This sport in other parts is called Dancing the Candle Rush." It may be necessary to observe that galagaskins were wide loose trousers.
The rhyme of Jack Horner has been stated to be a satire on the Puritanical aversion to Christmas pies and suchlike abominations. It forms part of a metrical chap-book history, founded on the same story as the Friar and the Boy, entitled "The Pleasant History of Jack Horner, containing his witty tricks, and pleasant pranks, which he played from his youth to his riper years: right pleasant and delightful for winter and summer's recreation," embellished with frightful woodcuts, which have not much connexion with the tale. The pleasant history commences as follows:
Jack Horner was a pretty lad,
Near London he did dwell,
His father's heart he made full glad,
His mother lov'd him well.
While little Jack was sweet and young,
If he by chance should cry,
His mother pretty sonnets sung,
With a lul-la-ba-by,
With such a dainty curious tone,
As Jack sat on her knee,
So that, e'er he could go alone,
He sung as well as she.
A pretty boy of curious wit,
All people spoke his praise,
And in the corner would he sit
In Christmas holydays.
When friends they did together meet,
To pass away the time—
Why, little Jack, he sure would eat
His Christmas pie in rhyme.
And said, Jack Horner, in the corner,
Eats good Christmas pie,
And with his thumbs pulls out the plumbs,
And said, Good boy am I!
Here we have an important discovery! Who before suspected that the nursery-rhyme was written by Jack Horner himself?
Few children's rhymes are more common than those relating to Jack Sprat and his wife, "Jack Sprat could eat no fat," &c.; but it is little thought they have been current for two centuries. Such, however, is the fact, and when Howell published his collection of Proverbs in 1659, p. 20, the story related to no less exalted a personage than an archdeacon:
Archdeacon Pratt would eat no fatt,
His wife would eat no lean;
'Twixt Archdeacon Pratt and Joan his wife,
The meat was eat up clean.
On the same page of this collection we find the commencement of the rigmarole, "A man of words and not of deeds," which in the next century was converted into a burlesque song on the battle of Culloden! [10]
Double Dee Double Day,
Set a garden full of seeds;
When the seeds began to grow,
It's like a garden full of snow.
When the snow began to melt,
Like a ship without a belt.
When the ship began to sail,
Like a bird without a tail.
When the bird began to fly,
Like an eagle in the sky.
When the sky began to roar,
Like a lion at the door.
When the door began to crack,
Like a stick laid o'er my back.
When my back began to smart,
Like a penknife in my heart.
When my heart began to bleed,
Like a needleful of thread.
When the thread began to rot,
Like a turnip in the pot.
When the pot began to boil,
Like a bottle full of oil.
When the oil began to settle,
Like our Geordies bloody battle.
| [10] | The following nursery game, played by two girls, one personating the mistress and the other a servant was obtained from Yorkshire, and may be interpreted as a dialogue between a lady and her Jacobite maid: Lady. Jenny, come here! So I hear you have been to see that man. Maid. What man, madam? Lady. Why, the handsome man. Maid. Why, madam, as I was a-passing by, Thinking no harm, no not in the least, not I, I did go in, But had no ill intention in the thing, For, as folks say, a cat may look at a king. Lady. A king do you call him? You rebellious slut! Maid. I did not call him so, dear lady, but— Lady. But me none of your buttings, for not another day Shall any rebel in my service stay; I owe you twenty shillings—there's a guinea! Go, pack your clothes, and get about your business, Jenny. |
The earliest copy of the saying, "A man of words and not of deeds," I have hitherto met with, occurs in MS. Harl. 1927, of the time of James I. Another version, written towards the close of the seventeenth century, but unfitted for publication, is preserved on the last leaf of MS. Harl. 6580.