Journalist Tim Devlin is once more on an investigative trail of nursery rhymes and, as ever, the depth of his research is very impressive. He goes all over the country, interviews descendants of families who may be featured in the rhymes and spends many hours in The British Library, The Bodleian and elsewhere. This new book which examines another fourteen rhymes is a welcome sequel to Cracking Humpty Dumpty, and is again rather beautifully and informatively illustrated by Katarina Dragoslavic.
Of course Devlin is by no means the first person to have done this and he now has a honed technique. He examines all the other explanations for each rhyme – in a pleasingly business-like but accessible style – debunks, the fanciful or impossible and finally comes to a tentative conclusion of his own.
Who or what, for example, were those four and twenty blackbirds? Well for a start, huge pastry containers out of which dwarves, animals or birds would burst as entertainment at courtly dinners were a Tudor commonplace so the hapless “birds” hadn’t been baked at all. Were the birds the 24 letters of the Tudor alphabet in celebration of the first printing of the English Bible in 1535? Were they an allegory for the number of hours in a full day? Was the rhyme poking fun at Henry James Pye, appointed poet Laureate in 1790, whose verse was full of lines such as “vocal groves and feathered choirs”? Some versions feature “naughty boys” rather than blackbirds. Pirates? Probably not. As so often, it turns out that the dates are wrong. But, bearing in mind that the first sixpence was minted in 1551, Devlin wonders whether the rhyme could have been written in celebration of Edward VI’s birthday in 1553. He has studied the hapless young king’s “chronicle” (diary) in the British Library via microfiche and discovered a keen personal interest in the coinage. Fascinating stuff.
And what about that “cock-horse” so familiar to anyone who, in childhood, has ever been jogged on the leg of a strong male relation? Is it literally a mythical creature which is half-cock and half-horse as depicted on an Etruscan vase? Aristophanes used the hybrid in The Birds to characterise a “cocky” character. There’s a pub in Kent on the Pilgrim’s Way near the bottom of Detling Hill, called The Cock Horse. According to a recent issue of Dover Kent Archives: “The name is derived from the need to supply a cock [ie extra] to get stagecoaches and heavy wagons up a steep hill”/ Then there are traditional hobby horses as children’s toys – a stick with a horse’s head at one end – which dates back, delightfully, at least to Sparta in the fourth century BC. And so Devlin goes on gleefully and filling me with glee too as we unpick Mother Goose, Pop Goes the Weasel, London Bridge, Little Miss Muffet and more.
In his epilogue, Devlin proposes the setting up of a National Centre for Nursery Rhymes because he is concerned (as am I) that they are rapidly disappearing from our culture. And he has some inspiring ideas about what this might include and how it might work. But it needs support and sponsorship. Contact him via www.crackingnurseryrhymes.co.
This book, ISBN 9781399985734, is published by Susak Press and available from www.crackingnurseryrhymes.co.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths
