A History of Nursery Rhymes Part 22

"Old Mother Bunch, shall we visit the moon?

Come, mount on your broom, I'll stride on the spoon; Then hey to go, we shall be there soon!"

This rhyme was sung at the time in derision to Earl Grey's and Lord Brougham's aerial, vapoury projects of setting the Church's house in order.

"Lord Grey," said the satire-monger, "provided the cupboards and larders for himself and relatives. He was a paradoxical 'old woman' who could never keep quiet."

"There was an old woman, and what do you think, She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink; Victuals and drink were the chief of her diet, And yet this old woman could never keep quiet."

As a prototype of reform this old woman was further caricatured as Madame Reform.

The going "up in a basket ninety-nine times as high as the moon"

referred to Lord Grey's command to the English bishops to speedily set their house in order. The ascent was flighty enough, "ninety-nine times as high as the moon, to sweep the cobwebs off the sky"--in other words, to set the Church, our cathedrals and bishops' palaces in order--and augured well; but this old woman journeyed not alone, in her hand she carried a broom (Brougham). It may have been a case of ultra-lunacy this journey of ninety-nine times as high as the moon, and "one cannot help thinking," said a writer of that period, "of the song, 'Long life to the Moon'; but this saying became common, 'If that time goes the coach, pray what time goes the basket?'"

The "Robbin, a bobbin, the big-bellied Ben" parody alluded to Dan O'Connell; the butcher and a half to the Northamptons.h.i.+re man and his driver; eating "church" and "steeple" meant Church cess.

O'Connell certainly did cut the Church measure about. In his curtailment he would not leave a room or a church for Irish Protestants to pray in.

"Little dog" refers to Lyttleton in the nursery rhyme, for when the under-trafficing came to light, Lord Grey, it is said, was so bewildered at his position that he doubted his own ident.i.ty, and exclaimed--

"If I be I, as I suppose I be, Well, I've a 'Little dog,' and he'll know me!"

FINISH