Riddle-Rhymes

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A VERY favorite class of rhymes with children, though the solutions are often most difficult to guess. Nursery riddle-rhymes are extremely numerous, and a volume might be filled with them without much difficulty. Many of the most common ones are found in manuscript collections of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

—A turnstile.

—The dog's name was Been, and the name of the persons who met each other was King. This riddle was obtained recently from oral tradition. I observe, however, a version of it in MS. Harl. 1962, of the seventeenth century.

—Three, for the second name in each line is a synonyme.

The cuckoo is called a gowk in the North of England; the lark, a laverock; and the twire-snipe and weather-bleak, or weather-bleater, are the same birds.

—An iron pot. In the country, an iron pot with three legs, and a wooden cover, the latter raised or put on by means of a peg at the top, is used for suspending over a fire, or to place on the hearth with a wood fire.

—Hair. From Kent.

—The fiddler's wife was the piper's mother. Each one there got ½ + 1 + ¼ or 1¾.

—A walnut.

—The teeth and gums.

—Greybeard, says Moor, Suffolk Words, p. 155, was the appropriate name for a fine large handsome stone bottle, holding perhaps three or four, or more gallons, having its handle terminating in a venerable Druidic face. This riddle appears to be alluded to in MS. Harl. 7316, p. 61:

—An equal. This riddle is well known in Sweden. The following version was given me by Mr. Stephens:

—A bramble-blossom.

—Paper and writing.

—Smoke. A wastle is a North country term for a twig or withy, possibly connected with A. S. wædl.

—The reflection of a face in a looking-glass.

—The mist. From Northumberland. Sometimes thus:

A young man and a young woman quarrelled, and the former, in his anger, exclaimed,—

The young woman immediately guessed the enigma, and replied in a similar strain,—

—Woman wants wit. Man much more.

—Parchment, pens, and wax.

—Smoke.

—Ice.

—A star. This charming little riddle is always a great favorite with children.

— His father was a dyer.

—Snuff. From Yorkshire.

—A chimney. From Yorkshire.

—A swarm of bees; not a very likely family to meet in that neighbourhood, at least nowadays, but some of the authors of these poems seem to have been continually traversing London bridge.

—A star. From Yorkshire.

—They both weigh alike.

—A candle. Lillylow is a North country term for the flame of a candle. Low, A.-S. lig, is universal.

—A field of flax.

—The ignis fatuus, or Will o' the Wisp. Jackatawad is a provincial term for this phenomenon.

—Eating a sloe. A North country riddle, given by Brockett. Girnigaw is the cavity of the mouth.

—Gaffer Was. From Yorkshire.

—The same as the last. From Norfolk.

—A pen. Riddles similar to this are current in most languages. Mr.Stephens has kindly furnished me with the following one obtained in Sweden:

The pen has been a fertile subject for the modern riddle-writer. The best production of the kind was printed a few months ago in the Times newspaper, contributed by Miss Agnes Strickland.

—He had a IV legged stool with him, and taking away the left-hand numeral, there remains V.

—A milkmaid.

—An amplification of the above, the milkmaid of course sitting on a three-legged stool.

—A nail in the bottom of a ship.

I do not know the solution of this riddle. A bucker is a bent piece of wood by which slaughtered sheep are hung up by their expanded hind legs, before being cut out.

—A nettle. MS. Harl. 1962, xvii. cent.

—Abindon, or Abingdon, in Berks. An ancient rebus given in Lelandi Itin. ed. 1744, ii. 136.

—A pump. MS. Harl. 1962, xvij. cent.

—The dew. From the same MS.

—A bee. From the same MS.

—A man calling to his neighbour for a gun to shoot a deer, and he should have her humbles. MS. ibid.

—A man going over a hill, and a fly lighting on his head. MS. ibid.

THE FOUR SISTERS.

Several versions of this metrical riddle are common in the North of England, and an ingenious antiquary has suggested that it is a parody on the old monkish songs! It will remind the reader of the Scottish ballad of Captain Wedderburn's Courtship,

THE DEMANDS JOYOUS.

It is not generally known that many of our popular riddles are centuries old. Yet such is the fact, and those whose course of reading has made them acquainted with ancient collections are not unfrequently startled by observing a quibble of the fifteenth or sixteenth century go the round of modern newspapers as a new invention, or perhaps as an importation from America! A few months ago, an instance of this species of resuscitation took place in the publication of the question, "Which were made first, elbows or knees?" This was an enigma current in England in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and is found in a manuscript in the British Museum written before the close of the sixteenth century.

The earliest collection of riddles printed in this country came from the press of Wynkyn de Worde in the year 1511, in black letter, under the title of the "Demaundes Joyous." Only one copy of this tract, which was "imprynted at London, in Flete Strete, at the sygne of the Sonne," is known to exist, and it is now preserved in the public library at Cambridge. It is chiefly a compilation from an early French tract under a similar title, but which is far more remarkable for its grossness. The reader may be amused with the following specimens, and perhaps recognise some of them as old favorites:

"Demand. Who bore the best burden that ever was borne?—R. The ass on which our Lady rode when she fled with our Lord into Egypt. D. What became of that ass?—R. Adam's mother did eat her. D. Who is Adam's mother?—R. The earth.

Demand. What space is from the surface of the sea to its greatest depth? — R. A stone's cast.

Demand. How many calves' tails behoveth to reach from the earth to the sky? — R. No more but one, an' it be long enough.

Demand. Which is the most profitable beast, and that which men eat least of? — R. Bees.

Demand. Which is the broadest water, and the least jeopardy to pass over? — R. The dew.

Demand. What thing is that which never was nor never will be? — R. A mouse making her nest in a cat's ear.

Demand. Why doth a dog turn himself thrice round before he layeth down? — Because he knoweth not the bed's head from its foot.

Demand. Why do men make an oven in the town? — R. For because they cannot make the town in the oven.

Demand. How may a man know or perceive a cow in a flock of sheep? — R. By sight.

Demand. What alms are worst bestowed that men give. — R. Alms to a blind man, for he would willingly see him hanged by the neck that gave it him.

Demand. What thing is that which hath no end? — R. A bowl.

Demand. What people be they that never go a-procession? — R. Those that ring the bells in the mean time.

Demand. What is that that freezeth never? — R. Hot water.

Demand. What thing is that that is most likest unto a horse? — R. That is a mare.

Demand. What thing is that which is more frightful the smaller it is? — R. A bridge.

Demand. Why doth an ox lie down? — R. Because he cannot sit.

Demand. How many straws go to a goose's nest? — R. None, for lack of feet.

Demand. Who slew the fourth part of the world? — Cain, when he killed his brother Abel.

Demand. What man is he that getteth his living backwards? — R. A ropemaker.

The reader will please to recollect the antiquity of these, and their curiousity, before he condemns their triviality. Let the worst be said of them, they are certainly as good as some of Shakespeare's jokes, which no doubt elicited peals of laughter from an Elizabethan audience. This may be said to be only a negative kind of recommendation, and, indeed, when we reflect on the apparent poverty of verbal humour in those days, the wonder is that it could have been so well relished. The fact must be that we often do not understand the greater part of the meaning intended to be conveyed.

Halliwell, James Orchard. Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales. London: John Russell Smith, 1849.

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