They who had been horribly plundered
and ill-treated now built meeting-houses, and thronged to them in
public. Shaftesbury, who afterwards became a Papist, exclaimed, "Let us
bless God and the king that our religion is safe, that parliaments are
safe, that our properties and liberties are safe. What more hath a good
Englishman to ask, but that the king may long reign, and that this
triple alliance of king, parliament, and the people may never be
dissolved?" But Charles had a standing army in Scotland, with the Duke
of Lauderdale as Lord High Commissioner, and all classes of people in
that country were obliged to depose on oath their knowledge of persons
worshipping as Dissenters, on penalty of fine, imprisonment, banishment,
transportation, and of being sold as slaves. Persecutions of former
times were surpassed, the thumbscrew and the boot were used as mild
punishments, the rack dislocated the limbs of those who respected
conscience, and the stake consumed their bodies to ashes. Villagers were
driven to the mountains, and eighteen thousand Dissenters perished, not
counting those who were accused of rebellion. He was "a man of words,"
and the rhyme of this period depicts his whole character.
* * * * *
Two of the courtezans of Charles II.'s time were Lucy Locket and Kitty
Fisher. The following rhyme suggests that Kitty Fisher supplanted Lucy
Locket in Charles' fickle esteem--
"Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it;
Nothing in it, nothing in it,
But the binding round it."
On his death-bed the monarch commended the Duchesses of Cleveland and
Portsmouth to his successor, and said to James, "Do not let poor Nelly
(Nell Gwynne) starve!" Even their pockets were as badly lined as Lucy
Locket's.
The hatred of the Roman Catholic religion "had become," said Macaulay,
"one of the ruling passions of the community, and was as strong in the
ignorant and profane as in those who were Protestants from conviction."
Charles II. was suspected by many of leaning towards the Roman Catholic
religion. His brother, and heir presumptive, was discovered to be a
bigoted Catholic, and in defiance to the remonstrances of the House of
Commons had married another papist--Mary of Modena.
The common people apprehended a return of the times of her whom they
unreasonably called Bloody Mary. Sons of this marriage, they feared,
meant a long succession of princes and kings hostile to the Protestant
faith and government by the people. In 1689, when William of Orange
became king in James II.'s place, a political squib went off in the
style of a nursery lullaby, entitled "Father Peter's policy discovered;
or, the Prince of Wales proved a Popish Perkin"--
"In Rome there is a fearful rout,
And what do you think it's all about?
Because the birth of the Babe's come out!
Sing, Lalla by babee, by, by, by."
The Douce MS. contains--
"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?"
At the beginning of this present century the renowned Pastorini
contributed his share to simple rhyming. A writer in the _Morning
Chronicle_ of that period points out Pastorini as being no less a
personage than the Right Rev. Charles Walmesley, D.D., a Roman Catholic
prelate, whose false prophecies under the name of Pastorini were
intended to bring about the events they pretended to foretell--the
destruction of the Irish Protestants in 1825. Just previous to this year
every bush and bramble in Ireland had this remarkable couplet affixed to
it--
"In the year eighteen hundred and twenty-five
There shall not be a Protestant left alive."
In 1835, when the efforts of the Whig Ministry to despoil the Irish
Church proved so strong, a writer in the Press caricatured Lord Grey,
Lyttleton, Dan O'Connell, and Lord Brougham in the following nursery
rhymes. The attempt was ingenious, but only of small value as showing
the rhymes to be the popular ones of that day.
"There was an old woman, as I've heard tell,
She went to the market her eggs to sell."
And--
"Robbin, a bobbin, the big-bellied Ben,
He ate more meat than threescore men;
He eat a cow, he eat a calf,
He eat a butcher and a half;
He eat a church, he eat a steeple,
He eat the priest and all the people."
The other rhymes were--
"There was an old woman went up in a basket
Ninety-nine times as high as the moon,
Where she was going I couldn't but ask it,
For in her hand she carried a Brougham!
Old woman, old woman, old woman, said I,
Why are you going up so high?
To sweep the cobwebs off the sky,
But I'll be with you by-and-by."
* * * * *
"Old Mother Bunch, shall we visit the moon?
Come, mount on your broom, I'll stride on the spoon;
Then hey to go, we shall be there soon!"
This rhyme was sung at the time in derision to Earl Grey's and Lord
Brougham's aerial, vapoury projects of setting the Church's house in
order.
"Lord Grey," said the satire-monger, "provided the cupboards and larders
for himself and relatives. He was a paradoxical 'old woman' who could
never keep quiet."
"There was an old woman, and what do you think,
She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink;
Victuals and drink were the chief of her diet,
And yet this old woman could never keep quiet."
As a prototype of reform this old woman was further caricatured as
Madame Reform.
The going "up in a basket ninety-nine times as high as the moon"
referred to Lord Grey's command to the English bishops to speedily set
their house in order. The ascent was flighty enough, "ninety-nine times
as high as the moon, to sweep the cobwebs off the sky"--in other words,
to set the Church, our cathedrals and bishops' palaces in order--and
augured well; but this old woman journeyed not alone, in her hand she
carried a broom (Brougham). It may have been a case of ultra-lunacy this
journey of ninety-nine times as high as the moon, and "one cannot help
thinking," said a writer of that period, "of the song, 'Long life to the
Moon'; but this saying became common, 'If that time goes the coach, pray
what time goes the basket?'"
The "Robbin, a bobbin, the big-bellied Ben" parody alluded to Dan
O'Connell; the butcher and a half to the Northamptonshire man and his
driver; eating "church" and "steeple" meant Church cess.
O'Connell certainly did cut the Church measure about. In his curtailment
he would not leave a room or a church for Irish Protestants to pray in.
"Little dog" refers to Lyttleton in the nursery rhyme, for when the
under-trafficing came to light, Lord Grey, it is said, was so bewildered
at his position that he doubted his own identity, and exclaimed--
"If I be I, as I suppose I be,
Well, I've a 'Little dog,' and he'll know me!"
FINIS
Transcriber's Endnote:
The following amendments have been made to the original text:
P. 96. _But the stick would not._ has been added as line 6 of the
poem beginning "There was an old woman swept her house ..."
End of Project Gutenberg's A History of Nursery Rhymes, by Percy B. Green