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Read Ebook: Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes by Eckenstein Lina
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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.
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."
Halliwell's collection includes only the first and the fourth verse of this piece.
There was a bonny blade had married a country maid, And safely conducted her home, home, home; She was neat in every part, and she pleased him to the heart, But alas, and alas, she was dumb, dumb, dumb.
Chappell, loc. cit., p. 770.
The same form of verse was used in another nursery song which stands as follows:--
There was a little man, and he had a little gun, And the ball was made of lead, lead, lead. And he went to a brook to shoot at a duck, And he hit her upon the head, head, head.
Then he went home unto his wife Joan, To bid her a good fire to make, make, make, To roast the duck that swam in the brook, And he would go fetch her the drake, drake, drake.
Again, a song which appears in several early nursery collections is as follows:--
There was an old woman toss'd in a blanket, Seventeen times as high as the moon; But where she was going no mortal could tell, For under her arm she carried a broom.
"Old woman, old woman, old woman," said I, "Whither, ah whither, ah whither, so high?" To sweep the cobwebs from the sky, And I'll be with you by and by.
Chappell, loc. cit., p. 569.
I have come across a verse sung on Earl Grey and Lord Brougham, written in 1835, which may have been in imitation of this song:--
Mother Bunch shall we visit the moon? Come, mount on your broom, I'll stick on a spoon, Then hey to go, we shall be there soon ... etc.
Another old song which figures in early nursery collections is as follows:--
What care I how black I be? Twenty pounds will marry me; If twenty won't, forty shall-- I am my mother's bouncing girl.
What though now opposed I be? Twenty peers will carry me. If twenty won't, thirty will, For I'm His Majesty's bouncing Bill.
Chappell, loc. cit., p. 315.
Another so-called nursery rhyme which is no more than a popular song has been traced some way back in history by Halliwell, who gives it in two variations:--
Three blind mice, see how they run! They all run after the farmer's wife, Who cut off their tails with a carving knife, Did you ever see such fools in your life-- Three blind mice!
Three blind mice, three blind mice! Dame Julian, the miller and his merry old wife She scrapte the tripe, take thow the knife.
The oldest known version of the song begins:--
Chappell, loc. cit., p. 88.
A Scottish variation of the song begins:--
The origin and meaning of this burden remains obscure.
Chappell, loc. cit., p. 561.
In the accepted nursery version the song begins:--
The word crowdy occurs also as a verb in one of the numerous nursery rhymes referring to scenes of revelry, at which folk-humour pictured the cat making music:--
Come dance a jig to my granny's pig, With a rowdy, rowdy, dowdy; Come dance a jig to my granny's pig, And pussy cat shall crowdy.
This verse and a number of others go back to the festivities that were connected with Twelfth Night. Some of them preserve expressions in the form of burdens which have no apparent sense; in other rhymes the same expressions have the force of a definite meaning. Probably the verses in which the words retain a meaning have the greater claim to antiquity.
Halliwell cites this song in a form in which the words are put into the lips of the king, and associates it with the amusements of Twelfth Night:--
A cat came fiddling out of the barn, With a pair of bagpipes under her arm, She could sing nothing but fiddle cum fee, The mouse has married the humble bee; Pipe, cat, dance, mouse; We'll have a wedding in our good house.
A cat came fiddling out of a barn, With a pair of bagpipes under her arm, She sang nothing but fiddle-de-dee, Worried a mouse and a humble bee. Puss began purring, mouse ran away, And off the bee flew with a wild huzza!
In both cases the cat was fiddling, that is moving to instrumental music without the utterance of words, and called upon the others to do so while she played the pipes. Her association with an actual fiddle, however, is preserved in the following rhyme which I cite in two of its numerous variations:--
Sing hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, The cow jump'd over the moon! The little dog laughed to see such sport, And the dish lick't up the spoon.
Sing hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed to see such craft, And the dish ran away with the spoon.
This rhyme also refers to the revelry which accompanied a feast, probably the one of Twelfth Night also.
RHYMES IN TOY-BOOKS
Many of our longer nursery pieces first appeared in print in the diminutive toy-books already described, which represent so curious a development in the literature of the eighteenth century. These books were sometimes hawked about in one or more sheets, which were afterwards folded so as to form a booklet of sixteen, thirty-two, or sixty-four pages. Others were issued sewn and bound in brilliant covers, at a cost of as much as a shilling or eighteen pence. Usually each page contained one verse which was illustrated by an appropriate cut. In the toy-books which tell a consecutive story, the number of verses of the several pieces seem to have been curtailed or enlarged in order to fit the required size of the book.
A was an Archer, who shot at a frog, B was a blind man, and led by a dog ... etc.
The cat was asleep by the side of the fire, Her mistress snor'd loud as a pig, When Jack took the fiddle by Jenny's desire, And struck up a bit of a jig.
The dame made a curtsey, the dog made a bow, The dame said, "Your servant," the dog said "Bow-wow."
But some editions have an additional rhyme on the dame's going for fish; and the edition at South Kensington has the verse:--
Old Mother Hubbard sat down in a chair, And danced her dog to a delicate air; She went to the garden to buy him a pippin, When she came back the dog was skipping.
In the edition of Rusher, instead of "the dog made a bow," we read "Prin and Puss made a bow."
In Halliwell's estimation the tale of Mother Hubbard and her dog is of some antiquity, "were we merely to judge," he says, "of the rhyme of laughing to coffin in the third verse."
She went to the undertaker's to buy him a coffin, When she came back the poor dog was laughing.
There was a little old woman and she liv'd in a shoe, She had so many children, she didn't know what to do. She crumm'd 'em some porridge without any bread And she borrow'd a beetle, and she knock'd 'em all o' th' head. Then out went the old woman to bespeak 'em a coffin And when she came back she found 'em all a-loffing.
This piece contains curious mythological allusions, as we shall see later.
It may be added that the nursery collection of 1810 contains the first verse only of Mother Hubbard, which favours the view expressed by Halliwell, that the compiler of the famous book did not invent the subject nor the metre of his piece, but wrote additional verses to an older story.
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