If the rhymes originally were not for the nursery, what was their function?
Some rhymes were stanzas taken from bawdy folk ballads. Others began as verses based on popular street games, proverbs, or prayers. And many originated as tavern limericks, spoofs of religious practices, social satire, and the lyrics of romantic songs. They don’t read precisely that way today because in the early 1800s many “nursery” rhymes were sanitized to satisfy the newly emerging Victorian morality.
In their definitive work The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Iona and Peter Opie write: “We can say almost without hesitation that, of those pieces which date from before 1800, the only true rhymes composed especially for the nursery are the rhyming alphabets, the infant amusements (verses which accompany a game), and the lullabies…. The overwhelming majority of nursery rhymes were not in the first place composed for children.”
However, rhymes in their bawdy versions were often recited to children, because children were treated as miniature adults. Then, in the early 1800s, many rhymes were cleaned up, subsumed under the rubric “nursery,” and ascribed to a pseudonymous Mother Goose. Who was this woman? Or man?
Mother Goose: 1697, France
According to an early New England legend, the original Mother Goose was a Boston widow, Elizabeth Goose, born in 1665. On marrying Isaac Goose at age twenty-seven, she immediately became the stepmother of ten children, then bore six of her own. The association of Mistress Goose with the name Mother Goose stems from an alleged volume of rhymes published in 1719 by one of her sons-in-law and titled Mother Goose’s Melodies for Children. Widespread as this legend was—and the people involved were real—no copy of the book has ever been found.
“Hush-a-Bye, Baby.” Inspired by the American Indian custom of hanging cradles from birch trees.
More cogent evidence suggests that the original Mother Goose was actually a man: Charles Perrault.
Perrault’s seminal 1697 book, containing eight popular stories, bore the subtitle “Tales of My Mother Goose.” That is the first time the term appeared in print. Whether Perrault concocted the name or adapted it from “Frau Gosen,” a woman in German folklore, is unknown. What most folklorists believe is that the same man who immortalized such fairy tales as “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty” also popularized a fictitious mother of rhymes who came to be known to children throughout the world.
“Hush-a-Bye, Baby”: 1765, New England
Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby, cradle, and all.
In the category of rhymes known as lullabies, “Hush-a-bye” is the best known in both America and England. It first appeared in a 1765 book, Mother Goose’s Melody, along with a footnote which indicates that its anonymous author intended it to be more than merely a lullaby: “This may serve as a Warning to the Proud and Ambitious, who climb so high that they generally fall at last.”
“Ride a Cock-Horse.” The “fine lady” may have been a “Fiennes lady,” one Celia Fiennes of Banbury Cross.
The slight historical evidence that exists indicates that the author was a young Pilgrim who sailed to America on the Mayflower. He was impressed by the way Indian squaws hung birchbark cradles containing their infants on tree branches. Such a tree, containing several cradles, is thought to have inspired the rhyme. According to the written record, “Hush-a-Bye” is the first poem created on American soil.
“Ride a Cock-Horse”: Pre-18th Century, England
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.
Banbury Cross appears in many nursery rhymes. Not because the British village of Banbury was a favorite locale of writers, but for the simple reason that a major seventeenth-century publisher, Master Rusher, lived in Banbury and frequently altered the wording in submitted manuscripts to promote his hometown.
One phrase, “bells on her toes,” suggests to historians that the rhyme may have been part of oral tradition as early as the fifteenth century. In England at that time, small decorative bells, fastened to the long tapering toes of shoes, were high fashion.
Two women have been identified as candidates for the “fine lady” on a white horse. One, not surprisingly, is the famous Lady Godiva, the eleventh-century noblewoman of Coventry, who is supposed to have ridden naked on a white horse to protest high taxation. The other woman is Celia Fiennes, daughter of a member of Parliament in the 1690s. Lady Fiennes’s family owned a castle in Banbury, and she was famous for her marathon horseback rides through the English countryside. Some authorities believe that the phrase “To see a fine lady” originally read “To see a Fiennes lady.”
“Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”: Pre-1765, Europe
Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir,
Three bags full…
Throughout its two-hundred-year history, this rhyme has remained essentially unaltered. It contains no hidden symbolism or significance, and from the start it was sung to the old French tune “Ah vous dirai je,” or, in America, the tune “A, B, C, D, E, F, G.” The rhyme was employed by Rudyard Kipling in 1888 as the framework for his story “Baa, Baa, Black-Sheep.”
“Little Boy Blue”: Pre-1760, England
Little Boy Blue,
Come blow your horn,
The sheep’s in the meadow,
The cow’s in the corn…
The little boy is believed to represent the influential sixteenth-century statesman and cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who dominated the government of England’s King Henry VII from 1515 to 1529.
A butcher’s son, Wolsey was educated at Oxford, then became a priest. He was an energetic and highly self-confident man, and easily persuaded the pleasure-loving young monarch to surrender more and more of the chores of state. It was on Henry’s recommendation that Pope Leo X promoted the power-hungry Wolsey first to bishop, a year later to archbishop, and the following year to cardinal. A meteoric rise. Wolsey used his ubiquitous secular and ecclesiastical power to amass a fortune second only to the king’s.
Though sworn to priestly chastity, he fathered at least two illegitimate children. The overbearing cardinal made many enemies, but his immediate downfall was his failure to persuade Pope Clement VII to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. The king, in an about-face, charged his lord chancellor with praemunire, or having overstepped his authority, and stripped him of all titles and power.
Wolsey, as a boy in Ipswich, tended his father’s sheep. And his fall from grace and loss of authority are believed to be mirrored in Little Boy Blue’s sudden disappearance and consequent inability to blow his own horn.
“The First Day of Christmas”: Pre-1780, London
The first day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
A partridge in a pear tree….
The rhyme, known technically as a “chant,” first appeared in a 1780 children’s book published in London. However, the verse was of older oral tradition—a so-called memory-and-forfeits game. Children, in a circle, individually recited the rhyme’s many verses, and for each mistake they were forced to relinquish a sweet. For more than a century, it was employed in classrooms as a teaching rhyme, intended to improve a child’s memory skills.
“Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!”: Early 17th Century, England
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
My dame has lost her shoe,
My master’s lost his fiddling stick,
And doesn’t know what to do.
Although the verse’s authorship is unknown, its early popularity in England is associated with a gruesome event that took place in Hertfordshire at the end of the reign of Elizabeth I.
The event, as recounted in a 1606 pamphlet, tells of the bludgeo
ning murder of a three-year-old boy, witnessed by his slightly older sister, whose tongue was cut out to prevent her from naming the culprit. Several years later, the speechless girl was playing a popular street game of the day known as “mock the cock.” When other children taunted her to speak, she allegedly opened her mouth and miraculously uttered the “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” rhyme, ensuring it immortality in the oral tradition.
“Hark, Hark”: 16th Century, England
Hark, Hark,
The dogs do bark,
The beggars are coming to town;
Some in rags,
And some in jags,
And one in a velvet gown.
Our contemporary social problem of homeless individuals, particularly in metropolises, is mirrored in the history of this verse.
The words were frequently quoted during the reign of Queen Elizabeth in the sixteenth century, when hordes of homeless men and women flocked to London to beg for food and drink. City folk feared that their homes would be burglarized, and farmers on the outskirts of town often were victimized by the down-and-out, who dressed “in rags,” and some of whom, mentally disturbed individuals suffering delusions of grandeur, imagined themselves dressed in such finery as “a velvet gown.”
“There Was a Little Girl”: 1850s, United States
There was a little girl,
And she had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead…
The rhyme, about a girl who is alternatively “very, very good” and “horrid,” was written in the late 1850s by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on a day when his young daughter, Edith, stubbornly refused to have her hair curled.
For many years, Longfellow denied authorship, pointing to the inelegance of several of the rhyme’s words and to the fact that the style of composition was not his. However, before his death in 1882, he acknowledged having hastily composed the verse, and retrospectively admitted, “When I recall my juvenile poems and prose sketches, I wish that they were forgotten entirely.”
“Hey Diddle Diddle”: Post-1569, Europe
Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon…
Any rhyme in which a cow jumps over the moon and a dish runs away with a spoon is understandably classified in the category “nonsense rhymes.” The verse, meant to convey no meaning but only to rhyme, was composed entirely around a European dance, new in the mid-1500s, called “Hey-didle-didle.” The object was to have something metrical to sing while dancing.
“Humpty Dumpty”: 15th Century, England
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses,
And all the king’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
Scholars of linguistics believe this rhyme may be five hundred years old and may have mocked a nobleman who fell from high favor with a king, the fifteenth-century British monarch Richard III. From England the rhyme spread to several European countries, where its leading character changed from “Humpty Dumpty” to “Thille Lille” (in Sweden), “Boule, Boule” (in France), and “Wirgele-Wargele” (in Germany).
In the 1600s, “humpty dumpty” became the name of a hot toddy of ale and brandy, and one hundred fifty years later, it entered British vernacular as “a short clumsy person of either sex.”
“Jack and Jill”: Pre-1765, England
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.
A 1765 British woodcut illustrating this rhyme shows two boys, named Jack and Gill; there is no mention or depiction of a girl named Jill. Some folklorists believe the boys represent the influential sixteenth-century cardinal Thomas Wolsey and his close colleague, Bishop Tarbes.
In 1518, when Wolsey was in the service of Henry VII, Western Europe was split into two rival camps, France and the Holy Roman Empire of the Hapsburgs. Wolsey and Tarbes traveled back and forth between the enemies, attempting to negotiate a peace. When they failed, full-scale war erupted. Wolsey committed British troops against France, and to finance the campaign he raised taxes, arousing widespread resentment. The rhyme is thought to parody his “uphill” peace efforts and their eventual failure.
“Jack Be Nimble”: Post-17th Century, England
Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick,
Jack jumped over
The candle stick.
The verse is based on both an old British game and a once-popular means of auguring the future: leaping over a lit candle.
In the game and the augury, practiced as early as the seventeenth century, a lighted candle was placed in the center of a room. A person who jumped over the flame without extinguishing it was supposed to be assured good fortune for the following year. The custom became part of traditional British festivities that took place on November 25, the feast day of St. Catherine, the fourth-century Christian martyr of Alexandria.
“This Is the House That Jack Built”: Post-1500s, Europe
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built….
This is an example of an “accumulative rhyme,” in which each stanza repeats all the previous ones, then makes its own contribution.
The origin of “The House That Jack Built” is thought to be a Hebrew accumulative chant called “Had Gadyo,” which existed in oral tradition and was printed in the sixteenth century, although the subject matter in the two verses is unrelated. The point of an accumulative rhyme was not to convey information or to parody or satirize a subject, but only to tax a child’s powers of recall.
“Little Jack Horner”: Post-1550, England
Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie…
At the end of this rhyme, when Jack pulls a plum from the pie and exclaims “What a good boy am I!” he is actually commenting on his deviousness, for the tasty plum is a symbol for something costly that the real “Jack” stole.
Jack Homer extracting the deed for Mells Manor.
Legend has it that the original Jack Horner was Thomas Horner, sixteenth-century steward to Richard Whiting, abbot of Glastonbury in Somerset, the richest abbey in the British kingdom under King Henry VIII.
Abbot Richard Whiting suspected that Glastonbury was about to be confiscated by the crown during this period in history, known as the Dissolution of Monasteries. Hoping to gain favor with the king, Whiting sent Thomas Horner to London with a gift of a Christmas pie.
It was no ordinary pie. Beneath the crust lay the title deeds to twelve manor houses—a token that the abbot hoped would placate King Henry. En route to London, Horner reached into the pie and extracted one plum of a deed—for the expansive Mells Manor—and kept it for himself.
Soon after King Henry dissolved the abbot’s house, Thomas Horner took up residence at Mells Manor, and his descendants live there to this day—though they maintain that their illustrious ancestor legally purchased the deed to the manor from Abbot Whiting.
Interestingly, Richard Whiting was later arrested and tried on a trumped-up charge of embezzlement. Seated in the corner of the jury was his former steward, Thomas Horner. The abbot was found guilty and hanged, then drawn and quartered. Horner not only was allowed to retain Mells Manor but was immortalized in one of the world’s best-known, best-loved nursery rhymes.
“Ladybird, Ladybird”: Pre-18th Century, Europe
Ladybird, ladybird,
Fly away home,
Your house is on fire
And your children all gone.
Today the rhyme accompanies a game in which a child places a ladybug on her finger and recites the verse. If the insect does not voluntarily fly aw
ay, it is shaken off. According to an eighteenth-century woodcut, that is precisely what children did in the reign of George II.
The rhyme, though, is believed to have originated as an ancient superstitious incantation. Composed of slightly different words, it was recited to guide the sun through dusk into darkness, once regarded as a particularly mysterious time because the heavenly body vanished for many hours.
“London Bridge”: Post-11th Century, England
London Bridge is broken down,
Broken down, broken down,
London Bridge is broken down,
My fair lady.
The first stanza of this rhyme refers to the actual destruction, by King Olaf of Norway and his Norsemen in the eleventh century, of an early timber version of the famous bridge spanning the Thames. But there is more to the story than that.
Throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, there existed a game known as Fallen Bridge. Its rules of play were virtually identical in every country. Two players joined hands so that their elevated arms formed a bridge. Other players passed beneath, hoping that the arms did not suddenly descend and trap them.
In Italy, France, Germany, and England, there are rhymes based on the game, and “London Bridge” is one example. But the remainder of the long, twelve-stanza poem, in which all attempts to rebuild London Bridge fail, reflects an ancient superstition that man-made bridges, which unnaturally span rivers, incense water gods.
Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things Page 25