Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes

The first he was an Irishman,
The second was a Scot,
The third he was a Welshman,
And all were knaves, I wot.

The Irishman loved usquebaugh,
The Scot loved ale called blue-cap.
The Welshman he loved toasted cheese,
And made his mouth like a mouse-trap.

Usquebaugh burnt the Irishman,
The Scot was drowned in ale,
The Welshman had liked to be choked by a mouse,
But he pulled it out by the tail.

In this form the piece is designated as a glee, and is printed in the New Lyric by Badcock of about 1720, which contains "the best songs now in vogue."

In the nursery collection of Halliwell of 1842 there is a parallel piece to this which stands as follows: —

Old King Cole was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he;
Old King Cole he sat in his hole,
And he called for his fiddlers three.

The first he was a miller,
The second he was a weaver,
The third he was a tailor,
And all were rogues together.

The miller he stole corn,
The weaver he stole yarn,
The little tailor stole broadcloth
To keep these three rogues warm.

The miller was drowned in his dam,
The weaver was hung in his loom,
The devil ran away with the little tailor
With the broadcloth under his arm.

    (1842, p. 3.)
Chappell printed the words of the song of Old King Cole in several variations, and pointed out that The Pleasant Historie of Thomas of Reading, or the Six Worthie Yeomen of the West of 1632, contains the legend of one Cole, a cloth-maker of Reading at the time of King Henry I, and that the name "became proverbial owing to the popularity of this book." "There was some joke or conventional meaning among Elizabethan dramatists," he says, "when they gave the name of Old Cole, which it is now difficult to recover." Dekker in the Satiromatrix of 1602, and Marston in The Malcontent of 1604, applied the name to a woman. On the other hand, Ben Jonson in Bartholomew Fair gave the name of Old Cole to the sculler in the puppet-play Hero and Leander which he there introduces.[10 - Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, 1893, p. 633.] In face of this information, what becomes of the identity of the supposed king?

On the other hand a long ancestry is now claimed for certain characters of nursery fame who seemed to have no special claim to attention. The following verse appears in most collections of rhymes, and judging from the illustration which accompanies it in the toy-books, it refers sometimes to a boy and a girl, sometimes to two boys.

Jack and Gill went up the hill
To fetch a bottle of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Gill came tumbling after.

    (c. 1783, p. 51.)
    [Later collections have Jill and pail.]
This verse, as was first suggested by Baring-Gould,[11 - Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, 1866, p. 189.] preserves the Scandinavian myth of the children Hjuki and Bill who were caught up by Mani, the Moon, as they were taking water from the well Byrgir, and they can be seen to this day in the moon carrying the bucket on the pole between them.

Another rhyme cited by Halliwell from The New Mad Tom o'Bedlam mentions Jack as being the Man in the Moon: —

The Man in the Moon drinks claret,
But he is a dull Jack-a-dandy;
Would he know a sheep's head from a carrot,
He should learn to drink cider or brandy.
(1842, p. 33.)

According to North German belief, a man stands in the moon pouring water out of a pail (K., p. 304), which agrees with expressions such as "the moon holds water." In a Norse mnemonic verse which dates from before the twelfth century, we read, "the pail is called Saeg, the pole is called Simul, Bil and Hiuk carry them" (C. P., I, 78).

The view that Jack and Jill are mythological or heroic beings finds corroboration in the expression "for Jak nor for Gille," which occurs in the Townley Mysteries of about the year 1460.[12 - Cited Murray's Dictionary: Jack.] By this declaration a superhuman power is called in as witness. The same names are coupled together also in an ancient divination rhyme used to decide in favour of one of two courses of action. Two scraps of paper slightly moistened were placed on the back of the hand, and the following invocation was pronounced before and after breathing upon them to see which would fly first. The sport was taught by Goldsmith to Miss Hawkins when a child, as she related to Forster.[13 - Forster, J., Life of Goldsmith, II, p. 71.]

There were two blackbirds sat upon a hill
The one was named Jack, the other named Jill.
Fly away Jack! Fly away Jill!
Come again Jack! Come again Jill!

    (1810, p. 45.)
The lines suggest the augur's action with regard to the flight of birds. The same verse has been recited to me in the following variation: —

Peter and Paul sat on the wall,
Fly away Peter! Fly away Paul!
Come again Peter! Come again Paul!

In this case the names of Christian apostles have been substituted for heathen names which, at the time when the names were changed, may still have carried a suggestion of profanity. The following rhyme on Jack and Gill occurs in an early nursery collection: —

I won't be my father's Jack,
I won't be my mother's Gill,
I will be the fiddler's wife
And have music when I will.
T'other little tune, t'other little tune,
Pr'ythee, love, play me, t'other little tune.

    (c. 1783, p. 25.)

CHAPTER III

RHYMES AND POPULAR SONGS

ON looking more closely at the contents of our nursery collections, we find that a large proportion of so-called nursery rhymes are songs or snatches of songs, which are preserved also as broadsides, or appeared in printed form in early song-books. These songs or parts of songs were included in nursery collections because they happened to be current at the time when these collections were made, and later compilers transferred into their own collections what they found in earlier ones. Many songs are preserved in a number of variations, for popular songs are in a continual state of transformation. Sometimes new words are written to the old tune, and differ from those that have gone before in all but the rhyming words at the end of the lines; sometimes new words are introduced which entirely change the old meaning. Many variations of songs are born of the moment, and would pass away with it, were it not that they happen to be put into writing and thereby escape falling into oblivion.

In Mother Goose's Melody stands a song in six verses which begins: —

There was a little man who woo'd a little maid,
And he said: "Little maid, will you wed, wed, wed?
I have little more to say, will you? Aye or nay?
For little said is soonest mended, ded, ded."