Origins: Star Light, Star Bright

Geppetto wishes on a star in Disney's Pinocchio

Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight.
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have the wish I wish tonight.

With its gently cantering rhythm and alliteration, ‘Star Light, Star Bright, commemorates and propagates the ancient tradition of wishing to the stars. The tradition takes many forms, variously invoking the power of the first star; nine stars; a shooting star. The most enduring myth is that shooting stars are caused by the Roman gods peering over the clouds into the mortal realm, and they will hear you (and perhaps heed you) when you speak your wish aloud.

Theshootingstar notes the same tradition in other cultures:

Even contemporary culture is abound with superstitions related to shooting stars. In Chile, for instance, when you spot a shooting star, you must pick up a stone in the same moment, while making a wish. (Quick thinking, I must say.) If you’re in the Philippines, you must tie a knot in your handkerchief instead. (Too bad if you don’t carry one around.)

The tradition is recalled in The Ladies Treasury for 1882: a household magazine:

I am trying to find a star,” replied the child, artlessly, ” so that I may wish. Jenny Brooks taught me how.

and here it is collected orally in volume four of Current Superstitions, 1896:

To wish on a star, when you see the first star come out, say : Star light, star bright, First star I see to-night, I wish I may, I wish I might Have the wish I wish to-night. Wish what you please and it will come true[.]

The rhyme does not appear in Opie, so it’s difficult for me to give you a certain first publication date for the rhyme, but the first reference that I can find is in Swallows on the wing o’er garden springs of delight: a medly of prose and verse (Will de Grasse, 1866) where it is rendered thus:

Star light,
star bright,
The first star I have seen to-night;
I wish I may,
I wish I might,
Have the wish I have wished to-night.

‘Star Light, Star Bright’ is an elusive rhyme of the type that might turn out to be a spy. References to the rhyme and the superstition abound but none can provide a definite point of origin; those that do suggest theories rarely cite reliable sources. I think this one may remain a mystery.

The seven blog posts that never happened

Happy blogiversary to me!

TreasuryIslands is one year old today. I haven’t got any proper branding yet (due to being not at all arty), the about me page still says ‘coming soon’ and no one can remember if TreasuryIslands has got a space in it (it hasn’t) but nevertheless I’ve managed to post 105 articles, all but two of which I’ve written myself. I have conformed entirely to stereotype by ineffectually ranting about such things as feminism, gender representations, feminism, queer issues, fat acceptance, feminism and child reading habits all padded out by brief witterings about nursery rhymes, some reviews of new publications and re-assessments of classic texts.

Over my first year of blogging I’ve been called a communist and a feminazi (both of which were meant as insults and neither of which I consider insulting), I’ve been invited on to national television (sorry, wrong country) and gained one of two Actual Proper Fans who are not my parents. It’s been a good year. Every now and then, though, a post gets started which never sees the light of day. In celebration of the first anniversary of TreasuryIslands, I present to you my failures.

[Review, stage] Swallows and Amazons

promotional poster

Reviewed performance: Saturday matinée, 4th Feb. 2012. Festival Theatre, Edinburgh. Swallows and Amazons tours nationally until My 2012.

One of the joys of attending theatre for children as an (admittedly rather short) adult is that one generally has a clear view of the action. So it was that on a chilly, windy day in Dùn Èideann, I found myself warm  and with an uninterrupted view of the stage as National Theatre’s touring production of Swallows and Amazons began.

I had been apprehensive – I just wasn’t sure that Swallows and Amazons would work as a musical – but, the score is perfectly acceptable, if nothing particularly special. Provided by Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy (no, really) the songs are not numbers, they’re not (with one exception) set pieces, and as such the show would do perfectly well without them. Only John’s solo adds to the narrative; from it we glean a deeper understanding of the boy’s motives, a move which makes the character infinitely more likeable. Even this song is instantly forgettable, though – you won’t be humming the tunes as you leave the auditorium.

Adapted by Helen Edmundson and directed by Tom Morris, Swallows and Amazons sticks fairly closely to Arthur Ramsome’s 1930 classic (with one glaring omission to which I will attend later). Ransome’s child characters, aged between 7-13, are portrayed ably by actors aged 22-38. Roger, aged seven, sports knee-pads and a five o’clock shadow, but such incongruencies can be overlooked when the talent on stage so completely inhabit their characters. Titty is mischievous and bouncing, Susan is the Angel in the House, John is Captain Sensible. But Roger, oh Roger. Roger is an utter joy to behold. He is seven, short-trousered and sharp. So utterly consumed by his seven-ness that it seems not at all odd to see a grown man throw himself face down on the floor in childish despair. There’s no high dramatics, though. Despite the pantomimic elements the show takes on part way through the second act, there’s no cartoonishness, no overwrought theatrics. Instead, we are treated to myriad subtleties, performances that have been, one feels, heavily workshopped but that shine.

Origins: Mary, Mary

Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.

Tom Thumb’s Pretty Song Book (c. 1744) has the first printed version of ‘Mary, Mary’, as follows:

Mistress Mary, Quite contrary,
How does your Garden grow?
With Silver bells,
And Cockle Shells,
And so my Garden grows.

The final line of the verse went through a a number of permutations in the first half-century of publication:

Nancy Cook’s Pretty Song Book for all Little and Misses and Masters, c.1780, Sing cuckolds all on row.
Gamer Gurton’s Garland, 1784, Cowslips all arow.
Tom Thumb’s Song Book, 1788, With Lady bells all in a row.
Tom Tit’s Song Book for all Little Masters and Misses, c.1790, With Lady bells all in a row.
Infant Institutes, 1797, And cuckolds all in a row.

There are a number of competing theories as to the identity of contrary Mary.

Our Lady

According to Opie, Catholics view the rhyme as a lament for the persecution of the Catholic church and Protestants as a lament for the reinstatement of the Catholic church. This belief is predicated on the interpretation of the verse as a pen portrait of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where the ‘silver bells’ represent sanctus bells, the cockleshells Pilgrim badges and the ‘pretty maids’ nuns.

Bloody Mary

Mary Tudor (Mary I, 1516-1558) was a staunch Catholic. This interpretation of the rhyme suggests that Mary’s garden is her figurative personal graveyard, ever growing as it was filled with the bodies of Protestant dead.  The rhyme appears to be a celebration of Mary’s torturous ways: the sliver bells are said to represent thumbscrews; the cockleshells a (male) genital torture device which crushed the penis, and the maids a colloquial abbreviation of referring to either the Iron Maiden or Scottish Maiden, devices of torture and beheading respectively.

Mary, Queen of Scots.

In the case of Mary Stewart (Mary, Queen of Scots, 1542 – 1587) the pretty maids are said to refer to the Four Marys, her ladies-in-waiting. In this case, the silver bells and cockleshells are said to be decorations on the womens’ dresses.

Victorian publications including the rhyme – Kate Greenway’s 1881 offering Mother Goose, Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes of England (1842) and Rusher’s Poetic Trifles (1840) – in keeping with the Victorian tradition of outward prudence, inward pervery, bowdlerizes the mention of cuckoldry in some earlier versions, referring instead to flowers.

No evidence has been found that the rhyme pre-dates the eighteenth century, which makes any links to the Queens Mary spurious at best. It’s worth mentioning, though, that a ballad called ‘Cuckolds all a row’ was registered in 1637, which may have provided the basis for the rhyme.

Origins: Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Tweedledum & Tweedledee as reimagined by Tim Burton in 2010's Alice in Wonderland

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle,
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Just then flew by a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel,
Which frightened both the heroes so
They quite forgot their quarrel.

Often attributed to Lewis Carroll, this verse was included in an Original Ditties for the Nursery, edited by John Harris, in 1805, almost 70 years before Carroll published Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.

The names Tweedledum and Tweedledee also appear in a rhyme of 1725. Smithsonianmag.com takes up the story:

Free-spirited musical entrepreneurship was more than possible in London, to which Handel moved permanently in 1710. [...] Adding zest to the London music scene were rivalries that split the audience into two broad musical camps. On one side were defenders of the more conventional Italian opera style, who idolized the composer Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747) and brought him to London. Enthusiasts of Handel’s new Italian operas cast their lot with the German-born composer. The partisanship was captured in a 1725 verse by poet John Byrom.

There is some contention over the final couplet, which may have been added by Alexander Pope or Jonathan Swift:

Some say, compar’d to Bononcini
That Mynheer Handel’s but a Ninny
Others aver, that he to Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a Candle
Strange all this Difference should be
‘Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!

Some say that John Byrom coined the words tweedledum and tweedledee. Still others say that although the version we know well does not appear in print until 90 years after this verse appeared, it is likely to have been the inspiration for Byrom’s satire. It is likely that only one of these assertions is correct, but I wouldn’t like to wager on which one.

[Review, DVD] Red Riding Hood

Red Riding Hood (2011)

Fairy tales suffer a lot. They undergo constant revision, both by design and by accident; by people purposely seeking to subvert the traditional tales (a la James Thurber), and by misrememberings and chinese whispers of oral storytelling.

Little Red Riding Hood may well be the most reinterpreted of the classic Tales of Mother Goose: Roald Dahl’s comic verse; Angela Carter’s twisted tales in The Bloody Chamber; Toby Forward’s POV swappage. There’s a plethora of retellings available on Amazon, from  board books for toddlers to long YA tomes that Freud would be proud of. In its lifetime, the story of the hooded one has been a morality tale, a metaphor for sexual awakening, a love story. It has been a thriller and a creature feature, a revenger’s tragedy and a modern satire.

Hollywood has taken the story to heart, with the character having been portrayed on-screen in at least 117 features. The The Weinstein Company‘s Hoodwinked! was released in 2005 to a lukewarm reception, and the latest take on the tale comes from Twlight director Catherine Hardwicke.

Perrault’s Le Petit Chaperon Rouge is the simplest and most well-known version of the story. In it Red is beat to Grandmother’s house by the wolf because she stops to pick wildflowers, and after running through the ‘what big arms/legs/ears/eyes/teeth you have’ schtick, is eaten up by the wolf. There’s no rescue, no redemption, and the tale ends with a moral:

Little girls, this seems to say,
Never stop upon your way.
Never trust a stranger-friend;
No one knows how it will end.
As you’re pretty, so be wise;
Wolves may lurk in every guise.
Handsome they may be, and kind,
Gay, or charming never mind!
Now, as then, ‘tis simple truth—
Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth!

Rotkäppchen (or Little Red Cap) by the Grimms differs slightly from Le Petit Chaperon Rouge. Split into two parts, the first half mirrors the Perrault text but has Red rescued by the Huntsman after she’s been eaten. Once bitten, twice shy, the Grimm’s add a second part to the story that sees Red and Grandmother foil further similar attempts to gobble them up by a second wolf.

Origins: Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater

This is probably not what he meant

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn’t keep her;
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well.

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had another and didn’t love her;
Peter learned to read and spell,
And then he loved her very well.

‘Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater’ was first anthologised in the UK in 1797 in Infant Institutes and in 1825 in North America in Mother Goose’s Quarto: or Melodies Complete. The Opie’s posit that ‘Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater’ is a variant of this verse collected in Aberdeen and its Folk in 1868,

Peter, my neeper,
Had a wife,
And he coudna’ keep her,
He pat her i’ the wa’,
And lat a’ the mice eat her.

and this one from around the same time,

Eeper Weeper, chimbly sweeper,
Had a wife but couldn’t keep her.
Had another, didn’t love her,
Up the chimbly he did shove her.

A psychoanalytical reading of the rhyme suggests that Peter’s treatment of his first wife exemplifies fear of (and desire to control) women. Lucy Rollin explains in Cradle and All: A Cultural and Analytical Study of Nursery Rhymes:

“Keep” here carries the meaning of “provide for” and suggest that Peter was a practical man who used his resources cleverly. But the image of the wife in the enclosed shell certainly implies “keep” in the more sinister modern sense (sinister even when the “shell” is an elegant suburban home).

p. 46

Peter clearly didn’t keep her that well though, as by the second stanza he seems to have remarried. In the most common version of the rhyme ‘Peter learned to read and spell, / And then he loved her very well’.

The association of marriage and learning to spell might have a strong unconscious appeal for the child just repressing  its unsatisfied curiosity about sexual matters in favour of the knowledge that adults offer instead – in this case the knowledge of the alphabet.

p. 111

In a version collected later (1918) the rhyme ends ‘Had another, didn’t love her / Causing instantaneous bother’. Rollin doesn’t mention this alternate ending, which provides a warning to learn from your mistakes, in her psychoanalytical reading, but would perhaps note the lack of companionate marriage is not unusual in nursery rhymes, where Jack Sprat is an anomaly.

More recently Dr Doug Larche has re-written the rhyme to appear in his non-racist, non-sexist, non-violent 1986 collection Father Gander’s Nursery Rhymes: The Equal Rhymes Amendment (which is also incredibly gender essentialist and heteronormative, from what I’ve read so far). His version sees Peter keep his wife:

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife and wished to keep her.
Treated her with fair respect,
She stayed with him and hugged his neck!

This version has not yet caught on.

Review: The Diabolical Mr Tiddles, Tom McLaughlin

The Diabolical Mr Tiddles; Tom McLaughlin

Published January 2012, Simon and Schuster. List price, £5.99.

Appropriate for ages 3-10.

From the cover;

Fearsome dinosaurs, whooshing jetpacks, rockstar guitars, a horse called Alan…

Just a few of the things that Harry unexpectedly finds in his bedroom. Where are they coming from

It couldn’t have anything to do with Harry’s furry-purry new pussycat Mr Tiddles… could it?

We’ve decided, as a nation of cat lovers, that when puss arrives through the catflap with a gob full of recently deceased small mammal, they’re bringing a gift for us. We’ve decided this without much in the way of evidence – could not mousey be abandoned on the kitchen floor simply because puss has grown tired of it? But no, we humans have summoned all our intellect and come to the most egotistical conclusion possible. It must be a gift! For us! For they luuurrrrve us!*

Origins: Higgledy-Piggledy

Cock-a-doodle-do.

Higgledy-piggledy, my black hen
She lays eggs for gentlemen,
Sometimes nine and sometimes ten,
Higgledy- piggledy, my black hen.

Also known with the following lyric:

Higgledy piggledy, my black hen
She lays eggs for gentlemen,
Sometimes nine and sometimes ten;
Gentlemen come every day
To see what my black hen has laid.

Albert Jack, whose book Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Ryhmes is accurate as often as it is not, claims the rhyme is the narration of a brothel keeper or procuress, advertising the services of her girls.  Jack  notes the similarity to a more overtly lascivious rhyme:

Little Blue Betty lived in a den,
She sold good ale to gentlemen;
Gentlemen came every day,
And little Blue Betty hopped away.
She hopped upstairs to make her bed,
And she tumbled down and broke her head.

Which first appeared in Gamer Gurton’s Garland in 1810, and concerns a girl working ‘under the sign of The Golden Can’. Opie lists a number of similar examples which refer to women  providing allegorical services to “gentlemen”, so a precident is set. ‘Higgledy-Piggledy’ is the only rhyme of the set that refers to an aimal.

Latterly Ogden Nash has used the rhyme as the basis for a poem, as has Dorothy Parker, who gave her version a decidedly more political bent;

At a party where she was seated with Somerset Maugham, the author asked if she would write a poem for him. “I will if you like,” Miss Parker said, and scribbled out:

Higgledy Piggledy, my white hen;
She lays eggs for gentlemen.

“Yes, I’ve always liked those lines,” Mr. Maugham commented.

Miss Parker bestowed a cool smile and without an instant’s hesitation added:

You cannot persuade her with a gun or lariat;
To come across for the proletariat.

from Parker’s obituary in the New York Times, 1967

There are great numbers of permutations of ‘Higgledy-Piggledy’ – rhymes of a similar metre that reference trade and which begin  an assonant nonsense phrase.  They appear from the late eighteenth century onwards – even Beatrix Potter got in on the act. The version I began with seems to be the most popular, but competition is strong.

Origins: I Love Little Pussy

Startled cat is startled

I love little pussy,
Her coat is so warm,
And if I don’t hurt her,
She’ll do me no harm.

So I’ll not pull her tail,
Nor drive her away,
But pussy and I,
Very gently will play.

I’ll sit by the fire
And give her some food,
And Pussy will love me
Because I am good.

A rhyme that’s fallen out of favour in recent years (because pornographic slang they’ve never heard and certainly don’t associate with anything untoward apparently corrupts our children), I Love Little Pussy is a simple didactic poem for youngsters reminding them to be kind to animals. First published with an additional three stanzas in Melvin Lord and John C. Holbrook’s A Child’s song book, for the use of schools and families : being a selection of favourite airs, with hymns and moral songs, suitable for infant instruction in 1830, a copy of which is available online. The book is described by its publishers as,

[An] attempt to combine pure religious and moral sentiment with innocent hilarity [...] dedicated to those benevolent ladies who devote their time and talents to the cause of infant education, with the hope that it shall be in some degree auxiliary to their meritorious enterprize.

The poem appeared anonymously, but has been attributed to Jane Taylor, famous for Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. A Child’s Song Book was published five years after Taylor’s death, which does not rule out her authorship, but does suggest more reasearch should be done.

Recently the poem has been bowdlerised to “I Love Little Kitty” by some. Needless to say, I think this is ridiculous.