Note on a Lying Song- G. L. Kittredge
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 39, No. 152 (Apr. - Jun., 1926), pp. 195-199
NOTE ON A LYING SONG
BY G. L. KITTREDGE
The curious fragment "Old Blind Drunk John" collected by Professor Hudson in Mississippi (No. 70 above) has interesting literary connections. The American Antiquarian Society and the Harvard College Library
have a Boston broadside of about 1814 containing a song of eleven stanzas entitled "Rare Sights, or Hue Boys Hue." [Isaiah Thomas's collection, I, 40 (also II, 8), "Nathaniel Coverly, Printer, Milk-Street, Boston." See Ford, The Isaiah Thomas Collection of Broadsides, p. 58 (No. 219), and Massachusetts Broadsides, p. 439 (No. 3317).] The first and seventh stanzas are:
I saw a Whale chase a Snail,
hue boys, hue!
I saw a Whale chase a Snail
All around a water pail,
Hue boys, hue,
Upon my word 'tis true,
So sing away, sing away
Hue boys, hue.
I saw a Mouse chase a Louse,
Hue boys, hue!
I saw a Mouse chase a Louse
All around the tailor's house,
Hue boys, hue,
Upon my word 'tis true,
So sing away, sing away
Hue boys, hue.
This seventh stanza corresponds to the first stanza of the Mississippi fragment collected by Professor Hudson (No. 70 above). "Rare Sights" is a rifacimento or an imitation of the famous old English song "Martin Said to his Man." This was entered in the Stationers' Register on November 9, 1588 (Arber, II, 506; Rollins, Analytical
Index to the Ballad-Entries, No. 168I, p. 146), and was printed, with the tune, in Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia, 1609.* I give the first and the last stanzas:
Martin said to his man,
Fie! man, fie!
O Martin said to his man
Who's the foole now?
Martin said to his man,
Fill thou the cup, and I the can;
Thou hast well drunken, man,
Who's the foole now?
I see a mouse catch the cat,
Fie! man, fie!
I see a mouse catch the cat,
Who's the foole now?
I see a mouse catch the cat,
And the cheese to eate the rat:
Thou hast well drunken, man,
Who's the foole now?
*See Rimbault, A Little Book of Songs and Ballads, 1851, pp. 115- 117; Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, I, 76; Notes and Queries, 1st Series, VII (1853), 19; The Vocal Magazine, Edinburgh, III (1799), Song
XLIX. In the opening speech of Wager's comedy "The Longer Thou Livest, The Moore Foole Thou Art" (printed ca. 1568), Moros sings what may be a bit of this song:
Martin swart and his man, sodledum, sodledum,
Martin swart and his man sodledum bell.
.......................................................
Early in the sixteenth century one Richard Hill copied into his commonplace book (now Balliol MS. 354) a lying song that may be the ancestor of "Martin." It runs to seven stanzas, each consisting of three lines and a refrain. The first stanza is -
I sawe a doge sethyng sowse,
And an ape thecyng an howse,
And a podyng etyng a mowse:
I will haue the whetston and I may.[2]
[2] The song is printed by Fliigel, Anglia, XXVI (1903), 270-271, and by Dyboski, Songs, etc., from the Balliol MS. 354 (Early English Text Society, 1908), p. 110.
The whestone was the sign of a liar. Thus in 1382 a fraudulent astrologer was ridden through the city of London with his back toward the horse's head and the tail in his hand for a bridle, and a whetstone was hung
about his neck. [Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed. Riley, 1, 63; Holinshed's Chronicle, II (1807), 754. Cf. Riley, Memorials of London, pp. 316, 353, 423, 432, 477, 493, 497, 584; Hall's Satires, iv. 6, ed. Singer, p. I 15, and note; Harington, Nugae Antiquae, ed. Park, 1804, II, 240; Summer's Last Will and Testament, Dodsley's Old Plays, ed. Collier, IX, 24; Hazlitt, English Proverbs, 1869, pp. 156, 489 (1907, pp. 181, 497, 560). 2 See the Kinloch MS., I, 272-275 (Harvard College Library).]
"The Man in the Moon" (Kinloch, The Ballad Book, 1827, No. 14, pp. 50-54.2) is based on "Martin Said to his Man." One stanza corresponds to the beginning of the Mississippi version:
I saw a louse chace a mouse,
Wha's fou, wha's fou?
I saw a louse chace a mouse,
Wha's fou now, my jo ?
I saw a louse chace a mouse,
Out the door, and round the house;
And we're a' blind drunk, bousing jolly fou, my jo.
A variant ("Wha's Fou?") in the Campbell MS., II, 239-244 (Harvard College Library) has this stanza in the following shape:
I saw a louse chase a mouse,
Wha's fou, wha's fou ?
I saw a louse chase a mouse,
Wha's fou now, my Joe?
I saw a louse chase a mouse,
Between the midden and the house
And we're a' drunk daft, my Boys,
And I am jolly fou, my Joe.
"Wha's fou now?" is reminiscent of "Who's the fool now?" (though the meaning is different). A three-stanza fragment of "The Man in the Moon," however, in the Macmath MS., p. 51 (47) (Harvard College Library), preserves the "fool." Thus:
I saw the snail draw the whale
Through the Red Sea by the tail,
Fare-ye-weel, my drucken boys,
Where's your fool now?
There is a similar French ballad which begins, in one ot its versions:
"Compare, d'ou viens-tu?"
"Commere, de l'affit."
"Compare, qu'as-tu vu?"
"Commere, j'ai bien vu,
J'ai bien vu un crapaud
Qui montait en haut,
L'epee au cote"
"Compare, vous mentez!"[1]
A modem street ballad ("World"), reprinted as one of the Cuala Press Broadsides (First Year, No. 9, February, 1909), begins:
You people draw near to what I'm going to relate,
And you will be surprised at the wonders I saw of late,
I saw a small trout devouring a large whale,
And the Royal Exchange concealed in the shell of a snail.
A Scottish medley, "The Man to the Green, Joe" (Buchan, Ancient Songs and Ballads of the North of Scotland, 1828, I, 259-260[2]), belongs in part to this group. Note the last stanza but one:
Ower Benachie I saw a skate flee,
Quo' the man to the joe, quo' the man to the joe;
And four an' twenty little anes fleeing her wi',
Quo' the merry, merry man to the green, joe.
This piece includes, however, the immemorial jest about headless, footless, mouthless, and tongueless ("There were four an' twenty headless men playing at the ba' "[3]), as well as the equally famous joke about the terrifying snail:
Four an' twenty Hilandmen chasing at a snail,
Quo' the man to the joe, quo' the man to the joe;
"0," says the hindmast, "weel take her by the tail,"
Quo' the merry, merry man to the green, joe.
The snail set up her horns like ony humle cow,
Quo' the man to the joe, quo' the man to the joe;
"Fye," says the foremost, "we're a' sticket now,"
Quo' the merry, merry man to the green, joe.
These two stanzas are an adaptation of the familiar nursery rhyme:
Four and twenty tailors went to kill a snail,
The best man among them durst not touch her tail;
She put out her horns like a little Kyloe cow,
Run, tailors, run, or she'll kill you all e'en now. [4]
[footnotes (see above)]
[1] Melusine, I, 314-315. Cf. S~billot, Litterature Orale de la Haute- Bretagne, pp. 286-288; Revue des Traditions Populaires, I, 334.
[2] See Buchan's Original MS., pp. 762-763 (Harvard College Library).
[3] See Bolte and Polivka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmarchen, III, 116--118.
[4] Halliwell, The Nursery Rhymes of England, 5th ed., No. 509, p. 256. Cf. Baring-Gould, A. Book of Nursery Songs and Rhymes, p. 124.
One is reminded of the mediaeval jest of the Lombard and the Snail, which finds its best expression in the elegantly humorous Latin elegiac verses De Lombardo et Limaca. There is an echo of this combat in the
old English interlude of Thersytes as well as in Preston's Cambises, and such fights are mentioned in mediaeval poems and are graphically represented in illuminated manuscripts*. [*Novati, Giomale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, XXII (1893), 335-353; Certeux, Revue des Traditions Populaires, VII (1892), 507-514: Baist, Zeitschrift fiir Romanische Philologie, II (1878), 303-306; Tobler, the same, III (1879), 98--102; Child, Four Old Plays, 1848, pp. 67-71 (note, p. 266); Hawkins, The Origin of the English Drama, 1773, I, 261.]
For further examples of lying poems or songs see Eustache Deschamps, Balade I455, OEuvres, VIII, 146-147; Uhland, Volkslieder, II (I845), 629-636 (Nos. 240-241); Zeitschrift fiir Deutsche Philologie, XXII,
317-320; Haupt's Zeitschrift, XXXVI, 150-154; Zeitschrift fiir Volkskunde, I, 396-397; M. Haupt, Franz6sische Volkslieder, 1877, p. 62; Barbeau and Sapir, Folk Songs of French Canada, 1925, PP.159- 165; cf. Uhland, Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung and Sage, III, 223-237; Miiller-Fraureuth, Die Deutschen Liigendichtungen, 1881; Kalff, Het Lied in de Middeleeuwen, 1884, pp. 486-492; Bolte and Polivka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmiirchen, III, 258 (on No. 159 of the 1819 edition); II, 514; III, 116; Haupt's Zeitschrift, XXXVI, 296; Alemannia, XVI, 89-92.