The People's Songbag

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31339, 8 April 1967, Page 5

The People's Songbag

(Specially written for "The Press" bv DERRICK ROONRY)

Old Mother Hubbard went to

the cupboard To get her poor doo a bone. When she got there the cup-

And so the poor dog got nona.

“Old Mother Hubbard” is not, as many suppose, one of the oldest nursery rhymes still in popular use; instead she is, as the inefficient and unhygienic housekeeper in the rhyme we know today, a mere youngster of 161, having made her first appearance as recently as 1806. But there is plenty of evidence that she bears an ancient, if not strictly honourable, name. Edmund Spencer knew her, for in his youth he wrote a political satire called “Prosopoeia or Mother Hubbard’s Tale.” It was an immature effort, quickly forgotten, but in it the “good old woman was Mother Hubberd, who did far surpass the rest in honest mirth” and who related the fable of the fox and the ape. Shakespeare’s contemporary, Thomas Middleton, was also acquainted with Mother Hubbard, and one of his writings was called “Father Hubburd’s Tale, or The Ant and the Nightingale”: in the introduction he said that it was called “Father Hubburd’s Tale” “not to have it called in again as the Tale of Mother Hubburd.” But it was not until the rhyme in its present form was published by J. Harris, a bookseller, “successor tn E. Newberry at the Corner of St Paul’s churchyard,” in a Is 6d toy-book in 1806 that it began to make headway as a nursery favourite. There were 14 verses, authorship of which was attributed to S.M.C. (corrected to S.CJf. in the second edition a few months later, it contained an inscription that “to T. B. Esquire, M.P. County of XX, at whose suggestion and at whose house these notable sketches were first designed, this volume is with all suitable deference dedicated by his humble servant S.C.M.”). It was an immediate success; sequels and many pirate editions appeared and ever since there has been a mild controversy in comparative folk-lore circles about it The controversy is not as might be expected, over the identity of S.C.M., of which there is no doubt (she was Sarah Catherine Martin, an early flame of Prince William Henry, later William IV), but over whether she invented the whole thing, or Conscience “As a child I always used to blame my conscience for stopping me from having fun. Hamlet felt similarly. He said that conscience makes cowards of us all. But was he right? Is it to make us cowards or responsible beings that we have a conscience? Is conscience a moral upgrader or a stultifier of personality?”— Mrs Shirley Meredeen talking of conscience in a 8.8. C. broadcast.

merely added to existing verses.

On balance the latter seems likely, although there are two traditions in the Bastard family which support the opposite view (T. 8. to whom the verses were dedicated, was in fact John Pollixfen Bastard, M.P. for Kitley, Devon, and Miss Martin’s future brother-in-law). One tradition was that Miss Martin based the rhyme on the Bastard family’s housekeeper, the other is that Miss Martin was a very vivacious young woman, and one day chattered so much while her host was writing that he told her to “go away and write, one of your stupid little rhymes.” The "stupid little rhyme” sold 10,000 copies in six months—a phenomenal achievement in 1806.