nursery rhyme in chrysalis

[truepenny]

So I'm reading Pepys's entry for 20 Jan, and the annotation expanding on the Thing with General Monk has this doggerel:

"Monk under a hood, not well understood,
The City pull in their horns;
The Speaker is out, and sick of the gout,
And the Parliament sit upon thorns.”
--Rugge's 'Diurnal.'--B."

Dunno who Rugge is, or what his "Diurnal" might be, or what "B" is supposed to mean (I said I was out of period here), but this did make me, for the first time, properly understand how political jingles turned into nursery rhymes. I mean, yes, I understood intellectually that it happened, but it was one of those things I knew without actually being able to make sense of. But now I get it.

And 'cause this is the kind of geek I am, right at the moment, I'm in love with this, with the pun on monkshood and the image of London as a snail, and that fabulous last line: "And the Parliament sit upon thorns." (Fantastic! says Elijah Wood in the back of my head.) It doesn't take much to make me happy (first rule of surviving grad school: be self-entertaining and easily amused), but this is an unexpected pick-me-up at 7:30 a.m. Which I needed.

Now, what I want to know is, when and how did our culture lose this ability? Why don't we get nasty little jingles about Dubya? 'Cause, frankly, I think our political system would be the better for a healthy dose of doggerel.

And, just because, here's my other favorite political jingle that didn't make it into Mother Goose:

The Cat, the Rat, and Lovell our Dog
Ruled all England under a Hog.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Did you get that from The Daughter of Time, which is where I know it from, or is it period for you?

I made one up in 1991, which I was reminded of when Zorinth came in and wanted help getting his sweater off -- too many layers. It's a putting sweater on or off a kid rhyme:

"Saddam Hussein, " said Madame Hussein,
when he came back from his levies (leave-ees)
"Saddam Hussein," said Madame Hussein,
"Keep your armies up your sleevies!"

I made up a ton of nursery rhymes when Zorinth was a baby, but I don't think any of the others were even remotely political. That one was in bad taste then, and is in worse taste now, oh dear.

I would guess we stopped doing it as a culture when we stopped finding rhyme a natural means of expression, as a culture, though when I look at advertising jingles, maybe not.

In The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (Peter and Iona Opie can't give you year because I lent it to someone who isn't likely to give it back, alas,) they quote a number of rhymes about contemporary politics, but as adaptations of older rhymes, like:
"Hark the herald angels sing
Mrs. Simpson's pinched our king."
(They are absurdly memorable, I'll say that for them.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Did you get that from The Daughter of Time, which is where I know it from, or is it period for you?

Daughter of Time, which I first read long before I could tell John Webster from John Fletcher.

In case anyone cares about the minutiae of periodization in English literature:
[geek]
The borders of "early modern" vary dramatically depending on who you ask. 1483 (Battle of Bosworth) is one terminus post quem; another is 1558 (Elizabeth's ascension). Termini ad quem range from 1642 (beginning of the Civil War) to 1648 (trial--and beheading, in 1649--of Charles I), 1660 (Restoration of Charles II), or 1674 (death of Milton. My personal expertise--as in, ask me a question, and I may not end up gaping like a stranded goldfish--runs roughly from 1588 (defeat of the Spanish Armada) to 1660 (Restoration).
[/geek]

I think what we lost, somewhere along the way, is the idea of verse as a vehicle for satire. At least, that's my tenuous and unsupported theory.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

They print satiric verse in New Statesman. It's not very good or even slightly memorable, and it's not satiric doggerel and it mostly doesn't rhyme, but anyway. (It's so unmemorable that I couldn't quote any of it, me, despite having read NS weekly for years, though not any more. They have the best foreign news coverage of anywhere.) They also rejected my poem "The Destruction of Woking" on the grounds that while they liked it so much they passed it round the office, it was much too long and old fashioned to print -- which was the point where I decided that putting stuff on the web was the way to go, as all my poetry is long and old fashioned.

As for The Daughter of Time, me too. I read it when I was about 13 from the school library.