It’s raining . . .

 

It’s raining . . .

It’s raining, it’s pouring,
The old man is snoring;
He went to bed
And he banged his head.
Ane he couldn’t get up
In the morning.

(Rain, rain, go away,
Come again another day.)

This nursery rhyme is American in origin and was first published in 1912. One suggestion is that the first line is a metaphor for a liberal outpouring of alcohol.The ‘old man’ bumping his head is a consequence of inebriation. 

The second  couplet in brackets is something I've always added when singing with children. 

Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem, ‘Rain,’ is sweet and simple and was included in ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses,’ first published in 1885.

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

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The North Wind

 

The North Wind

The North Wind doth blow
And we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?
He’ll sit in the barn
To keep himself warm
And hide his head under his wing, poor thing!

This little rhyme originated in 16^th century Britain and was first published two centuries later in collections of nursery rhymes. It has three additional verses, not regularly taught, which build on feelings of sympathy and compassion for those less fortunate.

The second verse is about the swallow.

The North Wind doth blow
And we shall have snow,
And what will the swallow do then, poor thing?
Oh, do you not know
That he’s off long ago
To a country where he will find spring, poor thing?

Swallows migrate to warmer countries for the winter. Any that attempt to remain usually do not survive. This is made clear in Oscar Wilde’s heartbreaking tale of the Happy Prince, a story I can never read aloud to children.

In the third verse, the children learn about the tiny dormouse.

The North Wind doth blow
And we shall have snow,
And what will the dormouse to then, poor thing?
Rolled up like a ball
In his nest snug and small,
He'll sleep till warm weather comes in, poor thing!

Verse four tells of the honey bee.

The North Wind doth blow
And we shall have snow,
And what will the honey bee do then, poor thing?
In his hive he will stay
Till the cold is away
And then he’ll come out in the spring, poor thing!

Referred to as ‘he’ in the rhyme, it is only the females, who are the Queen and the worker bees, who survive the winter. The workers cluster round the Queen to keep her warm and alive. The drones are only of use for mating and as there is no mating in the cold months they are pushed out of the hive and either starve or freeze to death.

A fifth verse was added later.

The North Wind doth blow
And we shall have snow,
And what will the children do then, poor things?
When lessons are done
They’ll jump, skip, and run,
And that’s how they’ll keep themselves warm, poor things.

We woke up to snow this morning, which settled briefly on the roofs and trees. At present, we have a north wind blowing. The forecast tonight is -3˚Celsius (26.6˚ Fahrenheit)

Dappled

 

Dappled Sunday

                                        Dappled Connemara pony

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

It was beautiful in the woods this morning, with the sun slanting through the trees, casting dappled light on the peaty ground.

The first lines of a verse came into my mind:

  I had a little pony,
His name was Dapple Grey.

I couldn’t remember the rest of it, so looked it up when I reached home. Somehow, I wish I hadn’t!

This is the traditional English nursery rhyme:

  I had a little pony,
His name was Dapple Grey;
I lent him to a lady
To ride a mile away.

She whipped him, she slashed him,
She rode him through the mire;
I would not lend my pony now,
For all the lady’s hire.

It probably dates back to the 1800s. Iona and Peter Opie, in ‘The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes’ suggest that it originated about 1825.

I discovered another version, which was popular in USA:

I had a little horse, his name was Dapple Grey,
His legs were made of cornstalks, his body made of hay.
I saddled him and bridled him and rode him off to town,
Up came a puff of wind, and blew him up and down.
The saddle flew off, and I let go -
Now didn’t my horse make a pretty little show?

Oranges and lemons

Oranges and lemons

 

The bells of St Clement Danes play the tune four times a day

This is a traditional English nursery rhyme and singing game, first published in about 1744.

Christopher Fowler’s book ’Oranges and Lemons’ is based on the nursery rhyme, but it is a thrilling, inventive series of murders investigated by Bryant and May, the two elderly detectives from the Peculiar Crimes Unit. It is not a cosy story. It is quite fitting, since the game has macabre elements, but greatly enjoyed by the participants, with the thrill of escaping . . . or not.

Two children make an arch with their arms and the queue of players passes under the arch as everyone sings the song.

1874 Artwork by Agnes Rose Bouvier Nicholls (1842-1892)

Oranges and lemons

Say the bells of St Clement’s;

You owe me five farthings

Say the bells of St Martin’s.

 

When will you pay me?

Say the bells of Old Bailey;

When I grow rich

Say the bells of Shoreditch.

 

When will that be?

Say the bells of Stepney.

I do not know

Says the great bell of Bow.

 

Here comes a candle

To light you to bed

And here comes a chopper

To chop off your head

Chip chop chip chop

The last man’s dead!

In the last verse, which is sung at an increasingly fast pace, the children run through as quickly as they can to avoid being caught, the ‘arches’ make chopping motions with their arms and those who are caught when the ‘chopper’ comes down on the last word of the last line have to join on behind one of the two ‘arches’, as an orange or a lemon.

An alternative version of the game has the ‘caught’ children forming arches until eventually there is a long row or arches for children to run through.

Oranges and lemons

 Say the bells of St Clement’s

St Clement Danes, in the City of Westminster, is reputedly the church of the nursery rhyme and plays the tune every day at 9.00, noon. 3.00 pm and 6:00 pm. but St Clement’s Eastcheap, in the City of London, also claims that honour. St Clement Danes is the central church of the RAF and one of the two ‘island churches’ in London, being situated on a traffic island near the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand. The other island church is St Mary le Strand.

Both churches were designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The legend of St Clement says that he was martyred by being tied to an anchor and cast into the Black Sea. He is the patron saint of sailors.

You owe me five farthings,

Say the bells of St Martin’s

St Martin’s or St Martin-in-the-Fields is dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours also known as Martin the Merciful. He is best remembered for using his sword to cut his cloak in two so that he could give a poor ragged beggar half of it to wear in the cold winter.

When will you pay me?

Say the bells of Old Bailey

The bells of Old Bailey belong to St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, now known as Holy Sepulchre. It is the National Musicians’ Church, with a chapel dedicated to St Cecilia, the patron saint of music and musicians. The bells were said to sing, ‘When will you pay me?’ to the prisoners in Newgate Debtor’s Prison, which used to lie opposite St Sepulchre’s. Newgate was demolished in 1902, following a grisly history.

When I grow rich

Say the bells of Shoreditch

The Shoreditch bells belong to St Leonard’s church, often known as the actors’ church because of its association with Elizabethan theatre. St Leonard is the patron saint of prisoners

When will that be?

Say the bells of Stepney

St Dunstan’s in Stepney is one of the oldest churches in London, and has been a site of Christian worship since early Saxon times, (450-1066). St Dunstan was a noted artist, musician and silversmith and is the patron saint of bellringers and metalsmiths.

I do not know

Says the great bell of Bow

The present church of St Mary-le-Bow was designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London of 1666. There are currently twelve bells at the church, named after different saints and having different weights and notes. Only those born within the sound of Bow Bells can call themselves true Londoners - that is, Cockneys.

2009 Sculpture by Christine Charlesworth in Ramster Gardens, Chiddingfold, Surrey

Sunday’s child

 

Sunday’s child

                      Gillian, the first Sabbath Day child in my family

        Mondays’ child is fair of face,

Tuesday’s child is full of grace.

Wednesdays’ child is full woe,

Thursday’s child has far to go.

Friday’s child is loving and giving,

Saturday’s child works hard for its living,

But the child that is born on the Sabbath Day

Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

Printed variations of this little nursery rhyme have been appearing since 1838, but the tradition of foretelling a child’s future from the day on which it was born goes back to the 1570s.

For most people it is a harmless piece of nonsense, though I did know one woman who was desperate not to give birth to her child on a Wednesday. I don’t know how serious she was, but she had some odd behaviours, so maybe she was superstitious, too.

                         Eve, the second Sabbath Day child in my family

I know the rhyme has sometimes been adapted to make Wednesday seem less doom-laden.

 Louis, the third Sabbath Day child in my family

I am indebted to Michelle Pauli, writing in the Guardian in 2005, for further information on the old rhyme. She wrote that the ‘Original Book of Knowledge’, published in 1775, proclaimed a different set of prophesies.

‘A Child born on Sunday shall be of long Life and obtain great Riches; 

A Child born on Monday shall be weak, and of an effiminate Temper, and seldom come to Honour. 

A Child born on Tuesday, shall be given up to the Inordinate Desire of Riches, and is in danger of dying by Violence. 

A Child born on Wednesday, shall be given to the Study of Learning, and shall profit thereby. 

A Child born on Thursday, shall arrive to great Honour. 

A Child born on Friday, shall be of a strong Constitution, but very letcherous; and if it be a Female, she is in great danger of turning Whore. 

A Child born on Saturday, shall be dull and heavy, and of a dogged Disposition, and seldom come to good.'

According to this version, the most favourable days to be born are Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday. The rest of the week is a dead loss!

Frogs galore!

Common or Grass Frogs, (Rana temporaria) which live in our garden, hibernate in the winter at the bottom of the pond beneath piles of mud and decaying leaves. They survive because they can breathe through their skins. The very oldest of them will live to about eight years of age but many provide a tasty snack for crows, rats or foxes long before they have had a chance to live out their natural span. Some don't survive beyond the spawn or tadpole stage, feeding fish and dragonfly nymphs.

The Frog

Be kind and tender to the Frog,

And do not call him names,

As 'Slimy skin,' or 'Polly-wog,'

Or likewise 'Ugly James,'

Or 'Gap-a-grin,' or 'Toad-gone-wrong,'

Or 'Bill Bandy-knees':

The Frog is justly sensitive

To epithets like these.

No animal will more repay

A treatment kind and fair;

At least so lonely people say

Who keep a frog (and, by the way,

They are extremely rare.)

Hilaire Belloc 1870 – 1953

A frog he would a-wooing go,

Heigh ho! says Rowley,

A frog he would a-wooing go,

Whether his mother would let him or no,

With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach,

Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
Traditional nursery rhyme

Although the water is not boiling and roiling with hundreds of over-excited frogs as it has in past years there is quite a lot of activity in the pond and already several clumps of spawn. Usually and unfortunately some larger clusters of frogs, all desperate to ensure the preservation of the species with the males tightly gripping any part of a female they can reach, or, in extremis, another male, become so entangled in weed and with each other that they drown. Nonetheless, the remaining frogs continue to make merry and much procreation is still occurring.

Have you ever looked into a frog's eyes? Admittedly it is not an easy thing to accomplish as frogs have no natural defences and duck and swim rapidly out of sight or hop soggily away into the undergrowth if they're away from home when danger threatens.

Reflected in this eye is part of the back of our house, one of the garden arches and Barry hiding behind the arch.

(Don't frighten the frogs!)

Look not in my eyes, for fear

They mirror true the sight I see.

 From 'A Shropshire Lad' by A E Housman (1859 – 1936)

A frog's eyes are sited on the top of the head and the large horizontal lenses give a wide field of view, essential for an animal which cannot turn its head very far, and have a focus of about 6". The advantage of being myopic is that the background is blurred which makes things in the foreground more easily discernible. Frogs appear unable to see things which don't move and would starve if their food remained stationary! Once aware of a meal the frog can extend its long sticky tongue remarkably rapidly to capture flying insects. They will also consume slugs, snails and worms. Adult frogs feed only on land though younger frogs will feed on land or in water. The cacophonous amphibians outside my house do not eat during the breeding season. Sex is urgent and surpasses all other instincts!

Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ'd,

The air is delicate.

 From 'Macbeth' by William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

Tadpoles are herbivorous but as they begin to metamorphose the digestic tract shortens and changes its character to accommodate ingestion and digestion of protein. I was always under the impression that they will not complete their metamorphosis unless they eat meat. Frequently they eat each other!

So far they are still encased in the jelly which will sustain them as they grow and become ready to emerge and live independently.

The North Wind doth blow . . .

The north wind doth blow,

And we shall have snow,

And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?

He'll sit in a barn,

And keep himself warm,

And hide his head under his wing, poor thing.

This British Nursery rhyme is thought to date from the 16^th century. It was intended to teach children to associate safety, warmth and security with home while allowing them to empathise with the situation of the robin.

The birds have been busier on the feeders since the weather has become colder, building up their fat reserves for the weeks to come and the huge expenditure of energy in the breeding season which starts much earlier than we may appreciate. During the autumn and early winter the robins have been defending their territories preparatory to pairing off. The female robin does all the chasing and eventually decides on her mate after visiting several males. The first indication of a pairing is two robins feeding alongside each other but they will not breed until Spring.