Rhymes and Jingles from our youth – Part one.
In every country and in every time there have been rhymes and jingles sung, or said, to children to amuse them, yet most of what are now called nursery rhymes had their origin in subject matter intended for adults. The young, however, have a way of taking what pleases them; and thus they have preserved the parodies, lampoons, bits of homely wisdom and folk ballads that have long lost their social significance. In past times, when few people could read, and even before the printed word, the use of rhymes was a way of safely satirizing those in power. Some people believe the lady in “Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, to see a fine lady on a white horse, with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes”, to have been Queen Elizabeth I. Others suggest that the rider may have been Lady Godiva, whose husband, Leofric, Earl of Mercia, imposed a heavy tax on his subjects. This was in the days before suffragettes came along, and women were sometimes compelled to obtain their ends by unusual means. Distressed by the people’s hardship Lady Godiva pleaded their case. Her husband listened and finally offered a dare, “Ride naked through Coventry and I’ll do as you ask”. Lady Godiva galloped through the town on a handsome white horse, while all the folk in Coventry stayed indoors to spare her blushes. The original “Little Jack Horner, sat in the corner, eating a Christmas pie, he put in his thumb and pulled out a plum, and said, “Oh, what a good boy am I”, may have been steward to Richard Whiting, the last of the Abbots of Glastonbury at the time the monasteries were being dissolved. The Abbot, hoping to appease Henry VIII, sent his steward to London with a ‘Christmas pie’, in which were hidden the title deeds to twelve manors. On the journey, Jack Horner is said to have opened the pie and taken out for himself a ‘plum’, which were the deeds to the Manor of Mells. Whether or not this story is true, it is a fact that shortly after the dissolution of the monasteries, a man named Thomas Horner went to live at Mells.

The rhyme “Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean, and so between the two of them, they licked the platter clean!” refers to couples where the man is below-average weight and the woman is obese. It has been suggested
that the rhyme pokes fun at Charles I of England and his wife Henrietta Maria of France. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Jack Spratt was one name for a dwarf. “London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady”, is reminiscent of the dark rite of entombing a living person in the supports of a bridge to appease evil spirits and to keep the bridge from falling down. This relic of ancient superstition is common to peoples all over the world. Skeletons have been found in the pillars of ruined bridges,proving that the rite was practised. The explanation of the rhyme “Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town, upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown, tapping at the window and crying through the lock, are all the children in their beds, it’s past eight o’clock?” was to teach children to associate everyday tasks with their own lives. Before the days of wireless and television, great reliance was put upon the Town Crier to pass on the latest news and information. Wee Willie Winkie was the children’s version of the Town Crier! “The Grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men, he marched them up to the top of the hill and he marched them down again, and when they were up they were up and when they were down they were down, and when they were only half way up, they were neither up nor down”, refers to Frederick Augustus, the second son of George III. Frederick was a British officer who commanded unsuccessful campaigns in the Netherlands during the French Revolutionary Wars. As Commander in Chief he helped to modernize the army. Patience Muffett was the little girl in the rhyme “Little Miss Muffett sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey, along came a spider, who sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffett away”. Patience’s stepfather, Dr. Muffett (1553-1604) was a famous entomologist who wrote the first scientific catalogue of British insects. While eating her breakfast Patience was frightened by one of his spiders. “Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row”. The Mary alluded to in this traditional English nursery rhyme is reputed to be Mary Tudor, or ‘Bloody Mary’, who was the daughter of Henry VIII. Queen Mary was a staunch Catholic and the garden referred to is an allusion to graveyards, which were increasing in size with those who dared to continue to adhere to the Protestant faith. The ‘silver bells’ were thumbscrews, which crushed the thumb between two hard surfaces by the turning of a screw. The ‘cockle shells’ were believed to be instruments of torture, which were attached to the genitals! The ‘maids’ or maiden was the original guillotine! Maids or Maiden were devices to behead people. Beheading a victim was fraught with problems. It could take up to eleven blows to actually sever the head, the victim often resisted and had to be chased around the scaffold. Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, did not go willingly to her death and had to be chased and hacked at by the executioner. These problems led to the invention of a mechanical instrument (now known as the Guillotine) called the Maiden. To be continued.

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