May 15, 2023 • 35 mins
It's our third installment of shows about the origins of Mother Goose nursery rhymes. Spoiler alert: Many of the real stories are hard to pin down.
Research:
- Cheadle, Roberta Eaton. “Dark Origins – Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.” Writing To Be Read. https://writingtoberead.com/2021/06/30/dark-origins-here-we-go-round-the-mulberry-bush/
- Historic UK. “More Nursery Rhymes.” 4/15/2015. https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/More-Nursery-Rhymes/
- Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O. “Popular rhymes and nursery tales : a sequel to the Nursery rhymes of England .” London : John Russell Smith. 1849.
- Howard, Jennifer. “The Realities Behind the Rhymes.” Washington Post. 6/11/1997. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/1997/06/11/the-realities-behind-the-rhymes/9fbd7d36-4bb9-4fc0-af38-58fbe3fb7e43/
- Ker, John Bellenden. “An essay on the archaiology [sic] of popular English phrases and nursery rhymes.” London. Whittaker. 1834. https://archive.org/details/b29309670/
- Littlechild, Chris. “The Egg-Citing Truth Behind Humpty Dumpty.” Ripley’s. 7/4/2019. https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/humpty-dumpty/
- Opie, Iona Archibald and Peter Opie. “The Singing Game.” Oxford University Press. 1998.
- Opie, Iona and Peter. “The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes.” Oxford University Press. 1997.
- Overstreet, Mikkaka. “10 Disturbing Nursery Rhyme Origin Stories to Celebrate Nursery Rhyme Week.” Book Riot. 11/4/2021. https://bookriot.com/nursery-rhyme-origin-stories/
- Seaver, Carl. “The Strange Historical Origins of the Humpty Dumpty Nursery Rhyme.” History Defined. 1/24/2023. https://www.historydefined.net/humpty-dumpty-history/
- Tearle, Oliver. “A Short Analysis of the ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’ Nursery Rhyme.” Interesting Literature. 9/2018. https://interestingliterature.com/2018/09/a-short-analysis-of-the-hickory-dickory-dock-nursery-rhyme-history-origins/
- Tearle, Oliver. “A Short Analysis of the ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ Nursery Rhyme.” Interesting Literature. https://interestingliterature.com/2018/10/a-short-analysis-of-the-sing-a-song-of-sixpence-nursery-rhyme-origins-history/
- Thomas, Katherine Elwes. “The Real Personages Of Mother Goose.” Lothrop, Lee & Shepard. 1930.
- Wood, Jennifer M. “The Dark and Mysterious Origins of 10 Classic Nursery Rhymes.” Mental Floss. 10/28/2015. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/55035/dark-origins-11-classic-nursery-rhymes
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frey. This is a return of
six Impossible Episodes. If you're new to the show Six
(00:22):
Impossible Episodes, it's kind of a series. We'll tackle six
different topics that, for whatever reason, usually can't fill out
an episode on their own. The first time that we
did one on Mother Goose Rhymes, it was because of
a listener request for an episode about the Muffin Man.
This was a listener request from a child that had
(00:44):
been passed on via an adult. That one was a
lot of fun, and so the next six Impossible Episodes
we did was another one. Some time has passed now
since those two, and I thought maybe we would go
for a third. We have to start, though, with a
caveat that Folks who have heard the other earlier Mother
Goose episodes will probably find familiar. A lot of these
(01:07):
poems and songs were first published hundreds of years ago,
and some of them might have existed for quite some
time before appearing in a book or some kind of
other print material. But most of the explanations for their
purported origins are much much newer, like in a lot
of cases, hundreds of years newer, and usually these wind
(01:30):
up seeming more like somebody sort of trying to come
up with an explanation that matches up with what's written
in a poem, rather than someone actually finding evidence that
a poem referenced a specific person or historical event. They're
fun anyway, though, so we're doing it. And first up,
(01:51):
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. The first known publication
of this rhyme was by Samuel Arnold in seventeen ninety
seven in a book called Juvenile Amusements. Arnold was a
composer and an organist who lived and worked in London.
(02:13):
His version was a little different, though it started out
the same, but then ended four score men and four
score more could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.
Some people interpret this as a riddle with the answer
being an egg. According to folkloris Iona and Peter Opie,
who specialized in the study of childhood culture and published
(02:37):
so much research on it in the last half of
the twentieth century. There are multiple different versions of the
same poem slash riddle in other European countries, like Trilla
Trola in parts of Germany or Bullabula in France. All
of these similar poems seem like they are connected, but
it's really not clear which of them might have been
(02:59):
the first one ever to be composed. Also, Humpty Dumpty
is often depicted is sort of an anthropomorphized egg, including
in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, which came out in
eighteen sixty five, but the term humpty dumpty predate Samuel
Arnold's publication of this nursery rhyme by roughly one hundred years.
(03:22):
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, It's been used since
at least sixteen ninety eight to mean a drink quote
made with ale boiled with brandy, and in seventeen eighty
five the word humpty dumpty was used in writing with
a different meaning, that being a person who was short
and squat and maybe kind of frumpy, especially if they
(03:42):
keep their shoulders hunched.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I feel attacked.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
A character named Humpty Dumpty who had these physical traits
also appeared in print before the Humpty Dumpty poem in
the Lilliputian Writing School that came out sometime between seventeen
fifty four and seventeen sixty four. So some people speculate
that this poem is a reference to King Richard third
of England, that the humpty is referencing the way his
(04:08):
body looked because he had scoliosis, and the wall that
he was on was a horse named Wall, and the
falling down part is referencing his death at the Battle
of bosworth Field.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
However, the only.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
References to Richard the third having a horse named Wall
that I could find, they all seem to be explanations
of what Humpty Dumpty is about. I don't know if
anybody else said at any point anywhere that he had
a horse named Wall. The other thing that people point
to with this a lot is that this could be
Richard third, is that all the King's horses and all
(04:45):
the King's men is maybe a reference to the my
Kingdom for a horse line from Shakespeare's Richard the Third.
There is also a completely different explanation that Humpty Dumpty
was a large cannon that was used during the English
Civil Wars. In this explanation, the Royalist town of Colchester
(05:06):
was under siege by the Parliamentarians and they had this
big cannon that they had nicknamed Humpty.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Dumpty up on a wall.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Either the cannon recoiled when it was fired and fell
off the wall, or the Parliamentarians shattered the wall and
caused the cannon to fall down, but either way the
Royalist forces could not repair it. But according to the opies,
the source for this story is a series of fictitious
nursery rhyme interpretations that were printed in Oxford Magazine in
(05:35):
nineteen fifty six, which people misinterpreted as being real. Yeah,
I've heard this cannon explanation a lot too, and I
did try to go and track down this original article
to see exactly what it said, and I could not
find a way to get at it. So I wish
(05:55):
I could did not sussess but do that. So next
we go on to our next poem, which is sing
a song a sixpence a pocket full of rye four
and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. When the pie
was opened, the birds began to sing. Wasn't that a
dainty dish? To set before the king. There's also a
second verse that I think people don't maybe say as much,
(06:17):
which is the King was in the counting house counting
out his money. The queen was in the parlor eating
bread and honey. The maid was in the garden hanging
out the clothes. There came a little blackbird and snapped
off her nose. So we're gonna look at this one
in pieces first. There are multiple references combining sixpence with
(06:38):
singing going back to the seventeenth century, including a line
from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which was first performed in sixteen
oh two. That's Sir Toby Belch saying, come on, there
is sixpence for you. Let's have a song. In the
sixteen fourteen play Bonduka by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher,
a character calls out, whoa, here's a stir Now sing
(06:59):
a song of sixpence. So that bit's been around for
a while next. Allegedly at least part of this was
written by English literary critic and Shakespeare commentator George Stevens,
who supposedly wrote it to make fun of Henry James Pie.
Pie was named British poet Laureate in seventeen ninety, and
(07:21):
unlike most people who are named a country's poet laureate,
Pie was not well regarded for his verse. He was
probably named poet laureate as a reward for supporting or
doing some kind of favors for somebody in Parliament. Some
sources point to William Pitt the Younger, who eventually became
Prime Minister. A lot of Pie's contemporaries made fun of
(07:45):
him and made fun of his poetry, especially his poems
commemorating the King's birthday, which apparently were particularly horrible, at
least based on what I read second hand, having also
not found the exact poems they're talking about again. Allegedly,
one of these birthday poems was so bad that Stevens
(08:08):
responded with and when the pie was opened, the birds
began to sing? Was not that a dainty dish to
set before the King? Pie in this instance was spelled Pye,
like Pie's name, and Stevens was supposedly inspired by a
line Pie had written that referenced a feathered choir. This
story shows up in a lot of sources, especially in
(08:30):
works that were printed in the nineteenth and early twentieth century,
but it's not clear where it came from, also drawing
some questions around this. The first written appearance of sing
a song a sixpence is in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Songbook,
published in seventeen forty four, forty six years before Pie
(08:53):
was named Poet laureate. In that version, it is a
bag of rye rather than a pocket.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Naughty boys are who.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Was baked into the pie rather than blackbirds. It is
definitely possible that Stevens kind of recited a bit of
a nursery rhyme that he already knew to make fun
of Henry James Pie. Though there are several other proposed
explanations for this rhyme, but none of them really seem
to have any backup, Like maybe this is a reference
(09:21):
to King Henry the Eighth and the dissolution of the
monasteries and those four and twenty blackbirds are really choirs
of monks singing and baking pies to try to earn
the king's favor. Or maybe in those later lines of
the second verse, the queen is supposed to be Henry's
first wife, Catherine of Aragon, who he divorced, and the
maid is his second wife and Boleyn who was beheaded,
(09:43):
and that the beheading is what's being referenced when the
blackbird snaps off the maid's nose. Or maybe the blackbirds
are a reference to twenty four hours in a day,
and the King and Queen are the sun and the moon. Honestly,
it all seems kind of random. I feel like this
is a literature class where people are like any interpretation
is valid as.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Long as you can back it up with the text.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
In nineteen ninety nine, the website snopes dot com published
an explanation involving the pirate Blackbeard using this song to
recruit new pirates for his crew. The sixpence and the
rye were the money and whiskey that these pirates would
be paid. The blackbirds in the pie alluded to how
(10:27):
pirates would lure the crews of other ships into a
false sense of security by pretending to be in distress.
This explanation went on from there, explaining each line in
the poem as part of a code for recruiting pirates.
But this was from a section of the website called
the Repository of Lost Legends or troll. They were supposed
(10:52):
to be so obviously made up that no one would
mistake them for real urban legends. In other words, snopes
dot Com was trolling people, But really some of the
articles in this section of the website are more obviously
made up than others. Like an article about how mister
Ed was really a zebra not a horse, accompanied by
pictures of mister Ed, who was clearly a horse, is
(11:14):
a lot easier to spot as fake than a made
up interpretation of a nursery rhyme that seems pretty similar
to the many, many other widely repeated nursery rhyme interpretations
floating around in the world that are at best barely
connected to reality. Some people did wind up falling for
this Blackbeard fantasy, including the TLCTV show Mostly True Stories
(11:38):
Urban Legends Revealed, which aired in two thousand and three. Yeah,
apparently later on they didn't exactly error retraction, but they
in a different episode they said the opposite. One possible
inspiration for this poem is something we have talked about
on the show before. Last year, we did an episode
(11:59):
on the history of pie, and in it we talked
about a fifteen ninety eight Italian cookbook titled Eppelario, which
included a recipe for making a pie and then filling
it with live birds, which would then fly out when
the pie was cut open. The Opies actually referenced this recipe,
as well as later cookbooks that referred back to it.
(12:19):
They reference that in their Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes.
We are going to have more mother Goose fun, but
first we're gonna pause for a sponsor break. Our next
(12:39):
rhyme is newer than some of the others that we
have been talking about over this kind of mini series.
Here we go around the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush,
the mulberry bush. Here we go around the mulberry bush
on a cold and frosty morning. This is a song.
I won't sing it because I'm bad at that. There
are lots of additional verses, including this is the way
(13:00):
we wash our face, this is the way we colmb
our hair, this is the way we brush our teeth,
and this is the way we put on clothes. This
nineteenth century rhyme is usually sung to an older tune,
one that was first documented in the middle of the
eighteenth century as Nancy Dawson. This melody is also used
for another song with some similarities to here we Go
(13:22):
round the mulberry Bush, which is called nuts in May.
That one goes here we come gathering nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May. Here we come gathering
nuts in May on a cold and frosty morning. The
Opie speculated that the popularity of here we Go round
the Mulberry Bush is at least partially due to nuts
(13:42):
in May already being a well known song when Mulberry
Bush was written. In their book The Singing Game, Peter
and Aana Opie mention the use of this song in
Glasgow infant schools in eighteen thirty four as a way
to teach pupils about hygiene and but with the verses
ending to come to school in the morning rather than
(14:04):
on a cold and frosty morning. And aside from the
first verse about the mulberry bush, this really does seem
like the kind of didactic song that somebody might make
up to teach young children about things like cleanliness. It
really has some parallels to the kinds of songs that
we talked about in our episode on the history of
Happy Birthday to You, which we ran as a Saturday
(14:26):
classic not long ago. Many nineteenth century versions of this
song start with a verse about going around some kind
of plants, but they aren't consistent about what kind of
plant they reference. The opies point out that Thomas Hardy,
born in Dorset, England, knew this song as being around
a gooseberry bush, while T. S. Eliot, who grew up
(14:46):
in Saint Louis, Missouri, knew it as a prickly pair.
In James Orchard Halliwell Phillips's popular Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales,
a sequel to the Nursery Rhymes of England, which was
published in eighteen forty.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Nine, it is bramble bush.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
It's not clear exactly where the mulberry bush came from
or how that one seems to have become the most common,
almost standard verse. Mulberries grow on trees and not on bushes,
And of course trees and bushes these are both constructed
categories that we have made up to understand the world.
But in general trees have a central trunk, while shrubs
(15:24):
tend to be smaller and have multiple woody stems. In
nineteen ninety four, Robert Stephen Duncan, who had been governor
of hm Wakefield Prison, self published a book called Here
we Go Round the Mulberry Bush, House of Correction, fifteen
ninety five HMP Wakefield, nineteen ninety five. And in this
(15:46):
book he claimed that this nursery rhyme was a reference
to women prisoners and their children walking around a mulberry
tree in the prison's exercise yard in the nineteenth century,
and there was a mulberry tree there. It was removed
in twenty nineteen after dying due to a beatle infestation
and other issues two years before. A replacement has since
(16:08):
been propagated from cuttings from the original tree. It's not clear, though,
what evidence there is to connect this mulberry tree to
the children's song, other than that both the tree and.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
The song exist.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Since this is a self published book that came out
in nineteen ninety four in the UK, we were not
able to get a copy of it to see what
specifically Duncan said about it, or what kind of documentation
there might be to support this idea. But sometimes people
point out the incongruity of a children's song possibly being
connected not only to a prison, but to one that
(16:46):
has now more recently become a high security prison in
more recent years than this song was originally written Wakefield
Prison has been nicknamed the Monster Mansion because of the
notoriety of some of the people incarcerated there and the
sometimes gruesome and horrifying crimes that some of them have
been convicted of committing. But there are still other proposed explanations.
(17:10):
One is that it's a veiled reference to early efforts
to start a silk industry in Britain, because silkworms eat
mulberry leaves, and those first efforts didn't go so well,
which is why the morning was cold and frosty. There's
also a bit about going around the mulberry bush in
some versions of Pop Goes the Weasel, but that seems
to be a very recent addition to a song that
(17:31):
goes all the way back to the sixteen hundreds. Moving
on to our next rhyme, Hickory dickory dock The mouse
ran up the clock, the clock struck one, the mouse
ran down Hickory dickery doc. This is yet another rhyme
that appears in the seventeen forty four Tommy Thumb's Pretty
Song Book, but with slightly different spellings. Hickory is hick
(17:54):
e r e and Dickery is d ic k e er.
Some versions of this rhyme say down he run instead
of the mouse ran down, so that run rhymes with one.
Others say down he ran, which feels more grammatically correct,
but doesn't rhyme as well. Grammar another thing we made
(18:14):
up to make sense of the world.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
The opies described this as a counting song with hickory
dickory doc possibly referencing the counting systems used by shepherds
in parts of northern England. These systems grew out of
Celtic languages like Kumbrick and were widely used in some
areas up through the nineteenth century in parts of Derbyshire,
Cumberland and Westmoreland. Eight nine and ten were Hovra, Doverra
(18:39):
and dick. Some of the purported explanations for this one
seem like just another instance of two things existing without
necessarily being connected to one another, beyond the similarities that
people spotted between them later on. One is the idea that
this poem is a reference to Richard Cromwell, who was
(19:00):
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland
for less than a year after the death of his
father Oliver Cromwell in sixteen fifty eight. Richard Cromwell wasn't
effective in this role at all. People described him as
mousey and timid, and he was given nicknames like tumble
Down Dick. Another thing that definitely exists is the astronomical
(19:24):
clock at Exeter Cathedral in Devon, and this clock is fascinating.
It probably dates back to the fifteenth century, but its
inner workings are a replacement installed at the end of
the nineteenth century. This clock shows the hour of the day,
the day of the lunar month, and the phase of
the moon, and the door that allows access to the
interior workings of the clock has a little hole for
(19:46):
a cat cut through the bottom. This was allegedly made
specifically because mice we're running up and down the clock's
mechanism and affecting its accuracy, so that door is so
cats could get in there and stop that problem.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
This has led to.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Some people suggesting that this specific clock is the inspiration
for Hickory Dickory doc As a cat person, I know
Tracy has some questions like, couldn't a cat do even
more damage to the mechanisms if they pounce on a
mouse that's running around in there? Or perhaps just batting machinery.
I mean, yeah, I mean, I can see what people
(20:23):
are saying, but it also seems like a cat could
cause definite problems. Yeah, I mean, you have to have
a lot of trust that your cat is a pretty
focused mouser with strategy that does not involve destroying other things.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Which seems like a big ask.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yes. So Catherine Els Thomas takes a totally different approach
to this in her book The Real Personages of Mother Goose.
Thomas's work has been a major source in a lot
of the interpretations that we have talked about in earlier
installments of this series. She refers back to an essay
(21:05):
on the archaeology of Popular English phrases and nursery rhymes
by botanist John Bellenden Kerr, which came out in eighteen
thirty four. He argued that a lot of English language
rhymes that seemed nonsensical were really written in Anglo Saxon,
which probably is what we would call Old English, and
(21:27):
that Anglo Saxon was, according to him, the same as
Low Saxon. So Kerr claimed that in this Low Saxon
Dowkin meant to give it once, to give without delay.
Maw spelled maegh meant stomach, clock spelled klocke meant cloak
(21:48):
or gown, Ran meant lank or wanting food, and strak
meant immediately. So this was about someone in a cloak
or a gown demanding to be given food immediately. In
other words, this was a criticism of Catholic clergy demanding
provisions from peasants, while also lampooning the peasants who did
(22:10):
as the clergy asked. A lot of Kurz explanations of
the purported Low Saxon origins of idioms and nursery rhymes
kind of boiled down to anti Catholicism in some way.
This seems like the longest walk interpretation to me. Yeah,
I tried to figure out there are languages and dialects
(22:31):
today that are sometimes called Lo Saxon, and I was
like trying to figure out is this the same as
what or is this something different? Like I really was
not able to confirm whether any of these words he
was talking about aligned with reality at all, right, and
just the whole idea that these seemingly nonsensical English language
(22:55):
nursery rhymes are really totally different words in a different
language I'd found that both fascinating and baffling. So we're
just going to take a quick sponsor break and ruminate
on that for a little bit and then get to
our last two rhymes. Okay, Georgie Porgie putting him pie
(23:23):
kiss the girls and made them cry when the boys
came out to play, Georgie Porgy ran away. This rhyme
was first written down in the eighteen forties, although initially
it was not that the boys came out to play
and Georgie Porgie ran away. Georgie Porgie ran away when
the girls came out to play. In the eighteen fifties,
(23:43):
James Orchard Halliwell Phillips, who we referenced earlier, published a
variant on this, which was roly Poly Pumpkin Pie kissed
the girls and made them cry. When the girls began
to cry, roly Poly runs away. The Georgie in this
poem is often interpreted as George Villiers, the first Duke
of Buckingham, favorite of King James the First, and as
(24:06):
referencing his affairs with the King and also with women
at the court. So after breaking some lady's hert, George
would run back to the King for his protection. Another
interpretation is that Georgie is King George the Fourth before
his ascension to the throne while he was serving as
Prince Regent. In this interpretation, the poem is making fun
(24:27):
of him for his weight and is also referencing his
relationships with two different women. One is Maria Ann fitz Herbert,
who he wanted to marry so badly even though she
was Catholic, but under the Active Settlement of seventeen oh one,
only Protestants could take the throne and anyone who married
a Catholic was barred from taking the throne as well.
(24:50):
That did not stop George, though he married Maria Ann
fitz Herbert in secret in seventeen eighty five. That marriage
was not a legal one, though, and George got married
again in seventeen ninety five as part of an agreement
with Parliament to pay off his debts. This wife was
Catherine of Brunswick, who he absolutely hated, to the point
that he did not allow her to attend his coronation
(25:13):
in eighteen twenty one.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
What a gem Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
In the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, the opies say
of all this quote, as with other of the better
known rhymes. Numerous guesses have been hazarded that n historical
character is portrayed as usual, no evidence is vouchsafed. And lastly,
little miss Muffett sat on a toughet eating her curds,
(25:40):
and whey, there came a big spider who sat down
beside her and frightened Miss Muffett.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Away.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Tracy learned this as along came a spider, so did I.
This first appeared in print in eighteen oh five in
Songs for the Nursery, as with Mary Mary. Quite contrary
which we talked about on a previous installment. Some people
interpret this as being about Mary, Queen of Scott's and
in this case the spider is Protestant reformer John Knox.
(26:09):
John Knox was the author of a tract titled the
First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,
which attacked three Catholic queens, Mary the First of England,
Mary of Geese, Queen Dowager and Regent of Scotland, and
Mary Queen of Scotts. Knox was also a major figure
in the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. Catherine L. Was Thomas
(26:32):
describes it this way, quote denouncing the frivolous little miss
Muffett from the pulpit of Saint Giles, until the ecclesiastical
atmosphere was blue and sulfurous. The Big Spider, with angry
brow and darkling means, strode down the canongate, turning sharply
to the right. He quickened his pace to enter Holyrood, and,
sitting beside her, demanded her recantation, all in vain. Although
(26:55):
he could frighten little Miss Muffett away from her toughet,
as he did eventually, never by expostulation, threat or entreaty
could the Big Spider induce the French bread Scotch beauty
to recant. Mary was ultimately forced to abdicate and spent
the last nineteen years of her life as a prisoner
before being executed in fifteen eighty seven. Is there conclusive
(27:18):
evidence that this poem is about that now and others
offer a totally different interpretation that this is about English
naturalist and physician doctor Thomas Muffett, who wrote a lot
about insects and arachnids, including making an illustrated manual called
Theater of Insects. Supposedly, this poem is a reference to
(27:38):
one of his stepchildren, or children, possibly a daughter or
stepdaughter named patients specifically. Some accounts go for so far
as to say that Muffett was tormenting his children or
stepchildren by frightening them with spiders, or even doing experiments
on them with spider venom.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Those poor spiders.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Although Muffett was a real person, he died in sixteen
oh four, two hundred years before this poem first appeared
in print. Of course, Mary Queen of Scott's lived even
longer ago than that, but she was also a much
better known figure than doctor Thomas Muffett.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
There's also some back.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And forth about what is meant by a toughet in
this poem. Tough It can mean a hillock or a mound,
but it can also mean a footstool. In fact, the
Oxford English Dictionary cites little Miss Muffett as the first
written use of tofit meaning in to quote from there
perhaps hasseock or footstool, But then the OED has this
(28:40):
additional note quote doubtful, perhaps due to misunderstanding of the
nursery rhyme. The opies note how similar little Miss Muffett
is to a lot of other rhymes, including Little Jack Horner,
which we discussed in our first Mother Goose episode. The
poems all involve someone little Miss Muffy, Jack Horner, Miss Mopsey,
(29:01):
pull Parrot, Tommy Tackett. The subjects of all these poems
are all sitting and waiting for something when something else happens.
Some of these go back to the early eighteenth century,
so it's possible that there are variations on a little
poetic formula. So that's our six impossible Mother Goose episodes
for this time around. I hope folks have enjoyed them.
(29:22):
I have a little listener mail that is also about
the meanings of things. Liz sent this, and I love
the subject of the subject line of the email, which
is Scott Joplin and the Cakewalk unlocking a core memory.
So Liz wrote, Hello, Holly and Tracy. I love the
show and I've been listening for the past few years.
(29:44):
You're always on my way to Slash from work and
when doing stuff around the house. I was just listening
to the Scott Joplin episode on my way to the
store and it unlocked a core memory that was apparently
deeply and unknowingly problematic. I'm originally from Texas, no where
near Texarcana, but If you know anything about Texas, you
know that Texans are just ridiculously proud of being Texans.
(30:06):
This episode unlocked a series of core memories from elementary
school in Austin. I remember learning about Scott Joplin and
music class. As soon as I saw the title of
the episode, I remembered hearing the maple leaf rag and
also having to learn a weird dance number. For some reason,
I assumed the teacher focused on him because he was
(30:27):
the father of ragtime and also likely a native Texan
and an educational two for if you Will. Then Holly
mentioned a cakewalk, and I had yet another memory unlocked.
While at this school, the library hosted a yearly cakewalk.
It was organized like musical chairs. Moms donated a cake,
we all walked in a circle around some chairs to music,
(30:48):
and then stopped. When the music stopped, the winner got
to take home a cake of their choice. So there
I was in my car driving to the store and
heard Holly mention the cakewalk and that, uh, it needed
its own explanation, And I laughed and thought, what explanation?
I did one every year in elementary school. But then
you explained its origins and let me tell you, I screamed.
(31:11):
So yes, cakewalks did continue for some time after Scott
Joplin's time, well into the nineteen nineties. I don't think
I thought about the yearly cakewalk in decades, But oh my,
what a wild flashback this episode brought on. It made
me wonder what other seemingly benign activities I did as
a child that have deep roots in racist practices. It's
(31:31):
wild to think about it, and I think it highlights
why pods like yours are so important. And then there
are some pet pictures. There is a cat, a cat
named Etta. I accidentally printed the pictures, except I printed
them so big. I'm gonna I'm gonna make sure that
Holli can see the glory of what I printed by it.
(31:52):
I think you should frame each of these pages and
make a giant art installation of a cat that is
six feet tall. Yeah, it's this would be really really
an armis if I had printed the whole cat. But
I just have the left eye and ear in what
I accidentally printed because I'm just perpetually forgetting to turn
off the printing of attachments when I print episodes. Then
(32:14):
that makes me feel like an old person who doesn't
know how to do email.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Edna is very cute.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
By the way, Yes, the other two pictures that I
actually printed out have no visible animal because of my
printer settings. But anyway, there's a final note about being
scared to look up the dance that they learned along
with maple leaf frag to find out if it also
has some connotations. Liz, first, thank you for sending this note.
(32:44):
I am sorry I printed it in such a way
that I cannot just tell everybody what your pets look like.
You are not the only person now who has had
this experience. I grew up in North Carolina and went
to a public school in a somewhat rural to suburban
(33:06):
kind of area, and our annual I think it was
the Halloween carnival. It was the same one that we
talked about in our Crash at Crush episode where they
would buy like a beat up used car and you
could pay a dollar to take a swing at it
with a baseball bat. There was also a cake walk
every year, and it was very like musical chairs, except
(33:27):
if I'm remembering it correctly, it was laid out with
like tape on the floor so that you were walking
and then something like that. That is my memory of
cakewalks as well. Yeah, so I don't think it was
like musical chairs where they take a chair away. I
think everybody came to a stop and then a number
(33:48):
was the winning number, and that was who got to
go get a cake. We didn't participate in this in
my family, not because we had any aware of the
history of the cakewalk.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
We did not.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
It was just because it was not what my mom
wanted to spend money on. She was like, we can
make a cake at home. I was super ready for
your mom's issue to be that she did not know
the nutritional contents of the cake.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
That might have been that.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
She might have assumed that none of the other moms,
because it would have been mostly other moms doing the baking,
maybe not everybody, but might have assumed they were not
good bakers.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Might have there might have.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Been like a random element to which cake you got.
She didn't want to wind up with a cake that
we would not like. I don't remember the exact tales
I was five, but yes, yes, lots of places still
as of them, which that would have been more like
nineteen eighty eighty one doing the cakewalk. So yeah, other
(34:58):
seemingly innocuous things that people may have done in elementary
school that I have had on my list to do
an episode about for a long time. May I get
to you at some point. It maybe not square dancing.
Apparently there is a whole history of square dancing where
people were encouraged to do it at school for racist reasons. So, anyway,
(35:21):
if you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcasts for a history podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com. We're all over social media. Missed in History?
That's why I'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, on Instagram,
and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio
app or wherever you like to get your podcasts. Stuff
(35:43):
you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frey. This is a return of
six Impossible Episodes. If you're new to the show Six
(00:22):
Impossible Episodes, it's kind of a series. We'll tackle six
different topics that, for whatever reason, usually can't fill out
an episode on their own. The first time that we
did one on Mother Goose Rhymes, it was because of
a listener request for an episode about the Muffin Man.
This was a listener request from a child that had
(00:44):
been passed on via an adult. That one was a
lot of fun, and so the next six Impossible Episodes
we did was another one. Some time has passed now
since those two, and I thought maybe we would go
for a third. We have to start, though, with a
caveat that Folks who have heard the other earlier Mother
Goose episodes will probably find familiar. A lot of these
(01:07):
poems and songs were first published hundreds of years ago,
and some of them might have existed for quite some
time before appearing in a book or some kind of
other print material. But most of the explanations for their
purported origins are much much newer, like in a lot
of cases, hundreds of years newer, and usually these wind
(01:30):
up seeming more like somebody sort of trying to come
up with an explanation that matches up with what's written
in a poem, rather than someone actually finding evidence that
a poem referenced a specific person or historical event. They're
fun anyway, though, so we're doing it. And first up,
(01:51):
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. The first known publication
of this rhyme was by Samuel Arnold in seventeen ninety
seven in a book called Juvenile Amusements. Arnold was a
composer and an organist who lived and worked in London.
(02:13):
His version was a little different, though it started out
the same, but then ended four score men and four
score more could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.
Some people interpret this as a riddle with the answer
being an egg. According to folkloris Iona and Peter Opie,
who specialized in the study of childhood culture and published
(02:37):
so much research on it in the last half of
the twentieth century. There are multiple different versions of the
same poem slash riddle in other European countries, like Trilla
Trola in parts of Germany or Bullabula in France. All
of these similar poems seem like they are connected, but
it's really not clear which of them might have been
(02:59):
the first one ever to be composed. Also, Humpty Dumpty
is often depicted is sort of an anthropomorphized egg, including
in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, which came out in
eighteen sixty five, but the term humpty dumpty predate Samuel
Arnold's publication of this nursery rhyme by roughly one hundred years.
(03:22):
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, It's been used since
at least sixteen ninety eight to mean a drink quote
made with ale boiled with brandy, and in seventeen eighty
five the word humpty dumpty was used in writing with
a different meaning, that being a person who was short
and squat and maybe kind of frumpy, especially if they
(03:42):
keep their shoulders hunched.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I feel attacked.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
A character named Humpty Dumpty who had these physical traits
also appeared in print before the Humpty Dumpty poem in
the Lilliputian Writing School that came out sometime between seventeen
fifty four and seventeen sixty four. So some people speculate
that this poem is a reference to King Richard third
of England, that the humpty is referencing the way his
(04:08):
body looked because he had scoliosis, and the wall that
he was on was a horse named Wall, and the
falling down part is referencing his death at the Battle
of bosworth Field.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
However, the only.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
References to Richard the third having a horse named Wall
that I could find, they all seem to be explanations
of what Humpty Dumpty is about. I don't know if
anybody else said at any point anywhere that he had
a horse named Wall. The other thing that people point
to with this a lot is that this could be
Richard third, is that all the King's horses and all
(04:45):
the King's men is maybe a reference to the my
Kingdom for a horse line from Shakespeare's Richard the Third.
There is also a completely different explanation that Humpty Dumpty
was a large cannon that was used during the English
Civil Wars. In this explanation, the Royalist town of Colchester
(05:06):
was under siege by the Parliamentarians and they had this
big cannon that they had nicknamed Humpty.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Dumpty up on a wall.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Either the cannon recoiled when it was fired and fell
off the wall, or the Parliamentarians shattered the wall and
caused the cannon to fall down, but either way the
Royalist forces could not repair it. But according to the opies,
the source for this story is a series of fictitious
nursery rhyme interpretations that were printed in Oxford Magazine in
(05:35):
nineteen fifty six, which people misinterpreted as being real. Yeah,
I've heard this cannon explanation a lot too, and I
did try to go and track down this original article
to see exactly what it said, and I could not
find a way to get at it. So I wish
(05:55):
I could did not sussess but do that. So next
we go on to our next poem, which is sing
a song a sixpence a pocket full of rye four
and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. When the pie
was opened, the birds began to sing. Wasn't that a
dainty dish? To set before the king. There's also a
second verse that I think people don't maybe say as much,
(06:17):
which is the King was in the counting house counting
out his money. The queen was in the parlor eating
bread and honey. The maid was in the garden hanging
out the clothes. There came a little blackbird and snapped
off her nose. So we're gonna look at this one
in pieces first. There are multiple references combining sixpence with
(06:38):
singing going back to the seventeenth century, including a line
from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which was first performed in sixteen
oh two. That's Sir Toby Belch saying, come on, there
is sixpence for you. Let's have a song. In the
sixteen fourteen play Bonduka by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher,
a character calls out, whoa, here's a stir Now sing
(06:59):
a song of sixpence. So that bit's been around for
a while next. Allegedly at least part of this was
written by English literary critic and Shakespeare commentator George Stevens,
who supposedly wrote it to make fun of Henry James Pie.
Pie was named British poet Laureate in seventeen ninety, and
(07:21):
unlike most people who are named a country's poet laureate,
Pie was not well regarded for his verse. He was
probably named poet laureate as a reward for supporting or
doing some kind of favors for somebody in Parliament. Some
sources point to William Pitt the Younger, who eventually became
Prime Minister. A lot of Pie's contemporaries made fun of
(07:45):
him and made fun of his poetry, especially his poems
commemorating the King's birthday, which apparently were particularly horrible, at
least based on what I read second hand, having also
not found the exact poems they're talking about again. Allegedly,
one of these birthday poems was so bad that Stevens
(08:08):
responded with and when the pie was opened, the birds
began to sing? Was not that a dainty dish to
set before the King? Pie in this instance was spelled Pye,
like Pie's name, and Stevens was supposedly inspired by a
line Pie had written that referenced a feathered choir. This
story shows up in a lot of sources, especially in
(08:30):
works that were printed in the nineteenth and early twentieth century,
but it's not clear where it came from, also drawing
some questions around this. The first written appearance of sing
a song a sixpence is in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Songbook,
published in seventeen forty four, forty six years before Pie
(08:53):
was named Poet laureate. In that version, it is a
bag of rye rather than a pocket.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Naughty boys are who.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Was baked into the pie rather than blackbirds. It is
definitely possible that Stevens kind of recited a bit of
a nursery rhyme that he already knew to make fun
of Henry James Pie. Though there are several other proposed
explanations for this rhyme, but none of them really seem
to have any backup, Like maybe this is a reference
(09:21):
to King Henry the Eighth and the dissolution of the
monasteries and those four and twenty blackbirds are really choirs
of monks singing and baking pies to try to earn
the king's favor. Or maybe in those later lines of
the second verse, the queen is supposed to be Henry's
first wife, Catherine of Aragon, who he divorced, and the
maid is his second wife and Boleyn who was beheaded,
(09:43):
and that the beheading is what's being referenced when the
blackbird snaps off the maid's nose. Or maybe the blackbirds
are a reference to twenty four hours in a day,
and the King and Queen are the sun and the moon. Honestly,
it all seems kind of random. I feel like this
is a literature class where people are like any interpretation
is valid as.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Long as you can back it up with the text.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
In nineteen ninety nine, the website snopes dot com published
an explanation involving the pirate Blackbeard using this song to
recruit new pirates for his crew. The sixpence and the
rye were the money and whiskey that these pirates would
be paid. The blackbirds in the pie alluded to how
(10:27):
pirates would lure the crews of other ships into a
false sense of security by pretending to be in distress.
This explanation went on from there, explaining each line in
the poem as part of a code for recruiting pirates.
But this was from a section of the website called
the Repository of Lost Legends or troll. They were supposed
(10:52):
to be so obviously made up that no one would
mistake them for real urban legends. In other words, snopes
dot Com was trolling people, But really some of the
articles in this section of the website are more obviously
made up than others. Like an article about how mister
Ed was really a zebra not a horse, accompanied by
pictures of mister Ed, who was clearly a horse, is
(11:14):
a lot easier to spot as fake than a made
up interpretation of a nursery rhyme that seems pretty similar
to the many, many other widely repeated nursery rhyme interpretations
floating around in the world that are at best barely
connected to reality. Some people did wind up falling for
this Blackbeard fantasy, including the TLCTV show Mostly True Stories
(11:38):
Urban Legends Revealed, which aired in two thousand and three. Yeah,
apparently later on they didn't exactly error retraction, but they
in a different episode they said the opposite. One possible
inspiration for this poem is something we have talked about
on the show before. Last year, we did an episode
(11:59):
on the history of pie, and in it we talked
about a fifteen ninety eight Italian cookbook titled Eppelario, which
included a recipe for making a pie and then filling
it with live birds, which would then fly out when
the pie was cut open. The Opies actually referenced this recipe,
as well as later cookbooks that referred back to it.
(12:19):
They reference that in their Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes.
We are going to have more mother Goose fun, but
first we're gonna pause for a sponsor break. Our next
(12:39):
rhyme is newer than some of the others that we
have been talking about over this kind of mini series.
Here we go around the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush,
the mulberry bush. Here we go around the mulberry bush
on a cold and frosty morning. This is a song.
I won't sing it because I'm bad at that. There
are lots of additional verses, including this is the way
(13:00):
we wash our face, this is the way we colmb
our hair, this is the way we brush our teeth,
and this is the way we put on clothes. This
nineteenth century rhyme is usually sung to an older tune,
one that was first documented in the middle of the
eighteenth century as Nancy Dawson. This melody is also used
for another song with some similarities to here we Go
(13:22):
round the mulberry Bush, which is called nuts in May.
That one goes here we come gathering nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May. Here we come gathering
nuts in May on a cold and frosty morning. The
Opie speculated that the popularity of here we Go round
the Mulberry Bush is at least partially due to nuts
(13:42):
in May already being a well known song when Mulberry
Bush was written. In their book The Singing Game, Peter
and Aana Opie mention the use of this song in
Glasgow infant schools in eighteen thirty four as a way
to teach pupils about hygiene and but with the verses
ending to come to school in the morning rather than
(14:04):
on a cold and frosty morning. And aside from the
first verse about the mulberry bush, this really does seem
like the kind of didactic song that somebody might make
up to teach young children about things like cleanliness. It
really has some parallels to the kinds of songs that
we talked about in our episode on the history of
Happy Birthday to You, which we ran as a Saturday
(14:26):
classic not long ago. Many nineteenth century versions of this
song start with a verse about going around some kind
of plants, but they aren't consistent about what kind of
plant they reference. The opies point out that Thomas Hardy,
born in Dorset, England, knew this song as being around
a gooseberry bush, while T. S. Eliot, who grew up
(14:46):
in Saint Louis, Missouri, knew it as a prickly pair.
In James Orchard Halliwell Phillips's popular Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales,
a sequel to the Nursery Rhymes of England, which was
published in eighteen forty.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Nine, it is bramble bush.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
It's not clear exactly where the mulberry bush came from
or how that one seems to have become the most common,
almost standard verse. Mulberries grow on trees and not on bushes,
And of course trees and bushes these are both constructed
categories that we have made up to understand the world.
But in general trees have a central trunk, while shrubs
(15:24):
tend to be smaller and have multiple woody stems. In
nineteen ninety four, Robert Stephen Duncan, who had been governor
of hm Wakefield Prison, self published a book called Here
we Go Round the Mulberry Bush, House of Correction, fifteen
ninety five HMP Wakefield, nineteen ninety five. And in this
(15:46):
book he claimed that this nursery rhyme was a reference
to women prisoners and their children walking around a mulberry
tree in the prison's exercise yard in the nineteenth century,
and there was a mulberry tree there. It was removed
in twenty nineteen after dying due to a beatle infestation
and other issues two years before. A replacement has since
(16:08):
been propagated from cuttings from the original tree. It's not clear, though,
what evidence there is to connect this mulberry tree to
the children's song, other than that both the tree and.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
The song exist.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Since this is a self published book that came out
in nineteen ninety four in the UK, we were not
able to get a copy of it to see what
specifically Duncan said about it, or what kind of documentation
there might be to support this idea. But sometimes people
point out the incongruity of a children's song possibly being
connected not only to a prison, but to one that
(16:46):
has now more recently become a high security prison in
more recent years than this song was originally written Wakefield
Prison has been nicknamed the Monster Mansion because of the
notoriety of some of the people incarcerated there and the
sometimes gruesome and horrifying crimes that some of them have
been convicted of committing. But there are still other proposed explanations.
(17:10):
One is that it's a veiled reference to early efforts
to start a silk industry in Britain, because silkworms eat
mulberry leaves, and those first efforts didn't go so well,
which is why the morning was cold and frosty. There's
also a bit about going around the mulberry bush in
some versions of Pop Goes the Weasel, but that seems
to be a very recent addition to a song that
(17:31):
goes all the way back to the sixteen hundreds. Moving
on to our next rhyme, Hickory dickory dock The mouse
ran up the clock, the clock struck one, the mouse
ran down Hickory dickery doc. This is yet another rhyme
that appears in the seventeen forty four Tommy Thumb's Pretty
Song Book, but with slightly different spellings. Hickory is hick
(17:54):
e r e and Dickery is d ic k e er.
Some versions of this rhyme say down he run instead
of the mouse ran down, so that run rhymes with one.
Others say down he ran, which feels more grammatically correct,
but doesn't rhyme as well. Grammar another thing we made
(18:14):
up to make sense of the world.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
The opies described this as a counting song with hickory
dickory doc possibly referencing the counting systems used by shepherds
in parts of northern England. These systems grew out of
Celtic languages like Kumbrick and were widely used in some
areas up through the nineteenth century in parts of Derbyshire,
Cumberland and Westmoreland. Eight nine and ten were Hovra, Doverra
(18:39):
and dick. Some of the purported explanations for this one
seem like just another instance of two things existing without
necessarily being connected to one another, beyond the similarities that
people spotted between them later on. One is the idea that
this poem is a reference to Richard Cromwell, who was
(19:00):
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland
for less than a year after the death of his
father Oliver Cromwell in sixteen fifty eight. Richard Cromwell wasn't
effective in this role at all. People described him as
mousey and timid, and he was given nicknames like tumble
Down Dick. Another thing that definitely exists is the astronomical
(19:24):
clock at Exeter Cathedral in Devon, and this clock is fascinating.
It probably dates back to the fifteenth century, but its
inner workings are a replacement installed at the end of
the nineteenth century. This clock shows the hour of the day,
the day of the lunar month, and the phase of
the moon, and the door that allows access to the
interior workings of the clock has a little hole for
(19:46):
a cat cut through the bottom. This was allegedly made
specifically because mice we're running up and down the clock's
mechanism and affecting its accuracy, so that door is so
cats could get in there and stop that problem.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
This has led to.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Some people suggesting that this specific clock is the inspiration
for Hickory Dickory doc As a cat person, I know
Tracy has some questions like, couldn't a cat do even
more damage to the mechanisms if they pounce on a
mouse that's running around in there? Or perhaps just batting machinery.
I mean, yeah, I mean, I can see what people
(20:23):
are saying, but it also seems like a cat could
cause definite problems. Yeah, I mean, you have to have
a lot of trust that your cat is a pretty
focused mouser with strategy that does not involve destroying other things.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Which seems like a big ask.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yes. So Catherine Els Thomas takes a totally different approach
to this in her book The Real Personages of Mother Goose.
Thomas's work has been a major source in a lot
of the interpretations that we have talked about in earlier
installments of this series. She refers back to an essay
(21:05):
on the archaeology of Popular English phrases and nursery rhymes
by botanist John Bellenden Kerr, which came out in eighteen
thirty four. He argued that a lot of English language
rhymes that seemed nonsensical were really written in Anglo Saxon,
which probably is what we would call Old English, and
(21:27):
that Anglo Saxon was, according to him, the same as
Low Saxon. So Kerr claimed that in this Low Saxon
Dowkin meant to give it once, to give without delay.
Maw spelled maegh meant stomach, clock spelled klocke meant cloak
(21:48):
or gown, Ran meant lank or wanting food, and strak
meant immediately. So this was about someone in a cloak
or a gown demanding to be given food immediately. In
other words, this was a criticism of Catholic clergy demanding
provisions from peasants, while also lampooning the peasants who did
(22:10):
as the clergy asked. A lot of Kurz explanations of
the purported Low Saxon origins of idioms and nursery rhymes
kind of boiled down to anti Catholicism in some way.
This seems like the longest walk interpretation to me. Yeah,
I tried to figure out there are languages and dialects
(22:31):
today that are sometimes called Lo Saxon, and I was
like trying to figure out is this the same as
what or is this something different? Like I really was
not able to confirm whether any of these words he
was talking about aligned with reality at all, right, and
just the whole idea that these seemingly nonsensical English language
(22:55):
nursery rhymes are really totally different words in a different
language I'd found that both fascinating and baffling. So we're
just going to take a quick sponsor break and ruminate
on that for a little bit and then get to
our last two rhymes. Okay, Georgie Porgie putting him pie
(23:23):
kiss the girls and made them cry when the boys
came out to play, Georgie Porgy ran away. This rhyme
was first written down in the eighteen forties, although initially
it was not that the boys came out to play
and Georgie Porgie ran away. Georgie Porgie ran away when
the girls came out to play. In the eighteen fifties,
(23:43):
James Orchard Halliwell Phillips, who we referenced earlier, published a
variant on this, which was roly Poly Pumpkin Pie kissed
the girls and made them cry. When the girls began
to cry, roly Poly runs away. The Georgie in this
poem is often interpreted as George Villiers, the first Duke
of Buckingham, favorite of King James the First, and as
(24:06):
referencing his affairs with the King and also with women
at the court. So after breaking some lady's hert, George
would run back to the King for his protection. Another
interpretation is that Georgie is King George the Fourth before
his ascension to the throne while he was serving as
Prince Regent. In this interpretation, the poem is making fun
(24:27):
of him for his weight and is also referencing his
relationships with two different women. One is Maria Ann fitz Herbert,
who he wanted to marry so badly even though she
was Catholic, but under the Active Settlement of seventeen oh one,
only Protestants could take the throne and anyone who married
a Catholic was barred from taking the throne as well.
(24:50):
That did not stop George, though he married Maria Ann
fitz Herbert in secret in seventeen eighty five. That marriage
was not a legal one, though, and George got married
again in seventeen ninety five as part of an agreement
with Parliament to pay off his debts. This wife was
Catherine of Brunswick, who he absolutely hated, to the point
that he did not allow her to attend his coronation
(25:13):
in eighteen twenty one.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
What a gem Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
In the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, the opies say
of all this quote, as with other of the better
known rhymes. Numerous guesses have been hazarded that n historical
character is portrayed as usual, no evidence is vouchsafed. And lastly,
little miss Muffett sat on a toughet eating her curds,
(25:40):
and whey, there came a big spider who sat down
beside her and frightened Miss Muffett.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Away.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Tracy learned this as along came a spider, so did I.
This first appeared in print in eighteen oh five in
Songs for the Nursery, as with Mary Mary. Quite contrary
which we talked about on a previous installment. Some people
interpret this as being about Mary, Queen of Scott's and
in this case the spider is Protestant reformer John Knox.
(26:09):
John Knox was the author of a tract titled the
First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,
which attacked three Catholic queens, Mary the First of England,
Mary of Geese, Queen Dowager and Regent of Scotland, and
Mary Queen of Scotts. Knox was also a major figure
in the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. Catherine L. Was Thomas
(26:32):
describes it this way, quote denouncing the frivolous little miss
Muffett from the pulpit of Saint Giles, until the ecclesiastical
atmosphere was blue and sulfurous. The Big Spider, with angry
brow and darkling means, strode down the canongate, turning sharply
to the right. He quickened his pace to enter Holyrood, and,
sitting beside her, demanded her recantation, all in vain. Although
(26:55):
he could frighten little Miss Muffett away from her toughet,
as he did eventually, never by expostulation, threat or entreaty
could the Big Spider induce the French bread Scotch beauty
to recant. Mary was ultimately forced to abdicate and spent
the last nineteen years of her life as a prisoner
before being executed in fifteen eighty seven. Is there conclusive
(27:18):
evidence that this poem is about that now and others
offer a totally different interpretation that this is about English
naturalist and physician doctor Thomas Muffett, who wrote a lot
about insects and arachnids, including making an illustrated manual called
Theater of Insects. Supposedly, this poem is a reference to
(27:38):
one of his stepchildren, or children, possibly a daughter or
stepdaughter named patients specifically. Some accounts go for so far
as to say that Muffett was tormenting his children or
stepchildren by frightening them with spiders, or even doing experiments
on them with spider venom.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Those poor spiders.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Although Muffett was a real person, he died in sixteen
oh four, two hundred years before this poem first appeared
in print. Of course, Mary Queen of Scott's lived even
longer ago than that, but she was also a much
better known figure than doctor Thomas Muffett.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
There's also some back.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And forth about what is meant by a toughet in
this poem. Tough It can mean a hillock or a mound,
but it can also mean a footstool. In fact, the
Oxford English Dictionary cites little Miss Muffett as the first
written use of tofit meaning in to quote from there
perhaps hasseock or footstool, But then the OED has this
(28:40):
additional note quote doubtful, perhaps due to misunderstanding of the
nursery rhyme. The opies note how similar little Miss Muffett
is to a lot of other rhymes, including Little Jack Horner,
which we discussed in our first Mother Goose episode. The
poems all involve someone little Miss Muffy, Jack Horner, Miss Mopsey,
(29:01):
pull Parrot, Tommy Tackett. The subjects of all these poems
are all sitting and waiting for something when something else happens.
Some of these go back to the early eighteenth century,
so it's possible that there are variations on a little
poetic formula. So that's our six impossible Mother Goose episodes
for this time around. I hope folks have enjoyed them.
(29:22):
I have a little listener mail that is also about
the meanings of things. Liz sent this, and I love
the subject of the subject line of the email, which
is Scott Joplin and the Cakewalk unlocking a core memory.
So Liz wrote, Hello, Holly and Tracy. I love the
show and I've been listening for the past few years.
(29:44):
You're always on my way to Slash from work and
when doing stuff around the house. I was just listening
to the Scott Joplin episode on my way to the
store and it unlocked a core memory that was apparently
deeply and unknowingly problematic. I'm originally from Texas, no where
near Texarcana, but If you know anything about Texas, you
know that Texans are just ridiculously proud of being Texans.
(30:06):
This episode unlocked a series of core memories from elementary
school in Austin. I remember learning about Scott Joplin and
music class. As soon as I saw the title of
the episode, I remembered hearing the maple leaf rag and
also having to learn a weird dance number. For some reason,
I assumed the teacher focused on him because he was
(30:27):
the father of ragtime and also likely a native Texan
and an educational two for if you Will. Then Holly
mentioned a cakewalk, and I had yet another memory unlocked.
While at this school, the library hosted a yearly cakewalk.
It was organized like musical chairs. Moms donated a cake,
we all walked in a circle around some chairs to music,
(30:48):
and then stopped. When the music stopped, the winner got
to take home a cake of their choice. So there
I was in my car driving to the store and
heard Holly mention the cakewalk and that, uh, it needed
its own explanation, And I laughed and thought, what explanation?
I did one every year in elementary school. But then
you explained its origins and let me tell you, I screamed.
(31:11):
So yes, cakewalks did continue for some time after Scott
Joplin's time, well into the nineteen nineties. I don't think
I thought about the yearly cakewalk in decades, But oh my,
what a wild flashback this episode brought on. It made
me wonder what other seemingly benign activities I did as
a child that have deep roots in racist practices. It's
(31:31):
wild to think about it, and I think it highlights
why pods like yours are so important. And then there
are some pet pictures. There is a cat, a cat
named Etta. I accidentally printed the pictures, except I printed
them so big. I'm gonna I'm gonna make sure that
Holli can see the glory of what I printed by it.
(31:52):
I think you should frame each of these pages and
make a giant art installation of a cat that is
six feet tall. Yeah, it's this would be really really
an armis if I had printed the whole cat. But
I just have the left eye and ear in what
I accidentally printed because I'm just perpetually forgetting to turn
off the printing of attachments when I print episodes. Then
(32:14):
that makes me feel like an old person who doesn't
know how to do email.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Edna is very cute.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
By the way, Yes, the other two pictures that I
actually printed out have no visible animal because of my
printer settings. But anyway, there's a final note about being
scared to look up the dance that they learned along
with maple leaf frag to find out if it also
has some connotations. Liz, first, thank you for sending this note.
(32:44):
I am sorry I printed it in such a way
that I cannot just tell everybody what your pets look like.
You are not the only person now who has had
this experience. I grew up in North Carolina and went
to a public school in a somewhat rural to suburban
(33:06):
kind of area, and our annual I think it was
the Halloween carnival. It was the same one that we
talked about in our Crash at Crush episode where they
would buy like a beat up used car and you
could pay a dollar to take a swing at it
with a baseball bat. There was also a cake walk
every year, and it was very like musical chairs, except
(33:27):
if I'm remembering it correctly, it was laid out with
like tape on the floor so that you were walking
and then something like that. That is my memory of
cakewalks as well. Yeah, so I don't think it was
like musical chairs where they take a chair away. I
think everybody came to a stop and then a number
(33:48):
was the winning number, and that was who got to
go get a cake. We didn't participate in this in
my family, not because we had any aware of the
history of the cakewalk.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
We did not.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
It was just because it was not what my mom
wanted to spend money on. She was like, we can
make a cake at home. I was super ready for
your mom's issue to be that she did not know
the nutritional contents of the cake.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
That might have been that.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
She might have assumed that none of the other moms,
because it would have been mostly other moms doing the baking,
maybe not everybody, but might have assumed they were not
good bakers.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Might have there might have.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Been like a random element to which cake you got.
She didn't want to wind up with a cake that
we would not like. I don't remember the exact tales
I was five, but yes, yes, lots of places still
as of them, which that would have been more like
nineteen eighty eighty one doing the cakewalk. So yeah, other
(34:58):
seemingly innocuous things that people may have done in elementary
school that I have had on my list to do
an episode about for a long time. May I get
to you at some point. It maybe not square dancing.
Apparently there is a whole history of square dancing where
people were encouraged to do it at school for racist reasons. So, anyway,
(35:21):
if you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcasts for a history podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com. We're all over social media. Missed in History?
That's why I'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, on Instagram,
and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio
app or wherever you like to get your podcasts. Stuff
(35:43):
you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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