Before the Opies there was Pepys

[steepholm]

We all know that "Ring a Ring o' Roses" goes back to the Great Plague, right? Or rather, we all know it doesn't. It must be one of the most thoroughly exploded myths in existence, though I'm sure there's still a smithereen or two in circulation.

Too much myth busting can be a dispiriting experience, and lead to the assumption that all such stories are inventions; but surely this is a myth in itself. Did you know that the still more macabre game of "Light as a Feather, Stiff as Board", beloved of American slumber parties, goes back at least to that time? For witness whereof here is Mr Pepys on July 31st, 1665, reporting the observations of his friend Mr Brisband, who had lately been in France:

He saw four little girles, very young ones, all kneeling, each of them, upon one knee; and one begun the first line, whispering in the ear of the next, and the second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and she to the first. Then the first begun the second line, and so round quite through, and putting each one finger only to a boy that lay flat upon his back on the ground, as if he was dead; at the end of the words, they did with their four fingers raise this boy high as they could reach, and he [Mr. Brisband] being there, and wondering at it, as also being afeared to see it, for they would have had him to have bore a part in saying the words, in the roome of one of the little girles that was so young that they could hardly make her learn to repeat the words, did, for feare there might be some sleight used in it by the boy, or that the boy might be light, call the cook of the house, a very lusty fellow, as Sir G. Carteret's cook, who is very big, and they did raise him in just the same manner.

Pepys notes in the same entry that 1,700-1,800 had died of plague in London that week, and although Brisband's anecdote refers to French children it seems well suited to such a time. He also recorded the rhyme the girls were speaking:

Voyci un Corps mort,
Roy comme un Baston,
Froid comme Marbre,
Leger comme un esprit,
Levons te au nom de Jesus Christ.

Behold, a dead body,
Still as a stone,
Cold as marble,
Light as a spirit,
We lift you in the name of Jesus Christ.

I'm reminded of the old bedtime prayer to the Evangelists, which stations angels around the bed: "One to watch and one to pray/ And two to bear my soul away." But the genealogy of these matters is hard to trace.

Comments

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

I haven´t got through to read Pepys although there was a period in Gotham City, Sweden, when each and everyone of my SF-fan friends seemed to know his work by heart, I often had parts of it cited to me, that were considered entertaining.

There seem to be at least as many myths and variations about this rather sad and sordid nursery rhyme: http://www.librarything.com/topic/20497 that I still know as sung from my mother and grandmother, who did think it stemmed all the way back to the 30 yrs war.

There were still plenty of legends and stories about that war and the swedes told in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German, Platt being a mainly oral language they called "Mundart" (dialect) if anything, that my grandmother and mother were still fluent in (though my mother had learnt to be embarrassed about it at school).

Country people in eastern Germany seemed not to recognise much difference to the newer wars following since the results always appeared to be the same to them: they lost sons, brothers and other family members, their land and animals, allover and once again.

However, the origins of that nursery rhyme are about as sure as anything else when it comes to myths and legends. Wilhelm Mannhardt, who started out by examining countryside customs, following in the footsteps of the Grimm brethren, found 26 different versions of the rhyme, three of them in english (I haven´t found those yet). Though it seems probable that it is all about war, the rhyme also seems to have been in wide use allover very different german-speaking parts of Europe. The written form is only known 150 years after the 30 yrs war.

That nursery rhyme has always fascinated me, I know it sung to the sweet and soothing melody of "Schlaf, Kindlein (or Kindchen, a diminutiv of child), schlaf" (Sleep, Baby, sleep) which only further enhances the horror of the meaning of the words.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I know the English version, but not the German. I've sometimes wondered whether Blake had it in his mind when he wrote his poem about the emmet (ant), which begins:

Once a dream did weave a shade
O'er my angel-guarded bed,
That an emmet lost its way
Where on grass methought I lay.

Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,
Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangle spray,
All heart-broke, I heard her say:

'Oh my children! do they cry,
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me.'

But many nursery rhymes are far from reassuring. 'Rock a bye Baby' is frankly alarming - you might as well sing 'Long Lankin' to your children. (Come to that, I did.)