by Albert Jack
Incidentally, the name Johnny has often been used as a derogatory term for an Englishman and, to this day, the English are referred to in some parts of the world as ‘Johnny English’ or ‘Johnny Englander’. This is also why so many other nursery rhymes and patriotic songs include either the name Jack or John, as these were taken to mean any Englishman. In the rhyme, the name is used to demonstrate how the English nation was tired of fighting the Spanish.
Red Sky at Night
RED sky at night,
Shepherd’s delight;
Red sky in the morning,
Shepherd’s warning.
In the Middle Ages, production of wool and other textiles formed the backbone of the English economy (see Baa, Baa, Black Sheep). Which is why shepherds and their flocks regularly appear in some of our oldest rhymes. Long before twenty-four-hour weather forecasting, country folk relied upon clues from nature to predict forthcoming weather. According to such country lore, birds will build their nests high in the branches of a tree during the spring if their instinct informs them the coming summer will be warm and dry and they therefore don’t need to rely on the shelter afforded by the lower branches. Cows lying down in a meadow are a sure sign of rain as instinct instructs them to keep the ground beneath them dry, while haze around the moon at night is another indication of rain to come. Bees will remain in their hives if a storm is coming, while high-flying swallows indicate warm, dry weather ahead.
In a similar vein, shepherds – who spent all their working day outside and, like farmers in general, needed to be able to predict bad weather as their livelihood depended on it – grew to recognize that when there was a particularly red sunset then the following day would be bright, clear and sunny. However, a red sky at sunrise usually indicated stormy, inclement weather for the day ahead. And it appears that meteorology can back up the folklore. The reason the sky glows red is due to the sun shining on the underside of clouds from a low angle, either at sunrise or sunset. As weather systems generally move from west to east, this reflection would predict, with reasonable accuracy, if rain clouds were moving towards you in the morning or away from you during the night.
Remember, Remember the Fifth of November
REMEMBER, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot;
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, it was his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament;
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow.
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With dark lantern and lighted match;
Holler boys, holler boys, make the bells ring,
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the King.
Living in our high-tech world, it is difficult to imagine a time when it was impossible to link up to the planet at large, and everyone on it, at the touch of a button or a single click of a mouse. It is only seventy years since the cinema, followed by television, began to bring news to the select few. Events reported were two days old but that was instantaneous compared with former times. After the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, for instance, nobody in England knew about the great victory, or Nelson’s death, for months.
So think back to the year 1605, a time when very few people could read and the only news of national importance would be when King James’s army turned up at your remote farm to recruit men for yet another war in God’s name. Many lived their entire lives in blissful ignorance of the wider world. James I was the first monarch of the new dynasty (reigning from 1603 to 1625) and hence his position was rather less stable than he would have liked – as a celebrated attempt on his life only two years into his rule was to prove. His government had to find a simple and effective way of delivering its message to the far corners of the land, as quickly as possible. And as most country folk could neither read nor write, this would have to be done by word of mouth. An easily memorable rhyme or limerick would do the trick admirably – encapsulating important news and, in this case, providing a stern warning in just a few snappy lines.
So when Robert Catesby led his gang of religious terrorists – thirteen men, including the hapless Guido (Guy) Fawkes – in the most famous failed terrorist attack in English history, the king needed to make sure all of his subjects were made aware of the dastardly plot and warned against entertaining similar ideas.
Catesby’s gang had planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament on the first day of the new session on 4 November 1605: the king and many other powerful Englishmen would have been killed at a single stroke. The idea was to incite rebellion and restore a Catholic head of state by putting King James’s nine-year-old daughter Elizabeth on the throne. Catesby’s plan was to pack the cellars of the Houses of Parliament with as much gunpowder as could be smuggled in. One of the men, Guy Fawkes, an explosives expert, would hide in the cellars all night long and then light a fuse to explode the barrels as soon as the king and his court were sitting directly above the cellars the following day.
But a member of the gang tipped off a family friend due to attend the opening of Parliament and that friend informed the authorities. Fawkes was caught, quite literally, with his hand on the fuse and the assassination attempt was foiled. A recent television re-enactment of the Gunpowder Plot has proved that, had it been successful, it would have certainly wiped out most of the great and good of the English ruling classes. During the re-enactment, the resulting controlled explosion was so severe that the head of the mock king was blown to the other side of the River Thames. Condemned for high treason, Guy Fawkes’s body parts could likewise be found all over London after their owner had been hanged, drawn and quartered. His mutilated body was displayed as a deterrent to others and a warning of the seriousness of treason. His head was placed on a pike at the Tower of London where the ravens pecked his skull clean.
The following year, a sermon was commissioned by Parliament to commemorate the foiling of the plot and the survival of the monarchy, and an annual custom was thereby established. The prominent clergyman Lancelot Andrewes (co-compiler of the King James Bible) first read the sermon and then recited the verse to be remembered and repeated as worshippers returned to their towns and villages throughout England. That year, loyal townsfolk formed lamplit processions in honour of the king and built huge fires on which they burned effigies of the conspirators in what was to be repeated as an annual reminder of what happens to those who commit treason and threaten the monarchy. Fireworks were later introduced to replicate the explosion that might have taken place. Such bonfires were normal at the time, with effigies of England’s ‘enemies’ burned on a regular basis at village greens throughout the land, although these days, thanks to ‘Remember, Remember the Fifth of November’, it is specifically the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 that is never forgotten.
Children soon began a tradition that has continued ever since of stuffing old clothes with paper and hay and displaying their flammable models of Guy Fawkes on street corners, asking passers-by for a penny for their efforts. ‘A penny for the guy, mister?’ became a familiar cry, although the last street urchin I passed asked for a fiver, demonstrating once again how times have changed.
Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross
RIDE a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
She shall have music wherever she goes.
Some argue there can only be one historic figure who could inspire such a rhyme. Step forward Lady Godiva, England’s favourite naked horsewoman. During the eleventh century, England was divided into four great provinces – Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria – each governed by an earl. In 1040, according to legend, Leofric, the Earl of Mercia, tried to impose heavy taxes on his countrymen, provoking outrage and near riots. Leofric’s wife, Godgifu (changed over time to Godiva), sympathized with the common peopl
e and urged her husband to lower the new taxes he had levied.
Now, Leofric was obviously a man with a sense of humour because he told his wife he would lower taxes only after she had ridden naked through the streets of Coventry. But he hadn’t reckoned upon Godiva’s spirit and, much to his surprise, she agreed to the challenge. The delighted people of Coventry, as a show of respect, all agreed to stay indoors, close their shutters and face the other way as the lady passed by, to spare her blushes. She rode through the streets on her beloved white horse, completely naked apart from her wedding ring (rings on her fingers), and with bells attached to her toes to remind the people of Coventry not to look out of their windows. All the citizens kept their word,
except for Tom the tailor, who couldn’t help himself and peeped out through the shutters. According to legend, Tom was then struck blind – hence the expression ‘peeping Tom’.
But if it’s a rhyme about Lady Godiva, surely the town mentioned in the rhyme should be Coventry? If we turn to the town of Banbury, in Oxfordshire, we encounter another horse-riding lady, Celia Fiennes, sister of the 3rd Viscount Saye and Sele of Broughton Castle, Banbury. According to this account, for fine lady we should read ‘Fiennes lady’. However, while the location is right and everything seems to fit quite nicely, it appears that the story is suspect –probably concocted by a member of the Fiennes family.
Banbury Cross is genuine, though. Indeed, Banbury once had three historic crosses: the White Cross, the High Cross and the Bread Cross, all important religious symbols in the settlement that was located on top of a relatively steep hill. Which brings us to our third lady on horseback…
This theory relates to the day Queen Elizabeth I travelled through Banbury on one of her annual progresses through the kingdom. In keeping with the fashion of the era, the Virgin Queen wore fine rings on her fingers and soft velvet shoes with bells sewn into the fabric. On reaching Banbury Hill, her carriage broke a wheel, leaving her entire entourage stranded outside the town.
Luckily, Banbury had a cock horse to hand. This is an old carriage-driving term, referring to an extra (male) horse employed to assist pulling a cart or carriage up a steep hill. As was common at the time, the town’s council provided traders with the free use of the horse, to help carts laden with goods make an easy passage into town. Banbury’s officials soon came to the rescue, Elizabeth mounted the cock horse, decorated with ribbons and more bells for its royal passenger, and rode through the town to the cheers of her delighted subjects (She shall have music wherever she goes).
This is all very charming and colourful but the rhyme is much more likely to have arisen from a rather darker episode in Banbury’s past. In the early sixteenth century, the town became a hotspot for Puritan zeal. (Even today the local football team, Banbury United FC, are known as ‘The Puritans’.) During the English Civil War, under the aegis of local MP Sir Anthony Cope, a group of one hundred and fifty men converged upon the town and destroyed the famous medieval crosses as part of the Parliamentarian edict to remove anything that might smack of idolatry. To the hardline Puritans, the rich and much decorated Catholic Church, decked out in all its finery like a beautiful woman (rings on her fingers and bells on her toes), was the ‘Whore of Babylon’. The Banbury crosses represented part of this finery, and must be destroyed to make way for Protestant plainness. It was hardly surprising that after the Parliamentarians had won the war they went on to ban any form of entertainment, whether it was morris dancing, football or just a drink down the pub. They even cancelled Christmas. (The name of the modern football team must be entirely ironical, therefore.)
Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses
RING-a-ring o’ roses,
A pocketful of posies;
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.
This rhyme usually accompanies a dancing game that ends with all the children falling to the ground, getting their clothes muddy and going home to a clout round the ear. Or at least that’s how I remember it.
‘Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses’ is traditionally associated with the plague – the Great Plague of London in 1665 or the Black Death of the late 1340s – and it is easy to see why. A plague victim would show early symptoms of the disease in the form of red, circular rashes all over the body resembling wreaths of roses (Ring-a-ring o’ roses). The rhyme also seems to reflect the superstition that if a person was to carry around a pouch, or ‘pocket’, stuffed with herbs or ‘posies’, there was less chance of infection (A pocketful of posies). Sneezing would be also be a symptom (A-tishoo! A-tishoo!), indicating that the person was in an advanced state of infection, certain to fall down (dead) very shortly afterwards. So far so neat.
Unfortunately this doesn’t actually accord with the known symptoms of the disease. Between two and six days following infection, the illness becomes obvious in a person. The early signs are headaches, chills, high fever. No rosy rings. Following the fever would come the formation of buboes, an inflammatory swelling of the lymph glands in both the groin and armpits. There is no historical record that posies, herbs or any other flower were used as preventive medicine, although there is evidence that sweet-smelling
flowers were sometimes carried to counter the terrible odours in areas affected by disease. (People were so terrified of catching the plague, in fact, that they are known to have resorted to extreme measures – burning all their clothes, possessions and sometimes even their houses in the hope of avoiding infection.) And finally, there is no reference anywhere to sneezing as a final and fatal symptom of the plague.
One of the strongest arguments given for the rhyme being connected with the plague is, in fact, one of the strongest arguments against it. Several historians have urged in favour of the association. But the big question is this: if indeed the rhyme dates as far back as the Black Death in the 1340s, then why did nobody write it down for over five hundred years?
No contemporary record of the rhyme has been found from that period. Even Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), the noted diarist and chronicler of a later outbreak, the Great Plague, makes no mention of it, although it seems unlikely that no record should be made until 1881, centuries after it was – seemingly – first sung. In fact, no connection had been made between ‘Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses’ and either of the plagues until 1961, when James Leasor proposed the idea in his book The Plague and the Fire.
In conclusion, while the connection between rhyme and plague makes a good story, it appears far more likely that ‘Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses’ is a simple children’s party game, illustrating nothing more than a group holding hands in a circle and dancing around, to the accompaniment of satisfying sounds effects (A-tishoo! A-tishoo!) and actions (We all fall down). In its first publication in Britain, in 1881 –in Kate Greenaway’s Mother Goose – the sneezing wasn’t even part of the rhyme, perhaps suggesting a later addition:
Ring-a-ring-a-roses,
A pocket full of posies;
Hush! hush! hush! hush!
We’re all tumbled down.
The version in Alice Gomme’s Dictionary of British Folklore (1898) reads:
Ring a ring of roses,
A pocket full of posies;
Upstairs, downstairs,
In my lady’s chamber.
While, as late as 1949, a version included in a collection of verse entitled Poems of Early Childhood – illustrated with four happy children dancing in a circle and carrying bunches of roses – still carries no reference to the fatal sneezing:
Ring a ring a rosy,
A pocket full of posies;
One, two, three, four,
We all fall down.
Rock-a-Bye, Baby
ROCK-a-bye, baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.
Also known as ‘Hush-a-bye, Baby’, this lullaby has several theories concerning its origins. One tells us that the words relate to the Glorious Revolut
ion of 1688 that led to the downfall of King James II of England (see The Grand Old Duke of York). It has been suggested that King James’s son was secretly replaced at birth, without his knowledge, by another baby in order to provide a true Catholic heir. Such are the lengths people would go to for religious purposes. The breaking bough in the rhyme is said to be the rotten Stuart monarchy, while the wind is supposed to represent the wind of change blowing in from the Netherlands in the shape of James’s Protestant nephew, William of Orange, who could provide a genuine Protestant monarchy once again in England. Finally, the baby is England herself –in dire peril from the conflict between these two opposing forces.
Another argument may in the end owe more to simple English myth or legend. During the mid eighteenth century, a family lived in a great yew tree at Shining Cliff Woods in Ambergate in Derbyshire. The tree was over a thousand years old and the family occupying its branches were the local charcoal-burners Kate and Luke Kenyon. With the permission of the wood’s owners, the Hurt family, the Kenyons hollowed out a cradle in one of the huge branches for the youngest of their eight children. The Hurts were apparently so fond of the Kenyons that they are said to have commissioned the artist James Ward to paint their portrait. But this picture does not exist, unfortunately, and checking the dates shows that Ward (1769-1859) was far too young to have painted them, making the entire tale highly unlikely, albeit very charming.
A popular theory from America is that a descendant of the great American folk hero Davy Crockett, Effie Crockett (1857-1940), composed the song as a fifteen-year-old in 1872 while looking after a baby and trying to rock it to sleep. However, as the first printed record of the lullaby can be traced to 1765, when it was published by John Newbery, a children’s book specialist in London, this appears to rule out that claim. And various other theories about the rhyme’s purported English origins don’t hold much water either. One suggests that it was written by the 3rd Earl of Sandwich, Edward Montague, heartbroken after his son was accidentally tipped from his cradle into the River Thames and drowned in 1706. This sounds even less likely, however, on discovering that his only son, Richard Montague, lived until he was thirty.
