Tom

 

Tom

Scanned page from 'The Baby's Opera' by Walter Crane, 1878 edition by McLoughlin Bros. in New York.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

YP was the inspiration, if that’s the appropriate word, for this post.

There are two nursery rhymes I know about Tom. In each he is a piper’s son, but one presents him as a thief, and the other as a musician.

Tom, Tom, the piper’s son,
Stole a pig and away did run,
The pig was eat, and Tom was beat
And Tom went crying down the street.

The pig in question was not a hefty mammal, but a type of apple-filled pastry, maybe like an apple turnover.

The origins of the ‘thief’ version are unknown, but it was first printed about 1795 in London.

The longer version, touting Musical Tom, was printed at the same time as the shorter verse. It was adapted from a popular rhyme from the late 17th century, as a recruitment song to encourage volunteers to join military campaigns in the early 18^th century (1705)

Tom’s skill was such that everyone enjoyed his music.

Tom, he was a piper’s son,
He learnt to play when he was young,
And all the tune that he could play
Was o’er the hills and far away.
Over the hills and a great way off,
The wind shall blow my top-knot off.

Tom with his pipe made such a noise,
That he pleased both the girls and boys,
They all stopped to hear him play,
‘Over the hills and far away.’

Some found themselves forced to dance.

Tom with his pipe did play with such skill
That those who heard him could never keep still;
As soon as he played they began for to dance,
Even the pigs on their hind legs would after him prance.

Tom’s music entranced Dolly, a milkmaid.

As Dolly was milking her cow one day,
Tom took his pipe and began to play;
So Dolly and the cow danced ‘The Cheshire Round’
Till the pail was broken and the milk ran on the ground.

The Cheshire Round (or Rounds) was a country dance and a prime feature of social gatherings in 17^th century England,

 Following that, Tom’s enthusiasm led him on to further capers.

He met old Dame Trot with a basket of eggs,
He used his pipe and she used her legs;
She danced about till the eggs were all broke.
She began for to fret, but he laughed at the joke.

Finally, he used his piping talent for a good cause.

Tom saw a cross fellow was beating an ass,
Heavy laden with pots, pans, dishes, and glass;
He took out his pipe and he played them a tune.
And the poor donkey’s load was lightened full soon.

Random thoughts

 

Random thoughts

Random thoughts flit in and out of my brain. It’s not always possible to know what prompts them and sometimes they take me on ‘voyages of discovery and other clichés.’

Recently, I have been thinking about sailors, that is, Royal Navy sailors. Obviously the trigger for that was my recent blog about sailing. I wondered why sailors were referred to as matelots.

Why would a French name be assigned to a naval rating? Maybe it was a hangover from when Calais belonged to England, in the sixteenth century. The English King Edward III captured Calais in 1347. It was returned to France in 1558.

I looked it up. Matelot is a Middle French slang word meaning sailor. Middle French covers the period from the 14^th to 16^th centuries. It came into use in the Royal Navy about 1847, so, nothing to do with the possession of Calais!

Another common term for a naval rating is Tar, or Jack Tar. It seemed logical to suppose that this name was applied because of the necessity of tarring a ship to waterproof it. Anyone involved in this messy task would soon be covered in the sticky, pungent coating.

I looked it up. I was wrong again. Apparently, it is thought to refer to the tarpaulins sailors wore. Tarpaulins were a type of strong canvas containing tar to make them waterproof. ‘Jack Tar’ to describe a sailor was first used in 1781 by George Parker, possibly Admiral Sir George Parker.

People born in Swansea in the UK have often been called Jacks or Swansea Jacks. Swansea people had a reputation for being skilled sailors and were much sought after for recruitment to the navy.

The official march of the Royal Navy, ‘Heart of Oak’, has a line which says, ‘Heart of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men’.

John was the commonest boy’s name in England in the 16^th century.  Jack is a diminutive of John. An interesting article from ‘Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources’describes how the nickname for John developed.

Jack was a common name applied to any man and is still in use in many phrases today, as in Jack of all trades, every man Jack, Jack of both sides, Jack the lad, Before you can say Jack Robinson, All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, I’m all right, Jack (pull up the ladder)

The infamous Whitechapel murders of the 1880s were not committed by a man called Jack the Ripper. In the twenty-first century a more accurate name for him would have been ‘Anyman the Ripper’.

From this point, I started thinking about Jack in children’s literature, in particular nursery rhymes. Jack and Jill, Jack be nimble, Jack Sprat, Little Jack Horner are all rhymes that have been sung and recited to small children, who respond to the rhymes with delight, in the process building a sense of rhythm and rhyming and developing their vocabulary in a most pleasurable way.

Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack Frost are well-loved children’s stories. This is the house that Jack built is a wonderful cumulative story that children love to join in with great enthusiasm.

 

Girls and boys come out to play

It is usual for young puppies to want to go outside during the night to relieve themselves. Small as they are, bladder and bowels soon reach capacity and need to be emptied.

The last couple of nights the waning gibbous moon has shone so brightly that an outside light has not been necessary for me to see our small black Gus. Feeling comfortable once more he scampers back upstairs, climbs into Frodo's bed and then returns to his pen when Frodo grumbles at him. In two shakes of a lamb's tail – or a puppy's tail – he's asleep and dreaming once more.

On the other hand I am now wide awake, though tired and needing to sleep. The brilliance of the moon has led my mind to the old Nursery rhyme 'Girls and boys come out to play' and I begin to wonder about its origins.

There are regional variations of this rhyme but the commonest one is as follows:

Girls and boys come out to play,

The moon doth shine as bright as day;

Leave your supper and leave your sleep

And come with your playfellows into the street.

Come with a whoop and come with a call,

Come with a good will or not at all.

Up the ladder and down the wall,

A halfpenny loaf will serve us all.

Some versions add the following:

You find milk and I'll find flour

And we'll have a pudding in half an hour.

Alternative renderings place boys before girls.

The rhyme has been in existence since at least 1708 when the first two lines were printed in dance books. The earliest known collection of nursery rhymes was published in London in 'Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book' in 1744 and contained the first six lines.

Why, though, would children be invited to play in the street by moonlight?

Prior to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution children often worked alongside their parents when the work load was heavy, for example during harvest. Once the Revolution was under way they became essential to the domestic economy when all able-bodied members of poor working class families were expected to work to bring in money. Under the Poor Laws failure to provide for the family often meant that its members were sent to the Workhouse, where husband and wife would be separated from each other and their children. Workhouse conditions were grim and degrading and people did their very best to avoid the destitution that would force them to seek support from the parish.

Thus were children from a tender age put to work, often in appallingly dangerous conditions. Many employers preferred to hire children as they were cheaper to employ than adults, were nimbler and could be used in confined spaces. For example in the coal mines a child might start work at 2 o'clock in the morning opening and shutting wooden doors to let air into the tunnels. He or she sat in the cold damp dark, alone, with a single candle until 8 o'clock in the evening. Other children pulled the heavy trucks of coal or worked on the surface sorting coal.

Some boys were employed as chimney sweeps, often climbing up inside the narrow branching chimneys of grand houses, scraping off soot. When they emerged, cut and bruised, their master would rub salt water on their elbows and knees before sending them up other chimneys. Charles Kingsley wrote 'The Water Babies' which gives an idea of the life of a young sweep before his escape.

In the textile factories children might work for 16 hours cleaning machines while they were still running. Workers lost fingers and some were crushed by the huge machines. The smallest children were sent under the machines to tie broken threads. It mattered little to the factory owners if their defenceless labourers died – children were cheap in all senses for a dead child was easily replaced from the many in orphanages.

So the poverty-stricken, hard-working children had little time for leisure. Generally starting work at the age of five many of them were dead before they were twenty-five, killed in accidents or through ill-health caused by lack of fresh air, good food, exercise, poor working conditions.

However, children will play when they have opportunity and this nursery rhyme gives an indication of when they might have been able to forget the harshness of their lives and enjoy themselves for a short while.

The YouTube clip is (I think!) an Australian rendition of the rhyme and dance. It amuses me for many reasons!