By The Landlord
“Hey Diddle Diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed,
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.” – traditional, c. 1569
"The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone." – Dylan Thomas
"Every pretty Moral Tale
Should o'er the infant mind prevail" – Tommy Thumb's Song Book, by Nurse Lovechild (1788 edition)
Their words and images are variously bizarre to banal, entrancing or exciting, rhythmical, repetitive, surreal, but also cruel and brutal, even utterly terrifying, and above all, powerfully manipulative and controlling. And that's just Humpty Dumpty for starters.
Entering the world of the nursery rhyme has opened up a gaping chasm of chaos and anarchy in the Bar. Old Mother Hubbard has got into our food cupboard looking for a bone, and it's not only the inside she finds bare. Little Miss Muffett is in there having her curds and whey with Tom Thumb, who has inadvertently got part of his anatomy stuck where it shouldn't be. "Ooo! Cock a doodle do!" chirps Doctor Foster, prescriptively. "Ding Dong Bell!, replies Robin Redbreast, trying to cheer up poor, cold Cock Robin. In this topsy turvy world, it's all gone Hey Diddle Diddle at the Bar.
Polly's put the kettle on with the idea getting her hands on some hot cross buns, although she's also talking about the plan to Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross. Steady on, girl. Little Miss Muffet meanwhile, who has since only just escaped the attentions of Tom Thumb, as well as the Muffin Man, is being eyed up by someone in the corner, who is not a spider, but who of is course Jack Horner, who has the very clear intention of giving her a Rub-a-Dub Dub. And who thought nursery rhymes were innocent.
Little Miss Muffett, ilustrated by Arthur Rackham
Mary, meanwhile, being quite contrary, has gone all Jack-a-Nory with Jack Be Nimble at the same time as getting On Top Of Old Smoky. And where does Wee Willie Winkie fit in? Perish the thought. That could be One for Sorrow of course, but are we ever going to get some food round here? Pease Porridge Hot? Of that so sure I'm definitely not. Georgie Porgie! Hey you, come back with that pudding and pie! What’s that? Oranges and Lemons? Pat-A-Cake? Or maybe by there'll be a bowl or two of on bar of Nuts In May. Either way, all I can say is that one must pity poor old Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater.
And hey, now there's a huge noise of horses galloping, and men running. so who is arriving now in that entourage? It's only the Grand Old Duke Of York. Hmm, well, all I can say is watch out, children …
Alright then, the imagination, as well as everything else, has run riot, so let's try to stop messing and get some focus here. This week's theme is all about songs that reference words and phrases from nursery rhymes, not the children's nursery rhymes themselves. This could be with in passing, or a larger part of the song. And they might use them in an adult context, or use the story as illustrative to the narrative within a song, as a rhythmical or rhyming tool, for humour, for a moral context, for melancholy or any other emotive colour. Nursery rhymes are deeply embedded in our psyche from childhood. They are catchy, addictive and strangely alluring to the young mind, and there's good reason for that.
Old Mother Hubbard … first edition. Comic adventures? Not always …
What then is a nursery rhyme? It is a traditional children's song or poem that encourages vocalising, memorising and repetition. In theory they aid our development, spatial reasoning, and perhaps even mathematical and musical skills. But they often also contain a moral tale, a vivid image, characters who interact and can be both people and animals, anthropomorphised objects, and quite surprising, sudden, dramatic events. While the sounds are soft the themes can be harsh, cruel, set in hunger and poverty, and are often violent, and sometimes result in death.
Nursery rhymes are metaphorical or allegorical doses of reality originally told from the soft, safe, warm bosom of the home and hearth. As Dylan Thomas put it, it the the sound of them that is alluring. Perhaps the meaning comes clear later. Either way, they are a form of preparation for life, but also control over behaviour. And within that moral context, they might also be a satirical reference to historical figures or events, infantilised in rhythm and rhyme. More on that shortly...
Ok, so you’ve been told once …
The term itself wasn't coined until the 1830s, but oral traditions of rhyming stories for children came long before that, including Mother Goose songs and Tommy Thumb songs at least a century before. One of the very first major collection published was s was Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, in 1744, by Mary Cooper. Unfortunately no copy has survived, because no doubt the little tearaways thumbed every copy to shreds, but a reprint was made 1788 by Isaiah Thomas of Worcester, Massachusetts with that telling quote on the left hand opening page:
Tommy Thumb’s Song Book, 1788 version
One of the very earliest, sometime before that publication, may well have been Three Blind Mice. A version of this rhyme, together with music, was published in Deuteromelia or The Seconde Part of Musicks Melodie (1609). The editor of the book, and possible author of the rhyme was Thomas Ravenscroft, who took quill in hand under candlelight and wrote this early version:
Three Blinde Mice,
Three Blinde Mice,
Dame Iulian,
Dame Iulian,
The Miller and his merry olde Wife,
She scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife.
There is some speculation that this musical round was written in reference to the “merry olde farmer’s wife”, Queen Mary I blinding and executing three Protestant bishops. This is the same Mary who is 'quite contrary' …
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockleshells
And pretty maids all in a row.
This garden may not have been a flowery one, but another, a torture chamber. “Silver bells” and “cockleshells” refers to Mary Tudor's preferred instruments of torture during her brief reign from 1556-58, while “pretty maids” alludes to the guillotine (nicknamed at the time as The Maiden).
Old Mother Goose is not quite the benign figure you’d hope …
But as with many nursery rhymes, truth and words get twisted through the many mouths and ears of time, and could be propaganda as much as poetry. Yet the threat of violence and death comes right from the cradle:
Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all.
This could be read as a simple warning of physical danger, but another interpretation is that it sews the seeds of political and religious fear and rumour, in particular that England's King James II and Mary of Modena passed off a random child as their own in order to ensure a Roman Catholic heir to the throne. Of course that didn't work out, because James was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when William of Orange and Mary crossed the channel and took over the English throne.
While coronavirus is constantly in the news now, health threats in nursery rhyme verse are nothing new. Consider then his earlier version without 'a tissue':
Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down.
The plague, which ran riot through Europe and killed millions across three centuries from the early 14th century included the early symptom of a red rash in the shape on a ring on the skin, as well as sneezing. Posies would be floral, sweet smelling items to cover up the perpetual stench of death. The modern version of the face mask. Then again, maybe it had nothing to do with this at all, it could just be a fun rhyme, then again …
Ring any bells?
Rock, folk, hip hop, and among other genres, pop of course will being going into the nursery rhyme this week, but what of this?
All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel;
The monkey thought ’twas all in good sport
Pop! goes the weasel.
A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle-
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.
Perhaps this is simply a cockney rhyming slang for having to pawn possessions to buy a suit to wear on a Sunday.
While many nursery rhymes come from British culture and history, with all their bigotry and fear-mongering, as well as good intentions, others from different cultures and languages are very much welcomed. Among the chaos of fictional characters crowding the Bar this week, also a small group of real guests to tell us more about nursery rhymes from their perspective:
Mixing up horror and fantasy, here's that master of zombie horror films, George A. Romero: "Nursery rhymes were political when they were first written! To me, that's what it's about: it's about using it to say something more than just what the story is." Exactly, George.
Many poets learned their sense of rhythm and rhyme from this form, just as Dylan Thomas says. Here's Louis MacNeice: "Nearly all children have a feeling for rhythm in words, for the delicate pattern of nursery rhymes. Many adults have lost this feeling and, if they read verse at all, demand a far cruder music than that which they once appreciated."
And adding to that, here's James Fenton: "Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral. Its transmission today is still in part oral, because we become acquainted with poetry through nursery rhymes, which we hear before we can read."
And to offer a different dimension here's a sharp mind from a different genre, GZA aka Gary E. Grice of Wu-Tang Clan: "Writing, for me, really started in the '70s as a young child. I used to read a lot of nursery rhymes, and I learned a lot of those rhymes word for word. That shaped me."
Let us now return to Humpty Dumpty, who may have had a great fall, but haven't we all? Well, the traditional interpretation is that this egg-headed figure's rhyme is that it really refers to a type of cannon used in the English Civil War that would consistently shatter when lit, or it was a type of brandy that would cause the drinker to have a “great fall” when drunk. But far more fascinating is the Humpty character who appears in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Her encounter with his is fascinating. They talk about his appearance, the rhyme in which he is mentions and what it means. He is arrogant, cryptic and difficult. He becomes a controlling political figure, whose power extends to the very language we speak:
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'
So perhaps Humpty goes the very heart of the nursery rhyme itself. It is all about control. To close then, here are a couple of sample songs to get the ball rolling. They only reference nursery rhymes briefly and no doubt, you, learned readers will pick out and nominate many better examples. First up, Here's De La Soul, using the Mary Had A Little Lamb in the tough context of a pregnant teenager on a housing project:
Nursery rhymes sometimes overlap with lullabies, a way to get children to sleep, and here Tom Waits references that original biblical phrase "Land of Nod" also used in several nursery rhymes, in a song from my favourite of his albums, Rain Dogs:
So then, with both rhyme, rhythm and reason (please include quotations of lyrics to justify) it's time to nominate your choice of songs inspired by, or referencing nursery rhymes. Managing every context, whether cruel or kind, gentle or violent, I'm delighted to welcome this week's guru back to the Song Bar chair, the excellent figure of history, present and past, EnglishOutlaw! Deadline for nominations is this coming Monday at 11pm UK time, for playlists published on Wednesday. Are you sitting comfortably, then …?
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