Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes

by Albert Jack

  ‘Solomon Grundy’ isn’t the only traditional rhyme to show a life in a week. There’s also this one:

  Tom, Tom, of Islington

  Married a wife on Sunday,

  Brought her home on Monday,

  Hired a house on Tuesday,

  Fed her well on Wednesday,

  Sick was she on Thursday,

  Dead was she on Friday,

  Sad was Tom on Saturday

  To bury his wife on Sunday.

  Taffy Was a Welshman

  TAFFY was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief,

  Taffy came to my house and stole a leg of beef.

  I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy wasn’t in,

  So I jumped upon his favourite hat and poked it with a pin.

  Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a sham,

  Taffy came to my house and stole a leg of lamb.

  I went to Taffy’s house and Taffy was away,

  So I filled his socks with sawdust and stuffed his shoes with clay.

  Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a cheat,

  Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of meat.

  I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy was not there,

  So I put his coat and trousers to roast before the fire.

  The origins of this rhyme are believed to lie in Welsh mythology, in which Taffy may be equated with Amaethon, son of Don, and the Celtic god of agriculture. The myth has it that Amaethon once stole a lapwing, a roebuck and a dog from Arawan, the king of the otherworld. This theft led to a battle between the king and Amaethon, the latter aided by his siblings. One of them, Gwydion, used his magic powers and turned trees into brave warriors who then helped the Children of Don to victory.

  The rhyme reflects the rivalry between the nations of England and Wales, historically pitted against each other. Taffy, as a corruption of ‘Dafydd’, Welsh for ‘David’ (Wales’s patron saint), would have been the standard name for a Welshman; hence the rhyme was aimed at the Welsh in general and reflects how the English might have taught their children from the cradle never to trust their Celtic neighbours – that they were thieves, cheats and liars. Periodically, the Welsh – under English rule from 1284 – have rebelled against the English; this rhyme would appear to advocate harsh punishment for any Welshman stepping out of line. It’s hardly surprising that when there was a referendum the Welsh decided to devolve from a government based in London.

  There Was a Crooked Man

  THERE was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,

  He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile;

  He bought a crooked cat, that caught a crooked mouse,

  And they all lived together in their little crooked house.

  ‘There Was a Crooked Man’ has its roots in seventeenth-century English history and the career of General Sir Alexander Leslie (c. 1580-1661), a Scottish soldier who also served with the Dutch and Swedish military. In the context of the rhyme, the word crooked is used not to suggest he was a frail, hunched old man, but to illustrate his perceived lack of loyalty and dishonesty. He was, in other words, bent.

  During the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), when most of Europe was a battleground fought over by the Protestants and Catholics, Leslie distinguished himself fighting for the Dutch before transferring to the Swedish army, where he rose to the rank of colonel and was knighted by the Swedish king for his valour.

  At the end of the conflict, Leslie returned to his native Scotland where he raised an army and seized Edinburgh Castle, without the loss of a single man, from the few remaining Scottish loyalists. He then turned south across the winding border with England (the crooked mile) and won a great victory for the Scots at the Battle of Newburn (1640), against the king’s army, before taking control of Newcastle, cutting off its valuable coal supply to London and forcing Charles I into an agreement with Leslie’s Scottish Covenanters – supporters of the National Covenant of

  1638, denying the Divine Right of the king to be spiritual leader of the Presbyterian Church – that led to the Treaty of London.

  As a result, in 1641, English King Charles I bestowed upon Leslie the titles of Earl of Levin and Lord Balgonie after the Scot had changed his allegiance once again, this time from Scotland to England, amassing another small fortune in the process (He found a crooked penny upon a crooked stile). Charles also gave Leslie the position of Captain of Edinburgh Castle and made him a privy councillor, one of his closest and most trusted advisers, after Leslie had sworn a new allegiance to the troubled and beleaguered king.

  But the new Earl of Leven once again broke his oath and, in 1644, raised an army and fought for the Solemn League and Covenant, a treaty binding both Scottish and English Parliaments together against the Royalist forces, and again marched south, to join Lord Fairfax in crushing Prince Rupert at the Battle of Marston Moor.

  In 1646, King Charles, pursued by Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarian forces, eventually surrendered to the Scots, after the Siege of Oxford, with whom he felt he would be safe and could hatch a deal with his new Earl of Leven. But Leven wasted no time in turning the king back over to the English, leading to Charles’s eventual execution. After which the alliance between the previously warring Scots and the English held firm for a while (They all lived together in their crooked little house).

  There Was a Little Girl

  THERE was a little girl

  Who had a little curl

  Right in the middle of her forehead.

  When she was good,

  She was very, very good,

  But when she was bad she was horrid.

  This popular nursery rhyme is unusual in having not just a famous author but also one who refused to be associated with it. Best known for his poem The Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82) was regarded in his day as the American Tennyson. Such was his fame and distinguished reputation that Longfellow always denied composing the childish verses. Once questioned by his friends on the subject, he angrily declared: ‘When I recall my juvenile poems and prose sketches I wish they were entirely forgotten about. However, they cling to one’s skirt with a terrible grasp.’

  Eventually he admitted to having made up the rhyme when his young daughter petulantly refused to have her hair brushed. The poet’s second son, Ernest, later recalled: ‘It was whilst he was walking up and down with Edith, then a baby, in his arms that my father composed and sang to her the well-known lines. Many people think it is a Mother Goose rhyme, but this is the true origin and history.’ Ironically enough, this is now probably the best-known of all his poems.

  There Was a Little Guinea Pig

  THERE was a little guinea pig,

  Who being little was not big;

  He always walked upon his feet,

  And never fasted when he eat.

  When from a place he ran away,

  He never at the place did stay;

  And while he ran, as I am told,

  He ne’er stood still for young or old.

  He often squeaked and sometimes violent,

  And when he squeaked he ne’er was silent;

  Though ne’er instructed by a cat,

  He knew a mouse was not a rat.

  One day, as I am certified,

  He took a whim and fairly died;

  And as I’m told by men of sense

  He never has been living since.

  Originating in South America, guinea pigs have been domesticated for over a thousand years (although they are still a favourite snack in Peru). They first came to Europe during the sixteenth century, following the discovery of the Americas, and legend has it that the first person in Britain to have one as a pet was Elizabeth I.

  Unfortunately, this means that my favourite theory behind this rhyme now looks pretty far-fetched. According to this interpretation, the guinea pig is Richard III (1452-85). King Richard’s royal emblem was a great white boar and to refer to him as a guinea pig was therefore a wholly intentional insult. The cat in verse three is supposedly William Catesby, Richard’s C
hancellor of the Exchequer and Speaker of the House of Commons (see also Hey Diddle Diddle). He was thought to be the most powerful man in England at the time and a huge influence on the king. The rat is Sir Richard Ratcliffe, a childhood friend and valued adviser of the king. The rhyme refers to the close relationship between the three men and the supposed influence the cat and the rat had over the king, but, as I said, this was over a century before guinea pigs came to England for the first time.

  The lyrics probably have no hidden meaning but are just trying to be humorous, the whole purpose of the rhyme being its nonsensical yoking together of a string of tautological phrases – being little was not big… never fasted when he eat – to make children laugh.

  There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

  THERE was an old woman who lived in a shoe,

  She had so many children she didn’t know what to do;

  So she gave them some broth without any bread,

  And she whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed.

  At first glance, this is simply another nonsense rhyme but there is, in fact, a story behind it, concerning George II (1683-1760; see also Georgie Porgie). He was born in Hanover, Germany – the last British sovereign to have been born outside Britain – and English was therefore not his first language. His subjects found him rather hard to understand, and, not very impressed with him as a monarch, they nicknamed him the old woman. It was after all his wife, Queen Caroline, who was the real power behind the throne and made all the major decisions, as a contemporary verse sneers:

  You may strut, dapper George,

  But it will be in vain;

  We all know it is Queen Caroline

  Not you that reign.

  This was underlined further by his having very little control over parliamentary policy during the early part of his reign as the government was firmly controlled at that time by Britain’s first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole (chosen by Caroline). Hence the children in the rhyme are the members of Parliament that he had so little control over. The bursting of the South Sea Bubble of 1721 had left Britain impoverished and George II was perpetually struggling to save money to improve Britain’s (and his own) financial situation (she gave them some broth without any bread), mainly so he could go to war again and prove by attacking other countries that he really was in control of his own. A whip is the MP whose job it is to ensure other members of their party are present to vote on a particular policy their faction feels strongly about, and the bed was the Houses of Parliament, which the king required his MPs to attend every day.

  Another theory considers the shoe from the point of view of its associations with female fertility – hence the casting of a shoe after the bride, or attaching shoes to the car of the bridal couple in the hope that their union will be fruitful. George and Caroline were clearly not lacking in that department as they had eight children. Indeed, Caroline –and a number of other prominent women with large families – has been identified with the old woman (She had so many children she didn’t know what to do).

  Three Acres of Land

  MY father left me three acres of land,

  Sing ivy, sing ivy;

  My father left me three acres of land,

  Sing holly, go whistle and ivy.

  I ploughed it with the ram’s horn,

  Sing ivy, sing ivy;

  And sowed it all over with one peppercorn,

  Sing holly, go whistle and ivy.

  I harrowed it with the bramble bush,

  Sing ivy, sing ivy;

  And reaped it with my little penknife,

  Sing holly, go whistle and ivy.

  I got the mice to carry it to the barn,

  Sing ivy, sing ivy;

  And threshed it with a goose’s quill,

  Sing holly, go whistle and ivy.

  I got the puss to carry it to the mill,

  Sing ivy, sing ivy;

  The miller he swore he would have her paw

  And the cat she swore she would scratch his face,

  Sing holly, go whistle and ivy.

  This nonsense rhyme, which shows step by ridiculous step how not to run a farm, sheds an interesting light on how things were actually done in the past. An acre of land was originally thought to be the area of farmland that could be ploughed by an ox in half a day. From the seventeenth century, this was standardized to 4,840 square yards, or about the size of a modern football pitch. Thus, however you measure it, three acres represents a reasonably large plot of land.

  Ploughing that amount of land would have needed oxen or horses and a proper plough. The crop to be planted – pepper – was very valuable but one that would never grow in Britain’s cold climate. Pepper was a highly prized spice, first used by the Egyptians as long ago as 2000 bc. Thanks to their natural longevity (they could last for many years) and their shortage of supply, peppercorns were once valued as highly as gold and were often used as trading currency. In the Middle Ages, explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo set off on their adventures in the hope of finding new sources of pepper and other valuable spices.

  Rather than weeding the fields, the song’s hero uses the brambles as an impossible rake (I harrowed the field with a bramble bush); rather than a scythe he uses a penknife; he gets mice and cats to carry the crops for him, and tries to thresh it with a feather (a goose’s quill). In short, it’s a farmer’s sly song about what might happen if a landowner gifted some of the land to his own offspring (My father left me three acres of land). With no farming know-how, they wouldn’t have a clue how to go about things.

  Three Blind Mice

  THREE blind mice, three blind mice,

  See how they run, see how they run;

  They all ran after the farmer’s wife,

  Who cut off their tails with a carving knife;

  Did you ever see such a thing in your life,

  As three blind mice?

  The origin of the words to ‘Three Blind Mice’ lies with the English queen Mary I (1516-58), known as Bloody Mary because she was prepared to do anything – however violent – to make sure England became Catholic again. Mary was the only child of Henry VIII and his first wife, the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon (see I Had a Little Nut Tree). Henry had initially doted upon Mary and boasted about her publicly, even breaking royal protocol by giving her the title of Princess of Wales, a prerogative usually reserved for the male firstborn, but all this changed when Catherine failed to produce a male heir, leading to events that marked a major watershed in English history.

  When Henry attempted to dissolve his marriage to Mary’s mother, on the grounds Catherine had previously been briefly married, as a sixteen-year-old, to his elder brother Arthur, who then died only a few days later. In his desperation for a divorce and a male heir with another wife, Henry tried to show God was on his side by citing passages from the Bible: ‘If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing; he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness and they shall remain childless’ (Leviticus 20:21). When Pope Clement VII refused his request, Henry broke English

  links with the Catholic Church and declared himself head of the newly reformed Church of England. He then promptly married Anne Boleyn, who was to prove no more successful at producing a male heir than her predecessor. As a result of the divorce, Catherine lost the title of queen and Mary was declared illegitimate, demoted from ‘princess’ to ‘lady’ and lost her position at court – earning the nickname, according to some, of the Farmer’s Wife, although this is more likely to be a reference to the vast estates she would own as wife of King Philip of Spain (see Flour of England). For Thomas Cranmer, the man who eventually sanctioned Henry’s second marriage, there would be dire consequences.

  Meanwhile Henry began confiscating land from the Catholics and dissolving the monasteries. During his brief reign, Henry’s son Edward VI (1537-53) took things much further and started hunting down and executing Catholic priests. The three religious leaders supporting Edward during this time we
re the bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley and the ever-loyal Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, architect of Henry VIII’s English Reformation. Openly Catholic, Mary was seen as a real danger to newly Protestant England, and the policies set in motion by these three were openly unfriendly: in effect, They all ran after the farmer’s wife.

  Unluckily for them, Edward only lasted six years. When Mary I finally ascended the throne in 1553, the bitter queen immediately set about restoring the Catholic faith as the religion of England and the real bloodletting began. Over eight hundred wealthy Protestants fled the country and nearly three hundred were burned at the stake in what became known as the Marian Persecutions (see Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary). The most high-profile of these victims, later remembered as the Oxford Martyrs’, were Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer, who were tortured, some stories say blinded, and then burned at the stake in central Oxford in front of hundreds of shocked spectators (she cut off their tails with a carving knife; / Did you ever see such a thing in your life).

  Another, less convincing theory is that three blind commoners, Joan Waste, John Aprice and an unspecified third, defied Queen Mary’s ban on reading the Bible in English and between them paid for a copy to have it read to them in public, as a result of which they were also burned at the stake.