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Pop Goes the Weasel, like all of my books revealing the fascinating history behind much of our popular culture, presented me with the usual problem of content and how to weave seventy thousand words around a handful of well-known nursery rhymes without losing either the reader's (or my own) interest. It is a useful rule of thumb (see Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep to find out why we use that expression) for any writer, aspiring or otherwise, that if the words you have don't interest yourself when you have a read through at the end of the day, then it is fair to assume it won't interest anybody else either. So work on it some more or delete it. This is the reason it takes a writer all day to produce what can be read in ten minutes (one thousand words or 3 pages). Writing a book in real time, as Truman Capote once said, is not writing, it's typing, and that is worth remembering. But tomorrow I will reveal the process of writing and releasing a full length book in more detail. For now, it is back to Pop Goes the Weasel.
After discovering the wonderful real story of Humpty Dumpty I immediately started to outline an idea for a full book of history, hanging the stories on something we all immediately recognize: nursery rhymes. I felt that if I could find enough content then it would make a great book, but without dragging the text out for the sake of the word count. I felt that more than a thousand words on each subject would start to bore me, so what must that be like for you, dear reader? I wasn't going to put either of us through that so it meant I needed at least seventy rhymes. We ended up with over a hundred because some of the stories just didn't justify a thousand words so that wasn't a rule, it was only my guideline. There are no rules in book writing, apart from if it doesn't interest you yourself at the end of the day then...... well, you know the rest.
The first place I thought would be a good idea to look at was the rhymes that included an actual name. There are two reasons for this. Firstly it seemed logical because I reasoned that if there really was a Little Jack Horner, Lucy Locket or Little Miss Muffet then it should be fairly easy to trace them and find out who they were. And that would get the whole project off to a good start. In the beginning, you really do need to be flowing along because if you are struggling with the words in the first month then you are likely to give up before the end of the following one, if you get that far at all. This was a technique I learned when taking exams all those years ago. You only have a certain length of time so go through the whole thing to begin with and start on the easy ones and then go back and work on the harder parts. That way you do not run out of time and miss the easy questions at the end that could have improved your overall mark. And that is the best way to please your publisher too because you will always deliver on time. Something that I imagine annoys every book editor is a writer laboring over details well past the delivery deadline.
And the second reason for starting with what I thought would be the easy ones was that if I was wrong, and couldn't easily find an interesting story behind those characters, then how would I struggle with Baa Baa Black Sheep or Mary had a Little Lamb. If a project is not going to work you want to find out as soon as you can and not have to drop the idea halfway through. As obvious as it seems, you will need that time for something else, another idea, if you are to make delivery day on time. So imagine the pleasure at producing the following, during the first few weeks of the writing process:
Little Jack Horner
Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb
And pulled out a plum
And said, ‘What a good boy am I!'
Before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536 there were more than eight hundred religious foundations in England with over 16,000 monks and nuns. During the following five years, they were all seized by the Crown and their land and buildings were either sold off or gifted to supporters of the king. One of the last to go was the ancient Benedictine abbey of Glastonbury and the tale of its own dissolution is said to supply the origin of this rhyme.
The Abbot of Glastonbury at the time was Richard Whyting, a rich and powerful figure who had been a signatory to the First Act of Supremacy (1534) granting King Henry VIII the legal authority as head of the Church of England. This was an outright rejection of the power of Catholicism and allowed the king to divorce and marry again (see also Three Blind Mice).
Despite choosing the king over the Pope, a basic requirement for keeping one's head in sixteenth-century England, Whyting resisted the dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey for as long as possible. It wasn't just that it was one of the wealthiest in the kingdom, it was also a place of huge religious significance.
The abbey was allegedly founded by Jesus's Joseph of Arimathea - the man who donated his tomb for the burial of Christ's body after the Crucifixion - to house the Holy Grail. Joseph is said to have arrived by boat over the flooded Somerset Levels; disembarking at Glastonbury Tor, he stuck his staff into the ground, which flowered miraculously into the Holy Thorn (legend has it that the tree still bursts into blossom every year on Christmas Day). The colorful story was widely believed, Elizabeth I used it as evidence that Christianity in England pre-dated the introduction of Roman Catholicism, thus legitimizing her role as Defender of the Faith.
Whyting chose to placate, some might say bribe, the king. He sent his steward, Thomas Horner, to Hampton Court with the deeds to twelve manor houses, concealed beneath the crust of a large pie, posing as a gift. In those days, during property transactions, it was not uncommon for the deeds to be hidden or concealed in transit to ensure they would not fall into the wrong hands, as the actual holder of the deeds was deemed the rightful owner. On the way, legend has it, Thomas Horner delved into the pie and pulled out the deed for a plum piece of real estate, Mells Manor House in the village of Mells, Somerset. And that, apparently, is all he needed to do to become the new lord of that manor.
But the bribe failed and in January 1539 Henry's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, sent his royal commissioners to Glastonbury to see for themselves what was actually going on down in darkest Somerset. As a result of what they found, Whyting was sent to the Tower of London so that Cromwell could question the abbot in person, and from there he was returned to Glastonbury on 14 November 1539. The following day he was tried for treason, with Thomas Horner as one of the jurors, and found guilty within only a few hours.
That afternoon, Richard Whyting and two of his senior monks, Roger James and John Thorne, were dragged by horses to the top of Glastonbury Tor, where they were hanged, drawn and quartered. Abbot Whyting's head was then displayed above the gates of the deserted abbey as a reminder to others to obey the king without question. Meanwhile Thomas Horner was presumably busy making his removal arrangements.
Unsurprisingly, the descendants of Thomas Horner, who still live at Mells Manor, dismiss the legend as ‘pure fantasy made up by the Victorians'. Jack's honesty, it is claimed, is supported by John Leland's Itinerary (1540-46), a study of ancient buildings and monuments presented to Henry in 1549 that states: ‘Mr. Horner hath boute [bought] the lordship of the King.' An alternative account suggests that the king gifted the manor to Horner and that the original title deed, bearing the royal seal, survives in the family's possession to this day. What a great story that is!
Note: During the 1500s, the slang term for £1,000 was ‘plum', just as in modern terms a ‘score' is £20 and a ‘monkey' £500. Back in the sixteenth century, £1,000 was a seriously large sum of money, as well as being the fixed amount some politicians received for taking on certain government roles. This was considered by the average person as a vast sum of money for doing very little, and that is why these posts became known as ‘plum jobs' or ‘plum roles'. The expression ‘plum' has been used ever since to describe anything of great value that is usually gifted rather than earned. (see Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep again)
Lucy Locket
Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it;
Not a penny was there in it,
Only ribbon 'round it.
The words to this rhyme involve real people living in London during the mid 1700s and the tune was later more famously used as the melody for another song (see Yankee Doodle Dandy). The real Lucy Locket was apparently a London barmaid working at the famous Cock Inn in Fleet Street during the eighteenth century, while the song itself, far from being a simple children's rhyme, clearly challenges her virtue and suggests that she had a second job in another ‘profession' - the oldest one of all.
The story goes that one of Lucy's lovers (her pocket) had run through all his funds and consequently found himself out of favor with the young barmaid. It is said that he then took up with Kitty Fisher (d. 1767), a well-known courtesan - painted by Joshua Reynolds and encountered by Casanova, who refused to sleep with her, however, as she spoke only English whereas Casanova ‘liked to have all [his] senses, even that of hearing, gratified'. Kitty took in Lucy's cast-off lover, despite his lack of wealth, and then taunted Lucy for her meanness. Kitty's claim that she had found a ribbon 'round him was a regular insult in catfights of the day because common prostitutes were known to keep their money tied to an upper thigh with a ribbon. So one of our most famous children's rhymes is not the innocent ditty that it first appears but a sordid exchange between two ladies of easy virtue.
Tomorrow I shall reveal Little Miss Muffet, what I think of the general belief that Ring a Ring a Roses is about The Great Plague and share some personal stories from my life as a writer that you may enjoy. And yes, re-reading it still interests me so that's first box ticked. After that I, as usual, live in hope.
Albert Jack
1st October 2009
London
Albert Jack, Pop Goes the Weasel, nursey rhymes, secret meanings
