Another version, more particularly the Irish one, runs—
This rhyme is evidently much older than the Tudor age, and one is reminded of the time when cloth and woollen goods were not much used by the lower classes. The Tzigane of Hungary to-day wears his sheep-skin breeches, and hands them down to posterity, with a plentiful supply of quick-silver and grease to keep them soft and clean. "Bye baby bunting" and the little "hare skin" is the other nursery rhyme having a reference to skins of animals being used for clothing. But "Baby bunting" has no purpose to point to, unless indeed the habits of the Esquimaux are taken in account. In the list of nursery songs sung by children in Elizabeth's reign, the following extract from "The longer thou livest the more foole thou art" gives four:—
To get back again to the true nursery lyrics, one more marriage game of this period is given, entitled—
The old saying of "A cat may look at the queen" is thus expressed in a dialogue between a ward nurse of Elizabeth's time and a truant tom on its return to the nursery.
No doubt the incident giving rise to this verse had to do with the terrible fright Queen Bess is supposed to have had on discovering a mouse in the folds of her dress—for it was she of virgin fame to whom pussy-cat paid the visit. It has been asked again and again, "Why are old maids so fond of cats?" and "Why are their lives so linked together?" Maybe it is to scare, as did the cat in the rhyme, "a little mouse from under her chair."
One more rhyme of Queen Elizabeth's time begins—
Or—
This legend of Dick Whittington is of Eastern origin. The story of the poor boy whose ill-fortune was so strangely reversed by the performances of his cat and its kittens finds a parallel in a cat tale found in "Arlott's Italian Novels," published 1485. The Lord Mayor of London bearing the name of Richard Whittington was a knight's son, a citizen of London, and never poor. The possible explanation of the cat in the career of Whittington of London had reference to a coal-boat known as a "cat," and far more likely to make a fortune for the future Lord Mayor than a good mouser would be.
Many authorities pronounce this lullaby to be of the earliest Christian era. Some believe that in times of yore the Virgin herself sang it to the infant Jesus.
If aught be distinct in this early Christian lullaby, it is that old-time ideas of "stars on high," "the sky is full of sleep," and other similar figures of mythical word-pictures are wanting. A mother's sympathy and affection alone bind together the words of her song in illimitable praises—a thousand thousand thousands.
Milton says—
What a bright sanctified glory the child King brought to his baby throne.
"Thee in all children, the eternal child. Thee to whom the wise men gave adoration, and the shepherds praise."
What countless hosts of child-bands are ever singing some dreamy lullaby of praise to their child King.
In the pastoral district of Vallauria, in the heart of the Ligurian Alps, within a day's journey from the orange groves of Mentone, a yearly festival takes place, when the children of the mountains sing a stanza recalling the Virgin's song—
"If thou wishest for music I will instantly call together the shepherds. None are before them."
No lyrics of the nursery have come down to us fashioned after the first-century song of the Virgin. The older types have survived, and in such an unvarying mould have they been cast that there is in each European country's song the same old pagan imagery obstinately repeating itself in spite of Christianity, so that the songs of the Christian Church became exclusively the hymns of her faithful people, the carols of her festivals, and in the Middle Ages the libretto of her Church mystery plays, setting forth her history and doctrines to the lower orders. If one were to remove the obstacles of idiom and grammar in the poetry of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, or even Russia, and expose the subject of the theme, a mere skeleton of past delusions would remain.
Long before modern European nations received this imagery of past credulities the poets of Greece and Rome had versified the same old-time beliefs. Before Rome was founded the Etruscan race, who flourished in what is now modern Tuscany, had the Books of the Tages fashioned in rhythmical mould, from which their traditions, ordinances, and religious teachings were drawn. They believed in genii as fervently as a Persian. Here is one Etruscan legend of the nursery, recalling
"How the wondrous boy-Tages sprang out of the soil just previously turned over by the plough in the fields of Tarquinii, and communicated to Lucamones the doctrines of divination, by sacrifice, by flight of birds, and by observation of the lightning, a son of genius and grandson of Jupiter."—Cic. de Divin. ii. 23.
It was the ancient tale of "Jack and the Beanstalk."
In the preceding chapter it was noted how the wondrous boy-Tages was believed in by the ancients. "Jack and the Beanstalk," our modern tale, though adapted to the present age, is the same legend, and known and told in their own way by the Zulus in South Africa and by the Redskin of North America, as well as to other isolated peoples. In these tales of primitive peoples the same wonderful miracle of the soil's fertility takes place, in the one case by the birth of the boy-Tages, in the other by the marvellous growth of the twisting beanstalks which in one night reach up—up—up to the land of the gods and giants. "Jack the Giant Killer," a similar legend but from a Celtic source, was known in France in the twelfth century, and at that period translated into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Both "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Jack the Giant Killer" are found in the folk-lore tales of Scandinavia.
sprang up into being after the wars of Parliament, when the pleasure-hating Puritan gained an ascendency in the land, and when the pastimes of all classes, but more especially those of the lower orders who had been so happy and contented under the Tudor sovereigns, suffered a miserable suspension. They who were in authority longed to change the robe of revel for the shroud. Not only were theatres and public gardens closed, but a war of bigotry was waged against May-poles, wakes, fairs, church music, fiddles, dancing, puppet shows, Whitsun ales—in short, everything wearing the attire of popular amusement and diversion. The rhyme recording Jack Horner's gloomy conduct was, in fact, a satire on Puritanical aversion to Christmas festivities.
The copy of the history of Jack Horner, containing his witty pranks and the tricks he played upon people from his youth to old age, is preserved in the Bodleian Library.
There are a number of men and women who recall a time when the rhymes of "Jack Horner" and "Jack the Giant Killer" appeared finer than anything in Shakespeare; but this much may be said for "Jack Horner," the cavalier's song of derision at the straight-laced Puritan, that it soon lost its political signification, gradually becoming used as a mark of respect.
Riddle-making is not left alone by the purveyors of nursery yarns, though belonging to the mythologic state of thought. The Hindu calls the sun seven-horsed; so the German riddle asks—
The Greek riddle of the two sisters—Day and Night. Another one given by Diog. Lært. i. 91, Athenagoras x. 451, runs—
An interesting English rhyme says—
This nursery rhyme's date is fixed by the reference to Old Noll, the Lord Protector.
Or—
Plutarch says of Homer that he died of chagrin, being unable to solve a riddle.
The Phœnix myth, once believed in by the Egyptian priests, is now, and had even so long ago as in Herodotus' time, degenerated into a mere child-story of a bird, who lived, and died, and rose again from its own ashes. As a relic of a mysterious faith, this fabulous bird has come down to us with diminished glory each century. Old Herodotus, the father of history, tells us that he saw it once—not the bird itself, but a painting of it—at Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, in Egypt. Even this old Greek historian could not quite believe the current story in his day concerning this bird; that it was supposed to revisit the earth after a five-hundred-year sojourn in the land of gods was to him, at least, a little strange. Pliny, the Roman, likewise gives a description of it. "I have been told," he writes, "it was as big as an eagle, yellow in colour, glittering as gold about the neck, with a body-plumage of deep red-purple. Its tail is sky-blue, with some of the pennæ of a light rose colour. The head is adorned with a crest and pinnacle beautiful to the sight."
Another ancient retells the story somewhat different to both the Greek and Roman historians. Thus runs the Indian version. Bear in mind, however, before reading it, that, like the Second Stone Age people, it was the habit of many races in India to cremate their dead:—
"A high funeral pyre is erected of dry wood, on which the body of the dead is laid, and in course of time after igniting the faggots the corpse is consumed. While this cineration is going on vultures and carrion fowl not infrequently pounce down upon the body, and tear away pieces of flesh from the ghastly, smoking corpse. These charred parts of the body they carry away to their nests to feast upon at leisure. But oftentimes dire results follow; the home of sun-dried sticks and litter ignites, and the bird is seen by some of the superstitious peasantry to rise up out of fire and smoke and disappear."
Then the Phœnix fable comes to mind, "It is the sun-god; he has thrown fire and consumed the nest, and the old bird," and they hastily conclude that the bird they just now beheld flying away is a new one, and has, in fact, arisen out of the ashes they witnessed falling from the branches of the tall tree. The Phœnix in truth!
The German child's rhyme, given by Grimm brothers, of
is not out of place here. It evidences a state of mythologic thought.
Yearly, as these harvest bugs, with their crimson or golden-coloured shields, appear in our country lanes, the village youngsters delight in capturing them, and play a game similar to the German child's. They sing—
To charm away the hiccup one must repeat these four lines thrice in one breath, and a cure will be certain—
The late Sir Humphry Davy is said to have learnt this cure for cramp when a boy—
The Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John rhymes were well known in Essex in Elizabeth's time. Ady, in his "Candle after dark," 1655, mentions an old woman he knew, who had lived from Queen Mary's time, and who had been taught by the priests in those days many Popish charms. The old woman, amongst other rhymes, repeated—
This was to be repeated yearly, thrice on Twelfth Night, and it would act as a charm until the following year against evil spirits.
In 1601 a charm in general esteem against lightning was a laurel leaf.
Even Tiberius Cæsar wore a chaplet of laurel leaves about his neck. Pliny reported that "laurel leaves were never blasted by lightning."
In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night Sir Toby alludes to the "Sing a Song a Sixpence," Act II., Sc. 3:—
In Beaumont and Fletcher's Bonduca it is also quoted.
Written about 1608:—
In New York the children have a common saying when making a swop or change of one toy for another, and no bargain is supposed to be concluded between boys and girls unless they interlock fingers—the little finger on the right hand—and repeat the following doggerel:—
Story-telling in the Reformation period was so prevalent that the wonderful tales were satirised in the following rhyme, dated 1588:—
A Henry VIII. rhyme:—
In 1754 mothers used to say to their children—
"As I was going down Sandy Lane I met a man who had seven wives; each wife had a bag, each bag held a cat, each cat a kit. Now riddle-me-ree, how many were going down Sandy Lane?"
Answer—One going down; the others were going up.