Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frey. This is a return of
Speaker 1: six Impossible Episodes. If you're new to the show Six
Speaker 1: Impossible Episodes, it's kind of a series. We'll tackle six
Speaker 1: different topics that, for whatever reason, usually can't fill out
Speaker 1: an episode on their own. The first time that we
Speaker 1: did one on Mother Goose Rhymes, it was because of
Speaker 1: a listener request for an episode about the Muffin Man.
Speaker 1: This was a listener request from a child that had
Speaker 1: been passed on via an adult. That one was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, and so the next six Impossible Episodes
Speaker 1: we did was another one. Some time has passed now
Speaker 1: since those two, and I thought maybe we would go
Speaker 1: for a third. We have to start, though, with a
Speaker 1: caveat that Folks who have heard the other earlier Mother
Speaker 1: Goose episodes will probably find familiar. A lot of these
Speaker 1: poems and songs were first published hundreds of years ago,
Speaker 1: and some of them might have existed for quite some
Speaker 1: time before appearing in a book or some kind of
Speaker 1: other print material. But most of the explanations for their
Speaker 1: purported origins are much much newer, like in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases, hundreds of years newer, and usually these wind
Speaker 1: up seeming more like somebody sort of trying to come
Speaker 1: up with an explanation that matches up with what's written
Speaker 1: in a poem, rather than someone actually finding evidence that
Speaker 1: a poem referenced a specific person or historical event. They're
Speaker 1: fun anyway, though, so we're doing it. And first up,
Speaker 1: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a
Speaker 1: great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's
Speaker 1: men couldn't put Humpty together again. The first known publication
Speaker 1: of this rhyme was by Samuel Arnold in seventeen ninety
Speaker 1: seven in a book called Juvenile Amusements. Arnold was a
Speaker 1: composer and an organist who lived and worked in London.
Speaker 1: His version was a little different, though it started out
Speaker 1: the same, but then ended four score men and four
Speaker 1: score more could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.
Speaker 1: Some people interpret this as a riddle with the answer
Speaker 1: being an egg. According to folkloris Iona and Peter Opie,
Speaker 1: who specialized in the study of childhood culture and published
Speaker 1: so much research on it in the last half of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. There are multiple different versions of the
Speaker 1: same poem slash riddle in other European countries, like Trilla
Speaker 1: Trola in parts of Germany or Bullabula in France. All
Speaker 1: of these similar poems seem like they are connected, but
Speaker 1: it's really not clear which of them might have been
Speaker 1: the first one ever to be composed. Also, Humpty Dumpty
Speaker 1: is often depicted is sort of an anthropomorphized egg, including
Speaker 1: in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, which came out in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five, but the term humpty dumpty predate Samuel
Speaker 1: Arnold's publication of this nursery rhyme by roughly one hundred years.
Speaker 1: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, It's been used since
Speaker 1: at least sixteen ninety eight to mean a drink quote
Speaker 1: made with ale boiled with brandy, and in seventeen eighty
Speaker 1: five the word humpty dumpty was used in writing with
Speaker 1: a different meaning, that being a person who was short
Speaker 1: and squat and maybe kind of frumpy, especially if they
Speaker 1: keep their shoulders hunched.
Speaker 2: I feel attacked.
Speaker 1: A character named Humpty Dumpty who had these physical traits
Speaker 1: also appeared in print before the Humpty Dumpty poem in
Speaker 1: the Lilliputian Writing School that came out sometime between seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty four and seventeen sixty four. So some people speculate
Speaker 1: that this poem is a reference to King Richard third
Speaker 1: of England, that the humpty is referencing the way his
Speaker 1: body looked because he had scoliosis, and the wall that
Speaker 1: he was on was a horse named Wall, and the
Speaker 1: falling down part is referencing his death at the Battle
Speaker 1: of bosworth Field.
Speaker 2: However, the only.
Speaker 1: References to Richard the third having a horse named Wall
Speaker 1: that I could find, they all seem to be explanations
Speaker 1: of what Humpty Dumpty is about. I don't know if
Speaker 1: anybody else said at any point anywhere that he had
Speaker 1: a horse named Wall. The other thing that people point
Speaker 1: to with this a lot is that this could be
Speaker 1: Richard third, is that all the King's horses and all
Speaker 1: the King's men is maybe a reference to the my
Speaker 1: Kingdom for a horse line from Shakespeare's Richard the Third.
Speaker 1: There is also a completely different explanation that Humpty Dumpty
Speaker 1: was a large cannon that was used during the English
Speaker 1: Civil Wars. In this explanation, the Royalist town of Colchester
Speaker 1: was under siege by the Parliamentarians and they had this
Speaker 1: big cannon that they had nicknamed Humpty.
Speaker 2: Dumpty up on a wall.
Speaker 1: Either the cannon recoiled when it was fired and fell
Speaker 1: off the wall, or the Parliamentarians shattered the wall and
Speaker 1: caused the cannon to fall down, but either way the
Speaker 1: Royalist forces could not repair it. But according to the opies,
Speaker 1: the source for this story is a series of fictitious
Speaker 1: nursery rhyme interpretations that were printed in Oxford Magazine in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, which people misinterpreted as being real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard this cannon explanation a lot too, and I
Speaker 1: did try to go and track down this original article
Speaker 1: to see exactly what it said, and I could not
Speaker 1: find a way to get at it. So I wish
Speaker 1: I could did not sussess but do that. So next
Speaker 1: we go on to our next poem, which is sing
Speaker 1: a song a sixpence a pocket full of rye four
Speaker 1: and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. When the pie
Speaker 1: was opened, the birds began to sing. Wasn't that a
Speaker 1: dainty dish? To set before the king. There's also a
Speaker 1: second verse that I think people don't maybe say as much,
Speaker 1: which is the King was in the counting house counting
Speaker 1: out his money. The queen was in the parlor eating
Speaker 1: bread and honey. The maid was in the garden hanging
Speaker 1: out the clothes. There came a little blackbird and snapped
Speaker 1: off her nose. So we're gonna look at this one
Speaker 1: in pieces first. There are multiple references combining sixpence with
Speaker 1: singing going back to the seventeenth century, including a line
Speaker 1: from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which was first performed in sixteen
Speaker 1: oh two. That's Sir Toby Belch saying, come on, there
Speaker 1: is sixpence for you. Let's have a song. In the
Speaker 1: sixteen fourteen play Bonduka by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher,
Speaker 1: a character calls out, whoa, here's a stir Now sing
Speaker 1: a song of sixpence. So that bit's been around for
Speaker 1: a while next. Allegedly at least part of this was
Speaker 1: written by English literary critic and Shakespeare commentator George Stevens,
Speaker 1: who supposedly wrote it to make fun of Henry James Pie.
Speaker 1: Pie was named British poet Laureate in seventeen ninety, and
Speaker 1: unlike most people who are named a country's poet laureate,
Speaker 1: Pie was not well regarded for his verse. He was
Speaker 1: probably named poet laureate as a reward for supporting or
Speaker 1: doing some kind of favors for somebody in Parliament. Some
Speaker 1: sources point to William Pitt the Younger, who eventually became
Speaker 1: Prime Minister. A lot of Pie's contemporaries made fun of
Speaker 1: him and made fun of his poetry, especially his poems
Speaker 1: commemorating the King's birthday, which apparently were particularly horrible, at
Speaker 1: least based on what I read second hand, having also
Speaker 1: not found the exact poems they're talking about again. Allegedly,
Speaker 1: one of these birthday poems was so bad that Stevens
Speaker 1: responded with and when the pie was opened, the birds
Speaker 1: began to sing? Was not that a dainty dish to
Speaker 1: set before the King? Pie in this instance was spelled Pye,
Speaker 1: like Pie's name, and Stevens was supposedly inspired by a
Speaker 1: line Pie had written that referenced a feathered choir. This
Speaker 1: story shows up in a lot of sources, especially in
Speaker 1: works that were printed in the nineteenth and early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: but it's not clear where it came from, also drawing
Speaker 1: some questions around this. The first written appearance of sing
Speaker 1: a song a sixpence is in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Songbook,
Speaker 1: published in seventeen forty four, forty six years before Pie
Speaker 1: was named Poet laureate. In that version, it is a
Speaker 1: bag of rye rather than a pocket.
Speaker 2: Naughty boys are who.
Speaker 1: Was baked into the pie rather than blackbirds. It is
Speaker 1: definitely possible that Stevens kind of recited a bit of
Speaker 1: a nursery rhyme that he already knew to make fun
Speaker 1: of Henry James Pie. Though there are several other proposed
Speaker 1: explanations for this rhyme, but none of them really seem
Speaker 1: to have any backup, Like maybe this is a reference
Speaker 1: to King Henry the Eighth and the dissolution of the
Speaker 1: monasteries and those four and twenty blackbirds are really choirs
Speaker 1: of monks singing and baking pies to try to earn
Speaker 1: the king's favor. Or maybe in those later lines of
Speaker 1: the second verse, the queen is supposed to be Henry's
Speaker 1: first wife, Catherine of Aragon, who he divorced, and the
Speaker 1: maid is his second wife and Boleyn who was beheaded,
Speaker 1: and that the beheading is what's being referenced when the
Speaker 1: blackbird snaps off the maid's nose. Or maybe the blackbirds
Speaker 1: are a reference to twenty four hours in a day,
Speaker 1: and the King and Queen are the sun and the moon. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it all seems kind of random. I feel like this
Speaker 1: is a literature class where people are like any interpretation
Speaker 1: is valid as.
Speaker 2: Long as you can back it up with the text.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety nine, the website snopes dot com published
Speaker 1: an explanation involving the pirate Blackbeard using this song to
Speaker 1: recruit new pirates for his crew. The sixpence and the
Speaker 1: rye were the money and whiskey that these pirates would
Speaker 1: be paid. The blackbirds in the pie alluded to how
Speaker 1: pirates would lure the crews of other ships into a
Speaker 1: false sense of security by pretending to be in distress.
Speaker 1: This explanation went on from there, explaining each line in
Speaker 1: the poem as part of a code for recruiting pirates.
Speaker 1: But this was from a section of the website called
Speaker 1: the Repository of Lost Legends or troll. They were supposed
Speaker 1: to be so obviously made up that no one would
Speaker 1: mistake them for real urban legends. In other words, snopes
Speaker 1: dot Com was trolling people, But really some of the
Speaker 1: articles in this section of the website are more obviously
Speaker 1: made up than others. Like an article about how mister
Speaker 1: Ed was really a zebra not a horse, accompanied by
Speaker 1: pictures of mister Ed, who was clearly a horse, is
Speaker 1: a lot easier to spot as fake than a made
Speaker 1: up interpretation of a nursery rhyme that seems pretty similar
Speaker 1: to the many, many other widely repeated nursery rhyme interpretations
Speaker 1: floating around in the world that are at best barely
Speaker 1: connected to reality. Some people did wind up falling for
Speaker 1: this Blackbeard fantasy, including the TLCTV show Mostly True Stories
Speaker 1: Urban Legends Revealed, which aired in two thousand and three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently later on they didn't exactly error retraction, but they
Speaker 1: in a different episode they said the opposite. One possible
Speaker 1: inspiration for this poem is something we have talked about
Speaker 1: on the show before. Last year, we did an episode
Speaker 1: on the history of pie, and in it we talked
Speaker 1: about a fifteen ninety eight Italian cookbook titled Eppelario, which
Speaker 1: included a recipe for making a pie and then filling
Speaker 1: it with live birds, which would then fly out when
Speaker 1: the pie was cut open. The Opies actually referenced this recipe,
Speaker 1: as well as later cookbooks that referred back to it.
Speaker 1: They reference that in their Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes.
Speaker 1: We are going to have more mother Goose fun, but
Speaker 1: first we're gonna pause for a sponsor break. Our next
Speaker 1: rhyme is newer than some of the others that we
Speaker 1: have been talking about over this kind of mini series.
Speaker 1: Here we go around the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush,
Speaker 1: the mulberry bush. Here we go around the mulberry bush
Speaker 1: on a cold and frosty morning. This is a song.
Speaker 1: I won't sing it because I'm bad at that. There
Speaker 1: are lots of additional verses, including this is the way
Speaker 1: we wash our face, this is the way we colmb
Speaker 1: our hair, this is the way we brush our teeth,
Speaker 1: and this is the way we put on clothes. This
Speaker 1: nineteenth century rhyme is usually sung to an older tune,
Speaker 1: one that was first documented in the middle of the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century as Nancy Dawson. This melody is also used
Speaker 1: for another song with some similarities to here we Go
Speaker 1: round the mulberry Bush, which is called nuts in May.
Speaker 1: That one goes here we come gathering nuts in May,
Speaker 1: Nuts in May, nuts in May. Here we come gathering
Speaker 1: nuts in May on a cold and frosty morning. The
Speaker 1: Opie speculated that the popularity of here we Go round
Speaker 1: the Mulberry Bush is at least partially due to nuts
Speaker 1: in May already being a well known song when Mulberry
Speaker 1: Bush was written. In their book The Singing Game, Peter
Speaker 1: and Aana Opie mention the use of this song in
Speaker 1: Glasgow infant schools in eighteen thirty four as a way
Speaker 1: to teach pupils about hygiene and but with the verses
Speaker 1: ending to come to school in the morning rather than
Speaker 1: on a cold and frosty morning. And aside from the
Speaker 1: first verse about the mulberry bush, this really does seem
Speaker 1: like the kind of didactic song that somebody might make
Speaker 1: up to teach young children about things like cleanliness. It
Speaker 1: really has some parallels to the kinds of songs that
Speaker 1: we talked about in our episode on the history of
Speaker 1: Happy Birthday to You, which we ran as a Saturday
Speaker 1: classic not long ago. Many nineteenth century versions of this
Speaker 1: song start with a verse about going around some kind
Speaker 1: of plants, but they aren't consistent about what kind of
Speaker 1: plant they reference. The opies point out that Thomas Hardy,
Speaker 1: born in Dorset, England, knew this song as being around
Speaker 1: a gooseberry bush, while T. S. Eliot, who grew up
Speaker 1: in Saint Louis, Missouri, knew it as a prickly pair.
Speaker 1: In James Orchard Halliwell Phillips's popular Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales,
Speaker 1: a sequel to the Nursery Rhymes of England, which was
Speaker 1: published in eighteen forty.
Speaker 2: Nine, it is bramble bush.
Speaker 1: It's not clear exactly where the mulberry bush came from
Speaker 1: or how that one seems to have become the most common,
Speaker 1: almost standard verse. Mulberries grow on trees and not on bushes,
Speaker 1: And of course trees and bushes these are both constructed
Speaker 1: categories that we have made up to understand the world.
Speaker 1: But in general trees have a central trunk, while shrubs
Speaker 1: tend to be smaller and have multiple woody stems. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, Robert Stephen Duncan, who had been governor
Speaker 1: of hm Wakefield Prison, self published a book called Here
Speaker 1: we Go Round the Mulberry Bush, House of Correction, fifteen
Speaker 1: ninety five HMP Wakefield, nineteen ninety five. And in this
Speaker 1: book he claimed that this nursery rhyme was a reference
Speaker 1: to women prisoners and their children walking around a mulberry
Speaker 1: tree in the prison's exercise yard in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and there was a mulberry tree there. It was removed
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen after dying due to a beatle infestation
Speaker 1: and other issues two years before. A replacement has since
Speaker 1: been propagated from cuttings from the original tree. It's not clear, though,
Speaker 1: what evidence there is to connect this mulberry tree to
Speaker 1: the children's song, other than that both the tree and.
Speaker 2: The song exist.
Speaker 1: Since this is a self published book that came out
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four in the UK, we were not
Speaker 1: able to get a copy of it to see what
Speaker 1: specifically Duncan said about it, or what kind of documentation
Speaker 1: there might be to support this idea. But sometimes people
Speaker 1: point out the incongruity of a children's song possibly being
Speaker 1: connected not only to a prison, but to one that
Speaker 1: has now more recently become a high security prison in
Speaker 1: more recent years than this song was originally written Wakefield
Speaker 1: Prison has been nicknamed the Monster Mansion because of the
Speaker 1: notoriety of some of the people incarcerated there and the
Speaker 1: sometimes gruesome and horrifying crimes that some of them have
Speaker 1: been convicted of committing. But there are still other proposed explanations.
Speaker 1: One is that it's a veiled reference to early efforts
Speaker 1: to start a silk industry in Britain, because silkworms eat
Speaker 1: mulberry leaves, and those first efforts didn't go so well,
Speaker 1: which is why the morning was cold and frosty. There's
Speaker 1: also a bit about going around the mulberry bush in
Speaker 1: some versions of Pop Goes the Weasel, but that seems
Speaker 1: to be a very recent addition to a song that
Speaker 1: goes all the way back to the sixteen hundreds. Moving
Speaker 1: on to our next rhyme, Hickory dickory dock The mouse
Speaker 1: ran up the clock, the clock struck one, the mouse
Speaker 1: ran down Hickory dickery doc. This is yet another rhyme
Speaker 1: that appears in the seventeen forty four Tommy Thumb's Pretty
Speaker 1: Song Book, but with slightly different spellings. Hickory is hick
Speaker 1: e r e and Dickery is d ic k e er.
Speaker 1: Some versions of this rhyme say down he run instead
Speaker 1: of the mouse ran down, so that run rhymes with one.
Speaker 1: Others say down he ran, which feels more grammatically correct,
Speaker 1: but doesn't rhyme as well. Grammar another thing we made
Speaker 1: up to make sense of the world.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: The opies described this as a counting song with hickory
Speaker 1: dickory doc possibly referencing the counting systems used by shepherds
Speaker 1: in parts of northern England. These systems grew out of
Speaker 1: Celtic languages like Kumbrick and were widely used in some
Speaker 1: areas up through the nineteenth century in parts of Derbyshire,
Speaker 1: Cumberland and Westmoreland. Eight nine and ten were Hovra, Doverra
Speaker 1: and dick. Some of the purported explanations for this one
Speaker 1: seem like just another instance of two things existing without
Speaker 1: necessarily being connected to one another, beyond the similarities that
Speaker 1: people spotted between them later on. One is the idea that
Speaker 1: this poem is a reference to Richard Cromwell, who was
Speaker 1: Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland
Speaker 1: for less than a year after the death of his
Speaker 1: father Oliver Cromwell in sixteen fifty eight. Richard Cromwell wasn't
Speaker 1: effective in this role at all. People described him as
Speaker 1: mousey and timid, and he was given nicknames like tumble
Speaker 1: Down Dick. Another thing that definitely exists is the astronomical
Speaker 1: clock at Exeter Cathedral in Devon, and this clock is fascinating.
Speaker 1: It probably dates back to the fifteenth century, but its
Speaker 1: inner workings are a replacement installed at the end of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. This clock shows the hour of the day,
Speaker 1: the day of the lunar month, and the phase of
Speaker 1: the moon, and the door that allows access to the
Speaker 1: interior workings of the clock has a little hole for
Speaker 1: a cat cut through the bottom. This was allegedly made
Speaker 1: specifically because mice we're running up and down the clock's
Speaker 1: mechanism and affecting its accuracy, so that door is so
Speaker 1: cats could get in there and stop that problem.
Speaker 2: This has led to.
Speaker 1: Some people suggesting that this specific clock is the inspiration
Speaker 1: for Hickory Dickory doc As a cat person, I know
Speaker 1: Tracy has some questions like, couldn't a cat do even
Speaker 1: more damage to the mechanisms if they pounce on a
Speaker 1: mouse that's running around in there? Or perhaps just batting machinery.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I mean, I can see what people
Speaker 1: are saying, but it also seems like a cat could
Speaker 1: cause definite problems. Yeah, I mean, you have to have
Speaker 1: a lot of trust that your cat is a pretty
Speaker 1: focused mouser with strategy that does not involve destroying other things.
Speaker 2: Which seems like a big ask.
Speaker 1: Yes. So Catherine Els Thomas takes a totally different approach
Speaker 1: to this in her book The Real Personages of Mother Goose.
Speaker 1: Thomas's work has been a major source in a lot
Speaker 1: of the interpretations that we have talked about in earlier
Speaker 1: installments of this series. She refers back to an essay
Speaker 1: on the archaeology of Popular English phrases and nursery rhymes
Speaker 1: by botanist John Bellenden Kerr, which came out in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty four. He argued that a lot of English language
Speaker 1: rhymes that seemed nonsensical were really written in Anglo Saxon,
Speaker 1: which probably is what we would call Old English, and
Speaker 1: that Anglo Saxon was, according to him, the same as
Speaker 1: Low Saxon. So Kerr claimed that in this Low Saxon
Speaker 1: Dowkin meant to give it once, to give without delay.
Speaker 1: Maw spelled maegh meant stomach, clock spelled klocke meant cloak
Speaker 1: or gown, Ran meant lank or wanting food, and strak
Speaker 1: meant immediately. So this was about someone in a cloak
Speaker 1: or a gown demanding to be given food immediately. In
Speaker 1: other words, this was a criticism of Catholic clergy demanding
Speaker 1: provisions from peasants, while also lampooning the peasants who did
Speaker 1: as the clergy asked. A lot of Kurz explanations of
Speaker 1: the purported Low Saxon origins of idioms and nursery rhymes
Speaker 1: kind of boiled down to anti Catholicism in some way.
Speaker 1: This seems like the longest walk interpretation to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I tried to figure out there are languages and dialects
Speaker 1: today that are sometimes called Lo Saxon, and I was
Speaker 1: like trying to figure out is this the same as
Speaker 1: what or is this something different? Like I really was
Speaker 1: not able to confirm whether any of these words he
Speaker 1: was talking about aligned with reality at all, right, and
Speaker 1: just the whole idea that these seemingly nonsensical English language
Speaker 1: nursery rhymes are really totally different words in a different
Speaker 1: language I'd found that both fascinating and baffling. So we're
Speaker 1: just going to take a quick sponsor break and ruminate
Speaker 1: on that for a little bit and then get to
Speaker 1: our last two rhymes. Okay, Georgie Porgie putting him pie
Speaker 1: kiss the girls and made them cry when the boys
Speaker 1: came out to play, Georgie Porgy ran away. This rhyme
Speaker 1: was first written down in the eighteen forties, although initially
Speaker 1: it was not that the boys came out to play
Speaker 1: and Georgie Porgie ran away. Georgie Porgie ran away when
Speaker 1: the girls came out to play. In the eighteen fifties,
Speaker 1: James Orchard Halliwell Phillips, who we referenced earlier, published a
Speaker 1: variant on this, which was roly Poly Pumpkin Pie kissed
Speaker 1: the girls and made them cry. When the girls began
Speaker 1: to cry, roly Poly runs away. The Georgie in this
Speaker 1: poem is often interpreted as George Villiers, the first Duke
Speaker 1: of Buckingham, favorite of King James the First, and as
Speaker 1: referencing his affairs with the King and also with women
Speaker 1: at the court. So after breaking some lady's hert, George
Speaker 1: would run back to the King for his protection. Another
Speaker 1: interpretation is that Georgie is King George the Fourth before
Speaker 1: his ascension to the throne while he was serving as
Speaker 1: Prince Regent. In this interpretation, the poem is making fun
Speaker 1: of him for his weight and is also referencing his
Speaker 1: relationships with two different women. One is Maria Ann fitz Herbert,
Speaker 1: who he wanted to marry so badly even though she
Speaker 1: was Catholic, but under the Active Settlement of seventeen oh one,
Speaker 1: only Protestants could take the throne and anyone who married
Speaker 1: a Catholic was barred from taking the throne as well.
Speaker 1: That did not stop George, though he married Maria Ann
Speaker 1: fitz Herbert in secret in seventeen eighty five. That marriage
Speaker 1: was not a legal one, though, and George got married
Speaker 1: again in seventeen ninety five as part of an agreement
Speaker 1: with Parliament to pay off his debts. This wife was
Speaker 1: Catherine of Brunswick, who he absolutely hated, to the point
Speaker 1: that he did not allow her to attend his coronation
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty one.
Speaker 2: What a gem Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, the opies say
Speaker 1: of all this quote, as with other of the better
Speaker 1: known rhymes. Numerous guesses have been hazarded that n historical
Speaker 1: character is portrayed as usual, no evidence is vouchsafed. And lastly,
Speaker 1: little miss Muffett sat on a toughet eating her curds,
Speaker 1: and whey, there came a big spider who sat down
Speaker 1: beside her and frightened Miss Muffett.
Speaker 2: Away.
Speaker 1: Tracy learned this as along came a spider, so did I.
Speaker 1: This first appeared in print in eighteen oh five in
Speaker 1: Songs for the Nursery, as with Mary Mary. Quite contrary
Speaker 1: which we talked about on a previous installment. Some people
Speaker 1: interpret this as being about Mary, Queen of Scott's and
Speaker 1: in this case the spider is Protestant reformer John Knox.
Speaker 1: John Knox was the author of a tract titled the
Speaker 1: First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,
Speaker 1: which attacked three Catholic queens, Mary the First of England,
Speaker 1: Mary of Geese, Queen Dowager and Regent of Scotland, and
Speaker 1: Mary Queen of Scotts. Knox was also a major figure
Speaker 1: in the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. Catherine L. Was Thomas
Speaker 1: describes it this way, quote denouncing the frivolous little miss
Speaker 1: Muffett from the pulpit of Saint Giles, until the ecclesiastical
Speaker 1: atmosphere was blue and sulfurous. The Big Spider, with angry
Speaker 1: brow and darkling means, strode down the canongate, turning sharply
Speaker 1: to the right. He quickened his pace to enter Holyrood, and,
Speaker 1: sitting beside her, demanded her recantation, all in vain. Although
Speaker 1: he could frighten little Miss Muffett away from her toughet,
Speaker 1: as he did eventually, never by expostulation, threat or entreaty
Speaker 1: could the Big Spider induce the French bread Scotch beauty
Speaker 1: to recant. Mary was ultimately forced to abdicate and spent
Speaker 1: the last nineteen years of her life as a prisoner
Speaker 1: before being executed in fifteen eighty seven. Is there conclusive
Speaker 1: evidence that this poem is about that now and others
Speaker 1: offer a totally different interpretation that this is about English
Speaker 1: naturalist and physician doctor Thomas Muffett, who wrote a lot
Speaker 1: about insects and arachnids, including making an illustrated manual called
Speaker 1: Theater of Insects. Supposedly, this poem is a reference to
Speaker 1: one of his stepchildren, or children, possibly a daughter or
Speaker 1: stepdaughter named patients specifically. Some accounts go for so far
Speaker 1: as to say that Muffett was tormenting his children or
Speaker 1: stepchildren by frightening them with spiders, or even doing experiments
Speaker 1: on them with spider venom.
Speaker 2: Those poor spiders.
Speaker 1: Although Muffett was a real person, he died in sixteen
Speaker 1: oh four, two hundred years before this poem first appeared
Speaker 1: in print. Of course, Mary Queen of Scott's lived even
Speaker 1: longer ago than that, but she was also a much
Speaker 1: better known figure than doctor Thomas Muffett.
Speaker 2: There's also some back.
Speaker 1: And forth about what is meant by a toughet in
Speaker 1: this poem. Tough It can mean a hillock or a mound,
Speaker 1: but it can also mean a footstool. In fact, the
Speaker 1: Oxford English Dictionary cites little Miss Muffett as the first
Speaker 1: written use of tofit meaning in to quote from there
Speaker 1: perhaps hasseock or footstool, But then the OED has this
Speaker 1: additional note quote doubtful, perhaps due to misunderstanding of the
Speaker 1: nursery rhyme. The opies note how similar little Miss Muffett
Speaker 1: is to a lot of other rhymes, including Little Jack Horner,
Speaker 1: which we discussed in our first Mother Goose episode. The
Speaker 1: poems all involve someone little Miss Muffy, Jack Horner, Miss Mopsey,
Speaker 1: pull Parrot, Tommy Tackett. The subjects of all these poems
Speaker 1: are all sitting and waiting for something when something else happens.
Speaker 1: Some of these go back to the early eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: so it's possible that there are variations on a little
Speaker 1: poetic formula. So that's our six impossible Mother Goose episodes
Speaker 1: for this time around. I hope folks have enjoyed them.
Speaker 1: I have a little listener mail that is also about
Speaker 1: the meanings of things. Liz sent this, and I love
Speaker 1: the subject of the subject line of the email, which
Speaker 1: is Scott Joplin and the Cakewalk unlocking a core memory.
Speaker 1: So Liz wrote, Hello, Holly and Tracy. I love the
Speaker 1: show and I've been listening for the past few years.
Speaker 1: You're always on my way to Slash from work and
Speaker 1: when doing stuff around the house. I was just listening
Speaker 1: to the Scott Joplin episode on my way to the
Speaker 1: store and it unlocked a core memory that was apparently
Speaker 1: deeply and unknowingly problematic. I'm originally from Texas, no where
Speaker 1: near Texarcana, but If you know anything about Texas, you
Speaker 1: know that Texans are just ridiculously proud of being Texans.
Speaker 1: This episode unlocked a series of core memories from elementary
Speaker 1: school in Austin. I remember learning about Scott Joplin and
Speaker 1: music class. As soon as I saw the title of
Speaker 1: the episode, I remembered hearing the maple leaf rag and
Speaker 1: also having to learn a weird dance number. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I assumed the teacher focused on him because he was
Speaker 1: the father of ragtime and also likely a native Texan
Speaker 1: and an educational two for if you Will. Then Holly
Speaker 1: mentioned a cakewalk, and I had yet another memory unlocked.
Speaker 1: While at this school, the library hosted a yearly cakewalk.
Speaker 1: It was organized like musical chairs. Moms donated a cake,
Speaker 1: we all walked in a circle around some chairs to music,
Speaker 1: and then stopped. When the music stopped, the winner got
Speaker 1: to take home a cake of their choice. So there
Speaker 1: I was in my car driving to the store and
Speaker 1: heard Holly mention the cakewalk and that, uh, it needed
Speaker 1: its own explanation, And I laughed and thought, what explanation?
Speaker 1: I did one every year in elementary school. But then
Speaker 1: you explained its origins and let me tell you, I screamed.
Speaker 1: So yes, cakewalks did continue for some time after Scott
Speaker 1: Joplin's time, well into the nineteen nineties. I don't think
Speaker 1: I thought about the yearly cakewalk in decades, But oh my,
Speaker 1: what a wild flashback this episode brought on. It made
Speaker 1: me wonder what other seemingly benign activities I did as
Speaker 1: a child that have deep roots in racist practices. It's
Speaker 1: wild to think about it, and I think it highlights
Speaker 1: why pods like yours are so important. And then there
Speaker 1: are some pet pictures. There is a cat, a cat
Speaker 1: named Etta. I accidentally printed the pictures, except I printed
Speaker 1: them so big. I'm gonna I'm gonna make sure that
Speaker 1: Holli can see the glory of what I printed by it.
Speaker 1: I think you should frame each of these pages and
Speaker 1: make a giant art installation of a cat that is
Speaker 1: six feet tall. Yeah, it's this would be really really
Speaker 1: an armis if I had printed the whole cat. But
Speaker 1: I just have the left eye and ear in what
Speaker 1: I accidentally printed because I'm just perpetually forgetting to turn
Speaker 1: off the printing of attachments when I print episodes. Then
Speaker 1: that makes me feel like an old person who doesn't
Speaker 1: know how to do email.
Speaker 2: Edna is very cute.
Speaker 1: By the way, Yes, the other two pictures that I
Speaker 1: actually printed out have no visible animal because of my
Speaker 1: printer settings. But anyway, there's a final note about being
Speaker 1: scared to look up the dance that they learned along
Speaker 1: with maple leaf frag to find out if it also
Speaker 1: has some connotations. Liz, first, thank you for sending this note.
Speaker 1: I am sorry I printed it in such a way
Speaker 1: that I cannot just tell everybody what your pets look like.
Speaker 1: You are not the only person now who has had
Speaker 1: this experience. I grew up in North Carolina and went
Speaker 1: to a public school in a somewhat rural to suburban
Speaker 1: kind of area, and our annual I think it was
Speaker 1: the Halloween carnival. It was the same one that we
Speaker 1: talked about in our Crash at Crush episode where they
Speaker 1: would buy like a beat up used car and you
Speaker 1: could pay a dollar to take a swing at it
Speaker 1: with a baseball bat. There was also a cake walk
Speaker 1: every year, and it was very like musical chairs, except
Speaker 1: if I'm remembering it correctly, it was laid out with
Speaker 1: like tape on the floor so that you were walking
Speaker 1: and then something like that. That is my memory of
Speaker 1: cakewalks as well. Yeah, so I don't think it was
Speaker 1: like musical chairs where they take a chair away. I
Speaker 1: think everybody came to a stop and then a number
Speaker 1: was the winning number, and that was who got to
Speaker 1: go get a cake. We didn't participate in this in
Speaker 1: my family, not because we had any aware of the
Speaker 1: history of the cakewalk.
Speaker 2: We did not.
Speaker 1: It was just because it was not what my mom
Speaker 1: wanted to spend money on. She was like, we can
Speaker 1: make a cake at home. I was super ready for
Speaker 1: your mom's issue to be that she did not know
Speaker 1: the nutritional contents of the cake.
Speaker 2: That might have been that.
Speaker 1: She might have assumed that none of the other moms,
Speaker 1: because it would have been mostly other moms doing the baking,
Speaker 1: maybe not everybody, but might have assumed they were not
Speaker 1: good bakers.
Speaker 2: Might have there might have.
Speaker 1: Been like a random element to which cake you got.
Speaker 1: She didn't want to wind up with a cake that
Speaker 1: we would not like. I don't remember the exact tales
Speaker 1: I was five, but yes, yes, lots of places still
Speaker 1: as of them, which that would have been more like
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eighty one doing the cakewalk. So yeah, other
Speaker 1: seemingly innocuous things that people may have done in elementary
Speaker 1: school that I have had on my list to do
Speaker 1: an episode about for a long time. May I get
Speaker 1: to you at some point. It maybe not square dancing.
Speaker 1: Apparently there is a whole history of square dancing where
Speaker 1: people were encouraged to do it at school for racist reasons. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: if you would like to write to us about this
Speaker 1: or any other podcasts for a history podcast at iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: dot com. We're all over social media. Missed in History?
Speaker 1: That's why I'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, on Instagram,
Speaker 1: and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio
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