Читать книгу Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes - Eckenstein Lina - Страница 5

ON looking more closely at the contents of our nursery collections, we find that a large proportion of so-called nursery rhymes are songs or snatches of songs, which are preserved also as broadsides, or appeared in printed form in early song-books. These songs or parts of songs were included in nursery collections because they happened to be current at the time when these collections were made, and later compilers transferred into their own collections what they found in earlier ones. Many songs are preserved in a number of variations, for popular songs are in a continual state of transformation. Sometimes new words are written to the old tune, and differ from those that have gone before in all but the rhyming words at the end of the lines; sometimes new words are introduced which entirely change the old meaning. Many variations of songs are born of the moment, and would pass away with it, were it not that they happen to be put into writing and thereby escape falling into oblivion.

In Mother Goose's Melody stands a song in six verses which begins: —

Halliwell's collection includes only the first and the fourth verse of this piece. (1842, p. 24.)

In the estimation of Chappell this song was a very popular ballad, which was sung to the tune of I am the Duke of Norfolk, or Paul's Steeple.14 It appears also in the Fairing or Golden Toy for Children of all Sizes and Denominations of 1781, where it is designated as "a new love song by the poets of Great Britain." Its words form a variation of the song called The Dumb Maid, which is extant in a broadside of about 1678,15 and which is also included in the early collection of Pills to Purge Melancholy of 1698-1719. The likeness between the pieces depends on their peculiar repeat: —

The same form of verse was used in another nursery song which stands as follows: —

Again, a song which appears in several early nursery collections is as follows: —

This song was a favourite with Goldsmith, who sang it to his friends at dinner on the day when his play The Good-natured Man was produced.16 It was one of the numerous songs that were sung to the tune of Lilliburlero, which goes back at least to the time of Purcell.17 A Scottish version of this piece was printed by Chambers, which presents some interesting variations: —

I have come across a verse sung on Earl Grey and Lord Brougham, written in 1835, which may have been in imitation of this song: —

Mother Bunch is a familiar character of British folk-lore, who figures in old chapbooks as a keeper of old-world saws, and gives advice in matters matrimonial. One of the earliest accounts of her is Pasquill's Jests with the Merriments of Mother Bunch, extant in several editions, which was reprinted by Hazlitt in Old English Jestbooks, 1864, Vol. III. There are also Mother Bunch's Closet newly broke open, Mother Bunch's Golden Fortune Teller, and Mother Bunch's Fairy Tales, published by Harris in 1802. The name also occurs in Mother Osborne's Letter to the Protestant Dissenters rendered into English Metre by Mother Bunch, 1733. Mother Bunch, like Mother Goose and Mother Shipton, may be a traditional name, for Mother Bunch has survived in connections which suggest both the wise woman and the witch.

Another old song which figures in early nursery collections is as follows: —

Chappell mentions a song called, What care I how fair she be, which goes back to before 1620.18 The words of these songs seem to have suggested a parody addressed to Zachary Macaulay, the father of the historian, who pleaded the cause of the slaves. The Bill for the abolition of slavery was passed in 1833, and the following quatrain was sung with reference to it: —

Another so-called nursery rhyme which is no more than a popular song has been traced some way back in history by Halliwell, who gives it in two variations: —

In Deuteromalia of 1609 this stands as follows: —

Among the popular songs which have found their way into nursery collections is the one known as A Frog he would a wooing go, the subject of which is old. Already in 1549 the shepherds of Scotland sang a song called, The Frog cam to the Myldur. In the year 1580 there was licensed, A most strange Wedding of the Frog and the Mouse, as appears from the books of the Stationers' Company cited by Warton.19 The song has been preserved in many variations with a variety of burdens. These burdens sound like nonsense, but in some cases the same words appear elsewhere in a different application, which shows that they were not originally unmeaning.

The oldest known version of the song begins: —

The expression humble dum occurs in other songs and seems to indicate triumph; the word tweedle represents the sound made by the pipes.

A Scottish variation of the song begins: —

In the nursery collection of c. 1783 the song begins: —

The origin and meaning of this burden remains obscure.

The antiquity and the wide popularity of these verses are further shown by a song written in imitation of it, called A Ditty on a High Amore at St. James, and set to a popular tune, which dates from before 1714. It is in verse, and begins: —

In the accepted nursery version the song begins: —

This burden is said by a correspondent of Notes and Queries to have been first inserted in the old song as a burden by Liston. His song, entitled The Love-sick Frog, with an original tune by C. E. H., Esq. (perhaps Charles Edward Horn), and an accompaniment by Thomas Cook, was published by Goulding & Co., Soho Square, in the early part of the nineteenth century (N. & Q., I, 458). The burden has been traced back to the jeu d'esprit of 1809 on the installation of Lord Grenville as Chancellor of Oxford, which another correspondent quotes from memory: —

Another variation of the song of The Frog and the Mouse of about 1800 begins: —

This expression, heigho, crowdie, contains a call to the crowd to strike up. The crowd is the oldest kind of British fiddle, which had no neck and only three strings. It is mentioned as a British instrument already by the low Latin poet Fortunatus towards the close of the sixth century: "Chrotta Britannia canat." The instrument is well known to this day in Wales as the crwth.

The word crowdy occurs also as a verb in one of the numerous nursery rhymes referring to scenes of revelry, at which folk-humour pictured the cat making music: —

This verse and a number of others go back to the festivities that were connected with Twelfth Night. Some of them preserve expressions in the form of burdens which have no apparent sense; in other rhymes the same expressions have the force of a definite meaning. Probably the verses in which the words retain a meaning have the greater claim to antiquity.

Thus among the black-letter ballads is a song23 which is found also in the nursery collection of 1810 under the designation The Lady's Song in Leap Year.

Halliwell cites this song in a form in which the words are put into the lips of the king, and associates it with the amusements of Twelfth Night: —

The expression diddle diddle according to Murray's Dictionary means to make music without the utterance of words, while fiddle faddle is said to indicate nonsense, and to fiddle is to fuss. But both words seem to go back to the association of dancing, as is suggested by the songs on Twelfth Night, or by the following nursery rhyme which refers to the same celebration.

The following variation of this verse occurs in the Nursery Songs published by Rusher: —

In both cases the cat was fiddling, that is moving to instrumental music without the utterance of words, and called upon the others to do so while she played the pipes. Her association with an actual fiddle, however, is preserved in the following rhyme which I cite in two of its numerous variations: —

This rhyme also refers to the revelry which accompanied a feast, probably the one of Twelfth Night also.