Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes Page 14

  The most convincing theory is in fact American and harks back to the sixteenth century. Reputed to be the first English language poem ever written on American soil, the rhyme is believed to have been penned by a young English pilgrim who had travelled to the New World in 1621 on the Mayflower. He had observed the way in which Native Wampanoag Indian mothers of Massachusetts crafted cradles out of tree bark and suspended them from the branches with vines, placing their offspring inside and thus allowing the soft wind to rock the babies to sleep. However, he also added a darker note with his warning (aimed at the Pilgrim Fathers, and Mothers, who might be trying out this method with their restless children) that sometimes the vine or branch could snap.

  Rub-a-Dub-Dub

  RUB-a-dub-dub,

  Three men in a tub,

  And how do you think they got there?

  The butcher, the baker and candlestick maker,

  It was enough to make a man stare.

  This is one of those nursery rhymes that we all take for granted. When looked at again, it’s a very much odder affair. At first glance, ‘Rub-a-Dub-Dub’ looks rather like a reference to a gay peep show. Indeed, history reveals that there probably was such a thing, catering especially for royalty and the nobility. There is every chance the working classes also had their own clandestine man-on-man entertainment going on in towns and cities throughout the land. However, the oldest printed version of the rhyme, dating to the fifteenth century, reveals how changing just a few words can alter a story completely, putting an entirely different complexion on it:

  Rub-a-dub-dub,

  Three maids in a tub,

  And who do you think were there?

  The butcher, the baker and candlestick maker,

  And all of them gone to the fair.

  Peep shows were popularized by the Victorians during the nineteenth century, but their origins can be traced back much further, to Europe in the 1400s. In those days, wandering artists and entertainers came up with the idea of presenting their art or shows in a large portable wooden box. The inside could be decorated to create scenery and customers would pay to watch the action through holes in the side. It was all innocent fun in the beginning but soon developed into the perfect way of providing ‘closet’ sexual entertainment for the public without breaking too many laws. That was probably when those Victorians became so interested in them.

  See-Saw, Margery Daw

  SEE-SAW, Margery Daw,

  Johnny shall have a new master;

  He shall earn but a penny a day

  Because he can’t work any faster.

  See-saw, Margery Daw,

  Sold her bed and lay on straw;

  Was not she a dirty slut

  To sell her bed and lie in the dirt?

  See-saw, Margery Daw,

  The old hen flew over the malt house;

  She counted her chickens one by one,

  Still she missed the little white one,

  And this is it, this is it, this is it.

  This song has been sung by children, past and present, as they play on a see-saw, its rhythm mimicking the rising and falling motion of the see-saw itself. And like so many rhymes, there’s more to it than first meets the eye. A seesaw in a metaphorical sense brings the low high and high low, and thus this rhyme explores what happens when family situations change for the worse.

  The first verse clearly refers to child labour, something that up until the mid nineteenth century was completely taken for granted. When Charles Dickens’s father was imprisoned for debt in 1824, the middle-class twelve-year-old had to leave school and work ten-hour days in a boot-blacking factory to support his family. Resentment of his situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became a major theme in his later works. Whatever age you were, if you were poor you had to work. It is quite possible that the rhyme was used as a taunt to other children: that if they failed to work at a harder and faster rate, they would be sent to the workhouse, where life was guaranteed to be even worse for them than it was up the chimney or out in the fields.

  The second verse takes the next step and is about poverty, destitution and perhaps even prostitution. After all, no young girl willingly sells her bed to lie on straw. The second half of the verse is about society’s negative reactions to sudden poverty (Was not she a dirty slut/To sell her bed and lie in the dirt?); no one helps, they just point the finger.

  The third verse then takes a step back and looks at the family missing its ‘lazy’ child – the one who can’t work any faster. They are no longer part of the community, perhaps sent to the workhouse (the malt house), where they are scorned by society – emphasized by the singer of the rhyme suddenly pointing at the child being taunted (And this is it, this is it, this is it). Altogether, not a very pleasant little song.

  Simple Simon

  SIMPLE Simon met a pieman,

  Going to the fair;

  Said Simple Simon to the pieman,

  ‘Let me taste your ware.’

  Said the pieman to Simple Simon,

  ‘Show me first your penny.’

  Said Simple Simon to the pieman,

  ‘Sir, I have not any.’

  Simple Simon went a-fishing,

  For to catch a whale,

  All the water he had got

  Was in his mother’s pail.

  Simple Simon went to look

  If plums grew on a thistle;

  He pricked his fingers very much,

  Which made poor Simon whistle.

  He went to catch a dicky bird,

  And thought he could not fail

  Because he had a little salt

  To put upon its tail.

  He went for water in a sieve,

  But soon it all fell through,

  And now poor Simple Simon bids

  You all a simple ‘Adieu’.

  At first glance, this seems like straightforward nonsense verse, but in fact the figure of Simple Simon is a very ancient one – arising from the old Christian idea of the holy fool. ‘Fools for Christ’, a phrase first used by St Paul, refers to behaviour motivated by real or assumed craziness, to serve a religious purpose. Such people might employ shocking, unconventional behaviour to challenge accepted norms, deliver prophecies or to mask their piety. According to this interpretation, Simple Simon is trying – and failing – to perform a series of miracles, some of which use the imagery of the Old Testament (poverty, fishing, the carrying out of impossible tasks). Unsurprisingly enough, the patron saint of holy fools was a sixth-century maverick called St Simeon of Ermesa.

  Simeon’s career as a saint started out with the required years of prayer and study, twenty-nine in all. But his story took a dramatic turn when he left his cave one day and entered the world. His chosen city was Emesa, in Syria, and he started as he meant to go on – much to the bemusement of the people of Emesa – with a dead dog tied to him. And that was only the beginning. During church services, he threw nuts at the clergy and blew out the candles. At the circus, he wrapped his arms around the dancing girls and went skipping across the arena, to the amusement of the masses. In the streets, he tripped people up, developed a theatrical limp, and dragged himself around on his buttocks; while, down in the bath house, he ran naked into the crowded women’s section. On solemn fasting days, he ate vast amounts of beans – with noisily predictable results. It is easy to see how, in his lifetime, Simeon must have been regarded as a madman.

  It was only after his death that people started to talk about his acts of kindness – and about they had turned into off beat miracles. There was the poor mule driver whose vinegar Simeon turned into wine, enabling him to start a successful tavern. There was the rich man who was saved from death when Simeon threw a lucky triple six at dice. And then there was the young man Simeon punched on the jaw to save him from an affair with a married woman in a literally backhanded act of kindness. Rather than being a madman, St Simeon the Holy Fool wanted the events of his life to show how (in the words of St Paul again) God
chooses ‘the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; the weak things of the world to shame the strong’ (1 Corinthians 1:27).

  Simple Simon often appears in the literature of the late Middle Ages, but slowly the imagery connected with him changes and the religious element is dropped in favour of slapstick, plain and simple. This Simple Simon has to suffer because he knows no better; the fool is no longer holy, he just rushes in where angels fear to tread. In this vein, a chapbook ballad published during the later part of the seventeenth century and called Simple Simon’s Misfortune tells the tale of an unfortunate man whose habit of losing and breaking things causes his wife to be cruel to him throughout their marriage. Meanwhile, another Simple Simon appears as the hero of a story written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1855, although presented more sympathetically. The idiot younger son of a wealthy family, he surprises everybody, including himself, when he somehow wins the hand in marriage of a beautiful princess after his elder, more intelligent brothers have failed.

  Sing a Song of Sixpence

  SING a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye;

  Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

  When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing;

  Oh, wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?

  The king was in his counting house counting out his money,

  The queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey.

  The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes

  When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose.

  This rhyme has been a favourite for centuries and there are a number of stories about it. One story focuses upon Henry James Pye (1745-1831), who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1790. Unfortunately, Pye lacked one significant attribute for the role: he was a terrible poet. One of the first tasks given to him was to write an ode in honour of mad King George III’s birthday. The rhyme, peppered with references to feathered choirs and vocal groves, was ridiculed by other writers one of whom, George Steevens, immediately quipped of the long-awaited effort: ‘and when the pye was opened the birds began to sing; was that not a dainty dish to set before the king?’ Pye was later described as the worst Poet Laureate in English history; indeed, his successor, Robert Southey, once remarked: ‘I have been rhyming as doggedly and dully as if my name had been Henry James Pye.’ But let’s get back to the origins of the rhyme…

  Songbirds were once a delicacy in England – and in some parts of Europe, especially France, they still are. It takes only a small leap of the imagination to see how food of days gone by could easily have inspired this rhyme. Royal meals have always been constructed to impress and, like showgirls jumping out of cakes, twenty-four live songbirds bursting out of a huge dish covered with an already-cooked pastry lid would certainly have wowed even the most jaded of royal diners. But there’s far more going on here than a banquet.

  According to one theory, the king in the rhyme was Henry VIII, the queen Catherine of Aragon, his first wife, and the maid Anne Boleyn, his mistress and wife-to-be. Like several other rhymes, ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ has to do with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In those much more dangerous times, it was crucial to transport sensitive documents around the kingdom in as unobtrusive a way as possible. Like the title deeds in Little Jack Horner, they were sometimes concealed in pies, and many deeds to valuable properties formerly owned by the Church were gifted to the king by black-clad churchmen (blackbirds) looking for a place in government or in Henry’s new Church of England. These political schemers used the opportunity to betray their superiors in return for financial reward or status, but they made highly unreliable allies, as Anne Boleyn was to find to her cost. Once she had given birth to a daughter rather than the much desired male heir, they were ranged against her. A plot was fabricated by Thomas Cromwell and the poor girl was accused of adultery, incest and high treason, leading to her head being cut off in 1536 (down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose).

  A much less likely theory, but my favourite nonetheless, is this one. Long before Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley glamorized piracy, there lived a man called Blackbeard (c. 1680-1718), king of the pirates. He lived during an age when ships from the great European nations sailed the seas in search of new lands to be plundered and vast riches returned to the ruler who authorized such activities. Ships’ captains and their crews could become amazingly wealthy if they returned home safely – a big ‘if as pirates often lay in wait for an authorized vessel to complete its voyage before attacking it as it headed for home, laden with bounty.

  Blackbeard operated in and around the Caribbean Islands with a fair degree of success, and before long several nations had put a price on his head. As a result, he kept a low profile when recruiting for new crew at the start of each season’s campaign. ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ was his coded message to potential shipmates.

  Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye

  Blackbeard, unlike many pirate captains, paid his crew a decent daily wage of sixpence per man, thereby attracting the best rogue sailors around. The king of the pirates also offered seamen a pocket full of rye whisky a day – a leather pouch holding about a litre of grog – which would have been a big incentive for any sailor, who liked to drown his seafaring sorrows with a liberal dose of alcohol. (Traditionally, almost all of them.)

  Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie

  Blackbeard was fond of a springing surprises and one of his tricks, to lure a target vessel close enough, was to pretend his own boat was in distress and in danger of sinking. Sails would be arranged to make the ship appear as though it was in difficulty or had lost its mast in a gale. Honest sailors from passing vessels would then go to the rescue, little realizing that twenty-four of Blackbeard’s finest drunkards would be lying in wait.

  When the pie was opened the birds began to sing

  As the target ship drew alongside, Blackbeard’s blackbirds would spring into action, usually with fearsome screams and shouts, jump aboard and quickly overpower the rival crew, killing as many as possible and then forcing those who surrendered to either join their gang or walk the plank.

  The king was in his counting house, counting out his money

  This obviously refers to the pirate king himself. Money was the motivating factor behind his actions. It didn’t hurt to remind new recruits how lucrative piracy could be.

  The queen was in the parlour, eating bread and honey

  Blackbeard’s favourite ship, Le Concorde de Nantes, was stolen from the French navy in 1717. He renamed it the Queen Anne’s Revenge and probably liked to remind potential recruits of the celebrated theft.

  The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes

  A maid was pirate slang for a choice ship known to be laden with treasure, while the waters around the Caribbean and Carolinas were referred to as ‘the garden’.

  When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose

  Blackbeard’s ‘birds’ always had to be at the ready, and speed was often their best weapon – a surprise attack on a ship to ‘peck off her nose’ (maids and ships both being feminine) before the crew realized what was happening. All of which explains why ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ could be associated with seafaring ‘kings’ as much as land-based ones. Although personally I doubt it.

  Solomon Grundy

  SOLOMON Grundy,

  Born on a Monday,

  Christened on Tuesday,

  Married on Wednesday,

  Took ill on Thursday,

  Grew worse on Friday,

  Died on Saturday,

  Buried on Sunday;

  That was the end of Solomon Grundy.

  A rhyme used for hundreds of years to teach children the order of the days of the week – and to remind them, cheeringly enough, that life is extremely short – ‘Solomon Grundy’ was first published in 1842 by researcher and Shakespearean scholar James Orchard Halliwell-Phillips. The name Solomon Grundy is believed to derive from a popular dish known as Salmagundi. Orig
inating in the early seventeenth century, this consisted of a variety of ingredients, including cooked meats, seafood such as anchovies and pickled herrings, salad leaves and dried fruits. Washington Irving used the name of the dish as the title of a literary magazine, issued from January 1807, in order to emphasize the publication’s eclectic mix of articles and with the intention of poking fun at New York’s politics and culture. Incidentally, it was in the pages of Salmagundi that Irving first nicknamed New York as Gotham City, an Anglo-Saxon word meaning ‘Goat Town’ – which is how I see the place, but that’s another story.

  The number seven is regarded as significant by many different cultures and religions. In Genesis, in the Old Testament, God creates the world in six days and then rests on the seventh. In Roman Catholicism, there are other sacred sevens, but the one most relevant to this rhyme is the seven sacraments. These are the special ceremonies performed at different stages in a person’s life: baptism, Eucharist or Mass, reconciliation (including confession), confirmation, marriage, taking holy orders, and anointing of the sick (or last rites). Clearly not all these apply to our Mr Grundy (he wasn’t a monk, for instance, and clearly didn’t have much time to commit any sins, let alone confess them), but a set of sacraments is nonetheless implied – those significant stages in every person’s life.