Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes
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The origins of this rhyme, it is suggested, hark back to the Tudors and their relationship with Spain. Both Henry VIII and his daughter Mary were at one time married to members of the Spanish royal family. Neither union was a success: Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon is the subject of several nursery rhymes (see Old Mother Hubbard, Sing a Song of Sixpence and Three Blind Mice); Mary’s marriage, meanwhile, was part of a desperate campaign to reimpose Roman Catholicism on England and to prevent her younger sister, Elizabeth, from succeeding her and returning England to the Protestant faith.
The simplest way to do this was to produce an heir of her own, thereby blocking her sister’s path to the throne, and this meant finding herself a husband. When Mary was shown a portrait of Prince Philip of Spain, she fell deeply in love on the spot. His father, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, agreed to send the prince to England and, legend has it, the two met for the first time in the pouring rain (Flour of England, fruit of Spain / Met together in a shower of rain). The following day, the queen publicly sent Philip a ring, signifying their engagement, and the pair were married the day after that. But, in the end, Mary died childless five years later, which may have had something to do with Philip’s lack of ‘carnal love’ for her, by his own admission. Although I doubt he admitted it to Mary.
So that’s one theory of the story behind this rhyme, but Elizabeth’s reign brings with it a different interpretation. After Mary’s death, Philip, now king of Spain and keen to keep his hold over the English throne, proposed to Elizabeth instead. But she managed to stall him for some years until it eventually became obvious that she had no intention of marrying him at all. This insult and her execution in 1587 of Mary, Queen of Scots, leaving no Catholic heir to the English throne, led to Philip’s planned invasion of England. Luckily for Elizabeth, her admiral Lord Howard of Effingham and vice admiral Francis Drake (the ‘flower’ of England), with the indispensable help of a good English storm (met together in a shower of rain), managed to rout the vastly superior forces of Philip’s Armada. The riddle of why they weren’t able to win, despite overwhelmingly superior forces, was one that the Spanish were unable to answer. Hence the final line – If you tell me this riddle, I’ll give you a ring – is an English taunt to the Spanish king, reminding him yet again that he would never again be king of England, either by marriage or by force.
For Want of a Nail
FOR want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
The earliest known written version of a rhyme along the lines of ‘For Want of a Nail’ can be found in Confessio Amantis (‘The Lover’s Confession’), a 33,000-line poem by John Gower (c. 1330-1408), published between 1386 and 1390:
For sparinge of a litel cost
Ful ofte time a man hath lost
The large cote for the hod [hood].
‘For Want of a Nail’ is a fine example of the sort of nursery rhyme written by teachers, probably in this case military men, to encourage others to think carefully about their actions and consider all possible consequences. In this case, the speaker is explaining, through a clever build-up of repeated phrases, each differing very slightly from the previous one, how a huge disaster could have been avoided by a small, thoughtful action only a few stages earlier. The lesson is that the entire kingdom could be lost to an enemy army if small tasks such as nailing a horseshoe correctly are not carried out properly. As the Boy Scouts say, ‘Be prepared.’
These days, the rhyme could be seen as a version of the Butterfly Effect – how mathematicians illustrate Chaos Theory by suggesting how some tiny, seemingly insignificant action, such as a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world, can, in principle, trigger a series of escalating events that could result in a devastating tornado somewhere else.
Getting back to that ill-fitting horseshoe, it appears that in days gone by most English kings didn’t court chaos but prepared particularly thoroughly for battle, taking few chances when it came to equipment and training. As early as 1252, the Assize of Arms ordered that all men aged between fifteen and sixty-five must be ‘equipped with a bow and arrows’ and that those in possession of between 40 and 100 shillings should also own a dagger and sword. In 1363, King Edward III ordered archery practice to be compulsory for all non-military citizens on a Sunday and every public holiday, giving rise to the great archery contests of the Middle Ages.
The skill of English archers became celebrated. Indeed, legend has it that the famous two-fingered V-sign evolved from the gestures of archers fighting at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. The myth claims that when the French captured English archers, they cut off the two fingers used to pull back the bowstring to ensure they could no longer use their bows against them. As a result, those who had not been handicapped in this way would show their defiance by waving two fingers to their enemy, illustrating they were still capable of beating them.
Frère Jacques
FRÈRE Jacques, Frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous, dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines!
Din, din, don, din, din, don.
Translated as:
BROTHER John, Brother John,
Are you sleeping, are you sleeping?
Ring the morning bells, ring the morning bells!
Ding, dang, dong, ding, dang, dong.
Usually sung as a round (see also London’s Burning and Turn Again, Whittington), this is one French song every English-speaking schoolchild knows. Rather than somebody’s lazy brother having a lie-in, Frère Jacques is generally held to be a monk, being called to ring the bells for matins or morning prayer (sonnez les matines). There are a number of potential candidates for him.
Some believe Friar Jacques could be Jacques de Molay (1249-1314), the twenty-third (and final) Grand Master of the very powerful Knights Templar. When sentenced to life imprisonment by Pope Clement V, de Molay, not knowing when to keep his head down, furiously challenged the Pope before God and so was burned at the stake.
Others have suggested the inspiration for the rhyme is Frère Jacques Beaulieu (1651-1720), a Dominican friar known for pioneering gallstone surgery, usually with disastrous results, or Jacques Clément (1567-89), another Dominican, who became famous – or rather, infamous – for assassinating the French king Henri III. Clément had gained access to the king by saying that he carried an important private message. In what was clearly an early suicide mission, he stabbed Henri in the chest and was immediately killed himself by the king’s guard. Henri died the following day from his wounds.
But frankly, it’s much more likely that the song was intended to mock monks in general, who seemed, to lay observers, (take Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for example) as though they never did or said anything of any note and contributed nothing to society, just taking their ease and ringing the odd bell.
A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go
A FROG he would a-wooing go,
Hey ho! says Rowley,
Whether his mother would let him or no;
With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach,
Hey ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat,
Hey ho! says Rowley.
And on the road he met with a rat;
With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach,
Hey ho! says Anthony Rowley.
They came to the door of Mousey’s hall,
Hey ho! says Rowley,
They gave a loud knock, and they gave a loud call;
With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach,
Hey ho! says Anthony Rowley.
Pray, Mrs Mouse, will you give us some beer?
Hey ho! says Rowley,
For Froggy and I are fond of good cheer;
With a rowley, powley, g
ammon and spinach,
Hey ho! says Anthony Rowley.
But while they were all a-merry-making,
Hey ho! says Rowley,
A cat and her kittens came tumbling in;
With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach,
Hey ho! says Anthony Rowley.
The cat she seized the rat by the crown,
Hey ho! says Rowley,
The kittens they pulled the little mouse down;
With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach,
Hey ho! says Anthony Rowley.
This put Mr Frog in a terrible fright,
Hey ho! says Rowley,
He took up his hat and wished them goodnight;
With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach,
Hey ho! says Anthony Rowley.
But as Froggy was crossing over a brook,
Hey ho! says Rowley,
A lily-white duck came and gobbled him up;
With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach,
Hey ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So there was the end of one, two, three,
Hey ho! says Rowley,
The rat, the mouse and the little frog-ee;
With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach,
Hey ho! says Anthony Rowley.
This is a song that has changed over the centuries to reflect the times. The first known version of it, published in 1549, has been found under the title ‘The Frog Came to the Myl Dur’ in Robert Wedderburn’s Complaynt of Scotland. In 1547, under attack from the English king Henry VIII, the Scottish queen consort, Mary of Guise, turned to her allies in France for assistance. The French obliged and Henri II (of France) then proposed to unite their two countries against the English by marrying his three-year-old son Louis (the frog) to her daughter Princess Mary (Mrs Mouse), the future Queen of Scots. It is this engagement that is thought to be behind the original version of ‘A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go’. The song proved unfortunately prophetic: Louis did not long survive their wedding thirteen years later.
The song re-emerged in England some years later when another example of French wooing caused some concern. This time it was the long courtship between Elizabeth I and the Duke of Anjou in 1579. Despite the twenty-one-year age gap between them, Elizabeth liked the young duke best of all her many suitors, affectionately nicknaming Anjou ‘her frog’ and bestowing many gifts upon him. But there was real alarm among the English people, including most of the queen’s own Privy Council, at how well Mousey was getting on with the French Catholic, and eventually, after much consultation with her advisers, the Queen reluctantly sent her young beau on his way.
But the story behind the version we all know today is rather different. The refrain Hey ho! says Anthony Rowley was added over a century later, while the frog the rhyme refers to is an English rather than a French king: Charles II.
After his father’s defeat at the hands of Cromwell (see As I Was Going by Charing Cross and There Was a Crooked Man), the prince had spent years on the continent at various European courts. By the time of the Restoration in 1660, he cut a raffish, exotic figure in an England starved of colour and frivolity. Cromwell had banned every form of merry-making, from dancing to Christmas, and Charles, determined to enjoy himself as much as possible, cancelled all these new laws. His court soon became notorious for its love of pleasure, while at the forefront of every new craze, from horse racing to high fashion, was the king.
But it was for his wooing that the king was best known. He was called ‘Old Rowley’ by his subjects after his famous stallion of that name – to quote Dennis Wheatley: ‘owing to the obvious similarity of their masculine vigour’. A portion of the Newmarket racecourse is still called the Rowley Mile, after the celebrated animal. Charles openly kept many mistresses: most notably Nell Gwyn, Louise de Kéroualle and Barbara Palmer, the Countess of Castlemaine, although there were many more. He openly acknowledged at least fourteen illegitimate children, by several different mothers, but he had no children with his wife, Catherine of Braganza. It is thought that the two aggressors who wanted to eat Anthony Rowley up were his two favourites: the cat was the very ambitious Castlemaine – her kittens being her five royal bastards – and the lily-white duck Nell Gwyn. In the case of Castlemaine, Charles managed to escape her toils – eventually banishing her from court for her promiscuity and for making too free with the Privy Purse –but it was ‘pretty, witty Nell’ who remained true to him and she ended up with the prize: the love of the king (A lily-white duck came and gobbled him up). On his deathbed in 1685, the king famously begged his brother and successor, James: ‘Do not let poor Nelly starve.’
Georgie Porgie
GEORGIE Porgie, pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry;
When the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away.
There is a sinister undertone to this nursery rhyme; Georgie Porgie really seems to be up to no good, otherwise the girls would not be crying and he would not have to run away when the boys came out to play. So what is it all about, then? There are two Georges whose stories fit the events. One was George Villiers (1592-1628), the handsome son of an insignificant nobleman but who soon climbed his own way into the court of James I and the king’s favour. Aged just twenty-three, he was given the somewhat unnerving position of Gentleman of the Bedchamber.
Rumour had it that he and the king were more than good friends. It certainly would explain why within two years he had been made an earl and then a marquess. Five years later, aged just thirty-one, George became the 1st Duke of Buckingham, proving quite clearly that the king’s bedchamber was the place to be for any aspiring nobleman in the early seventeenth century.
The nursery rhyme is said to mock both James I and George Villiers over their open romantic interest in each other. In fact, the king even proclaimed to the Privy Council that ‘you may be sure that I love the Duke of Buckingham more than anybody else and I wish not to have it thought to be a defect’. Although the king once announced that homosexuality was among the crimes that ‘we are bound in conscience never to forgive’, it is now believed by historians studying court diaries and correspondence that the pair were indeed lovers. The king even called Georgie ‘my sweet child and wife’ as if to emphasize the point.
But George Villiers was also known to be partial to both sexes and had many affairs with both the young ladies of court and the wives and daughters of other powerful Englishmen, causing resentment all around, although his relationship with the king gave him a certain amount of immunity. It had also been whispered that he often took advantage of his privileged position and forced his affections upon the said ladies, causing outrage (Kissed the girls and made them cry) while managing to avoid confrontation or retaliation (When the boys came out to play, / Georgie Porgie ran away).
George Villiers’s luck eventually ran out when, in 1627, he became embroiled in military matters and led an unsuccessful campaign on behalf of James’s son, Charles I, during which the former rent-boy-made-good accidentally lost over four thousand men out of an army of seven thousand. On his return to Portsmouth, he was stabbed to death by one of the wounded soldiers, furious at his commander’s lack of military judgement and the loss of so many of his English comrades. ‘Georgie Porgie’ was laid to rest at Westminster Abbey later that year.
Another candidate for the real Georgie Porgie is the Prince Regent George IV, the hapless son, with half an inch of brain, of mad King George III (see The Grand Old Duke of York). Immensely fat (Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie), his corset-wearing was the source of constant ridicule and satirical cartoons. By 1797, his weight had reached seventeen and a half stone and by 1824 his corsets were being made for a waist of fifty inches.
This George was unquestionably heterosexual but he took as much advantage of his position as George Villiers had done. He had a roving eye: attractive female visitors to the parties he gave at the Pavilion in Brighton were often advised to avoid being left alone with him. His chequered
love life involved several mistresses, illegitimate children and even bigamy. He had an official wife, Caroline of Brunswick, whom he detested so much he even banned her from his coronation, and an unofficial one – Maria Anne Fitzherbert (as she was both a Catholic and a commoner, their marriage was not formally recognized and remained a secret) – and he managed to make both women miserable (Kissed the girls and made them cry).
In addition, although George loved watching prizefighting (bare-knuckle boxing), which at that time was illegal, his own physical and emotional cowardice was legendary. This is illustrated by a story of the most infamous prizefight of the day, where one contestant died of his injuries. George was known to have been present, as he was included in a sketch of the match by James Gillray (the famous political cartoonist), but when the man died he ran away, terrified of being implicated in the fallout and attempting to conceal his presence at the match (When the boys come out to play, / Georgie Porgie ran away).
Good King Arthur
WHEN good King Arthur ruled this land,
He was a goodly king;
He stole three packs of barley meal
To make a bag of pudding.
A bag of pudding the king did make,
And stuffed it well with plums,
And in it put great lumps of fat,
As big as my two thumbs.
The king and queen did eat thereof,
And noblemen beside;
And what they could not eat that night,
The Queen next morning fried.
King Arthur is a fabled British leader, said in medieval tales and chronicles to have ruled over England and defended it against Saxon invaders following the withdrawal of the Romans in the fifth century. But at the start of the Dark Ages, when the island was under constant threat of invasion, and at various other troubled moments in their history, the inhabitants of Britain longed for a strong leader who could unite their fragmented regions under one rule and enable them to defend themselves. Hence the legend of King Arthur, the saviour king, was hugely appealing, its popularity spreading over the years, thanks especially to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regnum Britanniae (‘History of the Kings of England’), written in about 1136, and to Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, published in 1485.