Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales Part 2

"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 t.i.tle 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 n.o.body 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 cla.s.s 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 sc.r.a.ps, 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 ma.n.u.script dated 1570; and the memorial lines, "Thirty days hath September," occur in the Return from Parna.s.sus, 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. 'Abomba.' 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 ent.i.tled 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sistance:

_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 dis.h.!.+

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 pa.s.sage 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. .h.i.therto elicited.

I am only acquainted with one reference to the former, "Pillic.o.c.k sat on Pillic.o.c.k 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 _pillic.o.c.k_ is found in a ma.n.u.script (Harl. 913) in the British Museum of the thirteenth century.

English children accompanied their amus.e.m.e.nts 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 Adria.n.u.s Junius, translated by Higins, and edited by Fleming, 8vo. 1585, contains a few notices of this kind; p. 298, "as????da, the playe called one penie, one penie, come after me; ??t???da, the play called selling of peares, or how many plums for a penie; p. 299, ?????f????da, a kinde of playe called

Clowt, clowt, To beare about,

or my hen hath layd; ?p?st?a??s??, a kind of sport or play with an oister sh.e.l.l 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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, ent.i.tled "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 pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+p without a belt.

When the s.h.i.+p 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 b.l.o.o.d.y battle.