by Albert Jack
This is the cat that killed the rat
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the priest all shaven and shorn
That married the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cock that crowed in the morn
That waked the priest all shaven and shorn
That married the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the farmer sowing his corn
That kept the cock that crowed in the morn
That waked the priest all shaven and shorn
That married the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
‘The House That Jack Built’ first appeared in 1755, in Nurse Truelove’s New Year’s Gift, or The Book of Books for Children, its relentlessly cumulative verses inspired by a Hebrew hymn in the Jewish book of rituals Sepher Haggadah.
This rhyme has been used ever since as a memory-improving device but also to remind children that everything has a consequence. Each part of the ever-expanding list is dependent on the last, just as in For Want of a Nail. The series of events also builds up a picture of English country life during the eighteenth century – clearly quite action-packed in Jack’s neck of the woods. To this day, the rhyme’s refrain is used as a derogatory term for any badly designed or built property, the phrase the house that Jack built – Jack generally being a lazy fellow in English folklore – evoking an image of something that is about to fall down.
Humpty Dumpty
HUMPTY Dumpty sat on the 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 real Humpty Dumpty was a powerful cannon used by the Royalist forces during the English Civil War of 1642 to 1651. Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle led the king’s men and overpowered the Parliament stronghold of Colchester early in 1648. They grimly held on to it while the Parliamentarians, led by Thomas Fairfax, encircled and besieged the town in what became known as the Siege of Colchester. The supporters of Charles I almost won the day – all thanks to his doughtiest defender, Humpty Dumpty.
In pole position, as it were, on top of the church tower of St Mary-at-the-Walls, One-Eyed Thompson, the gunner, managed to blast away the attacking Roundhead troops with rousing success for eleven whole weeks. That is, until the top of the church tower was eventually blown away, sending Humpty Dumpty crashing to the ground outside the city wall, where it buried itself in deep marshland. The king’s cavalry (the horses) and the infantry (the men) hurried to retrieve the cannon in order to repair it, but they couldn’t put Humpty together again and without their weapon of mass destruction they were soon overrun by Fairfax and his soldiers.
There are another two verses preceding the better-known one that tell the tale in more detail:
In sixteen hundred and forty-eight,
When England suffered the pains of state,
The Roundheads laid siege to Colchester town
Where the king’s men still fought for the crown.
There One-Eyed Thompson stood on the wall,
A gunner of deadliest aim of all.
From St Mary’s Tower his cannon he fired,
Humpty Dumpty was its name.
Written in the same vein as ‘Hitler has only Got One Ball’ (a song mocking the Nazis that raised the British spirits during the darker days of the Second World War), ‘Humpty Dumpty’ was a piece of propaganda that passed from town to town as the news of the king’s defeat spread across England and the Parliamentarian troops slowly returned home, teaching even their youngest children to recite the tale of their victory.
But if the rhyme is entirely military in origin, how come we all think of Humpty Dumpty as an egg? The answer to that question is found in the late nineteenth century in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (1871). Sir John Tenniel’s iconic illustration shows Alice in deep discussion with Humpty Dumpty as he sits upon a high wall. Tenniel, clearly taken with the idea of the impossibility of Humpty Dumpty’s being put back together again once he’d fallen off the wall, has him shaped as an egg with short arms and legs. This is the first known depiction of Humpty as an egg, one that was to become the definitive image. (For other rhymes illustrated by Tenniel, see The Queen of Hearts and Tweedledum and Tweedledee.)
I Had a Little Nut Tree
I had a little nut tree,
Nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg
And a golden pear.
The King of Spain’s daughter
Came to visit me,
And all for the sake
Of my little nut tree.
Her dress was made of crimson,
Jet black was her hair,
She asked me for my nut tree
And my golden pear.
I said, ‘So fair a princess
Never did I see;
I will give you all the fruit
From my little nut tree.’
In 1501, the Spanish king Ferdinand and his queen Isabella I agreed that their beautiful youngest daughter, Catherine of Aragon, should become the bride of Henry VII’s fifteen-year-old son and heir, Arthur.
Arthur and Catherine’s marriage bonded the royal families of England and Spain. But it was short-lived because the young prince died of fever the following year. Faced with the prospect of returning her dowry to Spain, Henry immediately arranged a new marriage for Catherine, this time with his second son and new heir, also called Henry. As he was five years younger than Catherine, however, the Spanish princess had to wait, isolated from court, until her new fiancé was old enough to marry.
It is thought that the nursery rhyme sums up the royal manoeuvrings of the time. The nut tree is England itself. The king is offering its ‘fruits’ (English wealth) to the King of Spain’s daughter. The objects in question and the precious metals they are made of hint at why both countries were so keen to agree to a second marriage. Together the two nations could consolidate their success in trade – with spices from the East (symbolized by the nutmeg) and precious metals from South America (silver… golden) – thereby substantially increasing the wealth of both countries. The pear is perhaps a reference to England’s own agricultural plenty, from which Spain might also benefit. Catherine was to beco
me a popular princess and, later, a much loved queen. Unfortunately her marriage to Henry VIII ended much less happily than it had started. When, after many years, she had been unable to bear the king a son, and therefore a legitimate heir, she was cast aside in favour of Anne Boleyn (see Three Blind Mice). The English people never forgave Anne for ruining what they regarded as the king’s rightful marriage and Henry’s second queen was known for the rest of her short life as the Great Whore.
In Marble Walls as White as Milk
IN marble walls as white as milk,
Lined with a skin as smooth as silk,
Within a fountain colour clear,
A golden sphere doth there appear;
No doors are found in this stronghold,
Yet thieves break in and steal the gold.
First published in John Newbery’s Mother Goose’s Melody in 1765, this rhyme is actually a riddle that the reader is expected to solve. A riddle is an ambiguous statement, or puzzle, that can have several answers, although only one can be correct, and riddles have been popular since ancient times. As long ago as 400 bc, Plato is known to have observed children learning riddles; they feature in Old Norse literature and in Old English poetry, most notably in the Exeter Book – a collection of manuscripts originally housed in Exeter Cathedral – dating from around ad 800. While mostly frivolous, riddles can be profound, and even life-threatening: in perhaps the most celebrated riddle-posing session of all time, Oedipus has to give the correct answer to the Sphinx in order to avoid being killed. While the rhyme above is hardly in this category, in keeping with time-honoured tradition, I’m not going to give you the answer, but I will give you a clue. It’s not the Bank of England, although you might go to work on it. (For other riddling rhymes, see As I Was Going to St Ives and Flour of England.)
Jack and Jill
JACK and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.
Up Jack got and down he trot,
As fast as he could caper;
He went to bed and covered his head
With vinegar and brown paper.
This has been traditionally seen as pure nonsense verse, and indeed, taken at face value, the rhyme doesn’t make sense. Why do Jack and Jill go up the hill to fetch water? We don’t see many wells or springs on top of a hill, do we? Water generally runs downhill, hence the bottom of a hill or a valley is the best place to look for it. There must be more to this rhyme than first meets the eye.
One popular suggestion for its origin is that Louis XVI of France and his queen, the infamous Marie Antoinette, are Jack and Jill. But the only real supporting evidence for that
is the idea that Jack broke (or lost) his crown and that Jill came tumbling after him, or at least her head did. The executions of the French royal family took place in 1793, and the poem was first published in 1795, so this interpretation does at first seem plausible.
Closer to home (and probably to reality), a small village in Somerset has laid claim to the origin of the rhyme. The story told in Kilmersdon is that during 1697 the village was home to a young unmarried couple who did a lot of their courting up on a hill, away from the prying eyes of the local gossips. Consequently Jill became pregnant, but just before the baby was born Jack was killed by a rock that fell off the hill and landed on his head. Only days later, Jill also died in childbirth. It’s cheery stuff. The nursery rhyme is these days depicted on a series of tablet stones along the path to the hill, the people of Kilmersdon being convinced of their association with the famous nursery rhyme.
For the third theory, we must travel back a further fifty years in history, and from love to alcohol. Some researchers believe King Charles I (1600-49), who, during his reign, attempted to reform taxes on alcohol, provided the real inspiration for the rhyme. It is claimed that he was prevented from raising taxes by Parliament on several occasions and so, instead, he reduced the actual measures alcohol could be served in. Up until that point, wines and ales could be bought as a pint, a half pint, known as a ‘Jack’, or a quarter pint, known as a ‘Gill’ (pronounced in the same way as the ‘gill’ of a fish) – hence Jill. As the measures came tumbling down, Charles had effectively gained his tax increase, as slightly less alcohol could then be bought for the same price. To this day, many beer glass manufacturers still mark a half-pint line on a pint glass with a crown to honour the day the Jack was decreased in volume by King Charles I. No wonder they cut his head off.
But in fact, Jack and Jill were written about even earlier, in 1595 to be precise, by William Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: ‘Jack shall have Jill; / Nought shall go ill.’ It sounds as if Jack and Jill may well have been used in the past as a generic name for a couple, just as we’d say Janet and John today. But, this couple go even further back in history, it would appear, research taking us to twelfth-century Iceland.
Snorri Sturluson (1178-1241) was a politician, poet and noted historian. He was also the author of a collection of Old Norse poems, myths and tales. His Gylfaginning manuscript (‘The Fooling of Gylfi’) tells the famous ancient Norse tale of a young brother and sister, Hjuki (pronounced Juk-ee) and Bil, whom the moon god captured on a dark night as they stole a pail of water from the Bygrir Well. They were immediately spirited away to the moon, where they can be seen to this day carrying a bucket of water attached to a long pole. For nearly a thousand years, Scandinavians explained the markings of the lunar surface thus, just as we in England spoke to our own children about the man in the moon or how it was made of cheese. This tale is thought by many to be the original version of ‘Jack and Jill’ (see also The Man in the Moon).
Jack, Be Nimble
JACK, be nimble,
Jack, be quick,
Jack, jump over
The candlestick.
‘Jack, Be Nimble’ was first published in 1798 and has reappeared in various forms ever since. A couple of versions extend into a second verse:
Jack jumped high,
Jack jumped low,
Jack jumped over and burned his toe.
Over the years, children have used it as a skipping rhyme, no doubt with little thought about the origins of the poem, of which there are three very different theories.
One theory is based on the folk belief that yellow fever, or ‘yellow Jack fever’ – an acute viral disease that was rife in the West until vaccination was developed in the early twentieth century – could be prevented by the presence of fire. The most obvious symptom of fever is the body’s rapid increase of temperature. By having another source of heat nearby, the fever could be drawn out, or so it was believed. During outbreaks, children were often put to bed with a burning candle beside their cots to ward off the illness.
Another suggestion runs that Jack was actually the notorious pirate captain Calico Jack Rackham (1682-1720), so named because of his colourful calico clothing, and that the rhyme celebrates his regular near-miss escapes from the long arm of the law. Jack wasn’t quite nimble enough, it
would appear, as he was eventually captured and hanged, although the equally notorious Mary Read and Anne Bonnie, members of his crew, were saved from execution because of the ‘innocent’ unborn babies they were supposedly carrying.
There is no real evidence to back up either of these suggestions, however. The true origin of the rhyme goes back many centuries. Candle jumping in those times was a traditional method of predicting the future. Quite simply, if the candle stayed alight after a person had ‘jumped it’, then he or she could look forward to a bright and prosperous future. If, however, the flame went out, then things looked rather bleak. Although not as bleak, I imagine, as it would if the candle set light to the jumper’s clothing as he/she passed over it, in which case his/her future would be short and phosphorous.
Candle jumping might be incorporated into other festivities, such as the feast of St Catherine on 25 November, when winter was drawing in and the days gettin
g shorter and darker. Towards the end of the day, bonfires would be lit and fireworks set off, including, quite possibly, Catherine wheels – picturesquely named after the manner of the saint’s martyrdom. Catherine is the patron saint of unmarried women and her festival gave spinsters the opportunity to openly search for a husband. During the festivities, men in costume danced and sang while the ladies served punch and showed off their buns. The whole mad event would be concluded with the placing of a tall candlestick on the ground over which people jumped, one after the other, while the crowd chanted the name of each jumper.
The game of candle leaping has a very long history, in fact, being related to fire leaping, which can be traced back to between five and ten thousand years ago. Bonfires –originally containing animal bones, which accounts for the name – were believed to ward off evil and dangerous spirits; hence many considered that jumping over the flames would bring good fortune – or a good husband.
Jack Sprat
JACK Sprat could eat no fat,
His wife could eat no lean,
And so between them both
They licked the platter clean.
In 1190, King Richard I (the Lionheart) set off on the Third Crusade. Unfortunately, that left room for his younger brother John to try and take control. It was a turbulent time for England. The youngest of the four princes (Jack Sprat), John was a highly unpopular figure – nicknamed John Lackland for his lack of territories and John Softsword for his lack of military success. The attempt by John and his greedy wife, Isabella of Gloucester, to claim the throne was regarded as an act of treachery, although Richard later forgave his younger sibling.
