Curly locks curly locks

Curly locks, curly locks wilt though be mine,
Though shalt not wash dishes, nor yet feed the swine,
But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,
And dine upon strawberries, sugar and cream.

I’m not sure there are many ladies around today that sit around on cushions sewing fine seams and eating strawberries and cream!

This illustration is from a lovely book by Kate Greenaway - another illustrator I love – called The April Baby’s Book of Tunes. It is a whole story discussing the rhymes and what is known about them. Bearing in mind this was written in 1900:

“Perhaps she did marry him, and is sitting to this day on her cushion, and has grown dreadfully fat through never moving and eating so much sugar and cream, and hasn’t even the energy to curl her hair any more.”

All the current exhortations to exercise and eat healthily, and the dangers of obesity really chime with this, though perhaps those messages are couched rather more positively these days!?

The book also shows that these ryhmes are often set to different tunes.

(perhaps tunes will be less diverse these days with easy music reproduction and distribution?)

Sing a song of sixpence

Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,
And when the pie was opened, the birds began to sing,
Now wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king.

The king was in his counting house, counting out his money,
The queen was in her parlour, eating bread and honey,
The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes,
When along came a blackbird and pecked off her nose.

Never fails to tickle the little ones as their noses are ‘pecked’ off.  I was amused to find from another Nursery Rhymes website that on the BBC’s Listen with Mother in the 1950s they used to add the following to the end of the rhyme:

“There was such a commotion that little Jenny Wren
Flew down from the tree tops and popped it on again”

Though it doesn’t sing so well to the tune I know.

This lovely illustration again by Walter Crane, from a beautiful book that is called ‘The Sing a Song of Sixpence Picture Book’ and has an illustration for each line of the ryhme.

The idea of birds singing inside a pie is also an idea worth exploring – as Heston Blumental did, by making a pie with homing pigeons in his Medieval Feast on Channel 4 a few years ago.

Mary Mary Quite Contrary

Mary, mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

This amazing illustration by W W Denslow quite accurately depicts the bizarreness of this little ditty, note the cheeky smiles on the bells and cockle shells. I have been singing it in the context of a theme of growing things, the kids like the idea of little people popping up in their garden!

Historically there are possible religious implications and a possible connection with Mary Queen of Scots, but it is only conjecture, as the first print version of this is in the mid 1700s, some 200 years after Mary Queen of Scots, and also the religious upheavals of the Stuart era.

Savez vous plantez les choux

Savez-vous plantez les choux
À la mode, à la mode?
Savez-vous plantez les choux
À la mode de chez nous?

On les plante avec la main,
À la mode, à la mode?
On les plante avec la main,
À la mode de chez nous!

On les plante avec la tête,
À la mode, à la mode?
On les plante avec la tête,
À la mode de chez nous!

On les plante avec le doigt,
À la mode, à la mode?
On les plante avec le doigt,
À la mode de chez nous!

On les plante avec le pied,
À la mode, à la mode?
On les plante avec le pied,
À la mode de chez nous!

On les plante avec le nez,
À la mode, à la mode?
On les plante avec le nez,
À la mode de chez nous!

A traditional French song about planting cabbages with different parts of your body – plenty of giggles to be had! I have a version of this in a beautifully illustrated book of French songs by Anne Rockwell some of which I hope to be able to reproduce.

Pop goes the weasel

Up and down the city road,
In and out the eagle,
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weasel.

Half a pound of tupenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle,
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weasel.

A tune that ‘pops’ up everywhere – we have a jack in the box that plays it, and pops at the right moment, as you’d expect. These lyrics are the ones I know, but there are all sorts of other options out there, perhaps the kids should be making their own up? A version arranged by Charles Twiggs in 1853 is overtly political.

Queen Victoria’s very sick
Napoleon’s got the measels
Sebastopol is won at last
Pop goes the weasel.

Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John
Went to bed with his trousers on;
One shoe off, and one shoe on,
Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John.

A lovely bit of nonsense! The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes suggests this one was well known at the turn of the 1800s, though in those days John wore breeches rather than trousers, or perhaps even stockings, and maybe boots rather than shoes? Might be a good rhyme to illustrate how clothing has changed through the ages. The above illustration is probably from the 1930s when boys wore short trousers!

Dinosaurs and more..

Reception’s theme for the term is Dinosaurs, which presents a problem in terms of older traditional songs as the visual representations of dinosaurs has only recently entered our popular lexicon.

So.. I have a lovely book called ‘Dinosaur Roar’ by Kaye Urmansky and illustrated by Nick Sharratt which has a dinosaur version of ’1 2 3 4 5, once I caught a fish alive’

But I’m starting with today’s animals, and how different animals look to each other in scale, a fly looks small to us, but to the fly we look enormous? Would we look like flies to a dinosaur?!

1. Incey Wincey Spider (small spider)

2. There was an old lady who swallowed a fly (even smaller than a spider but the horse is in the end much bigger than her..)

3. Hickory Dickory Dock (a dinosaur as big as big ben?!)

4. 12345, Once I caught a fish alive (tiny fish, largest animal on the planet is a blue whale.. how does that compare to a dinosaur?)

5. I went to the animal fair (monkeys using an elephant as a slide – dinosaurs have long necks..)

6. Un elephant se balancait (an elephant on a spiders web, would that work?)

Un éléphant qui se balançait
se balançait sur une toile d’araignée
Et comme il trouvait ça très amusant
Il fit venir un deuxième éléphant

Deux éléphants qui se balançaient
se balançaient sur une toile d’araignée
Et comme ils trouvaient ça très amusant
Ils firent venir un troisième éléphant

Trois éléphants qui se balançaient
se balançaient sur une toile d’araignée
Et comme ils trouvaient ça très amusant
Ils firent venir un dernier éléphant

6. The elephant goes like this, like that, OR The wooly mammoth goes like this, like that, OR The dinosaur goes like this…

7. Five little dinosaurs bouncing on the bed

8. Down in the forest where nobody goes..

Theres the most enormous dinosaur washing his clothes…
There’s a big fat dinosaur having a doze…
There’s a medium-sized dinosaur blowing his nose…
Theres a tiny little dinosaur smelling rose…

9. 12345 five fat dinosaurs take a dive, 678910 time to fill the swamp again

10. The prehistoric animal brigade (get up and stomp around!)

Song lists for a materials theme, with some harmony singing

This is a song list I’ve devised for a year 2 class (6-7 years) whose theme this term is Materials, and also a focus on St Lucia (the Caribbean Island). I’m also keen to introduce them to a bit more part singing, so I’m joining forces with another Mum to do some rounds.

As usual I format it in the form of a story..

So we travel to the river’s edge in London in the olden days – think Thames at Deptford, and spy a pussy cat ..

Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been? Could be done as a call-response perhaps?

Long ago houses built of wood, in 1666 there was a great fire in london  – picture of fire?

London’s Burning

London Bridge is broken down, broken down, build it up

London Bridge is broken down

Some things don’t really burn as wood does, they melt – lots of metals are like this.

Great Tom is cast

Casting is the process of melting the metal and banging it into the metal shape.

Remember we are by the river’s edge

But then I hear more bells from over the water, this time in France, where they speak French ..

Frere Jacques

But we might want to sail to St Lucia on one the ships we saw by the Thames in Deptford -

My bonny lies over the water, my bonny lies over the sea

A sailor went to sea sea sea,
A sailor went to chop chop chop,
…… knee knee knee
…… heel heel heel
……. toe toe toe
……. sea chop knee heel toe, sea chop knee heel toe, sea chop knee heel toe

At which point they all collapse in a heap!

Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clements

Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clements,
You owe me five farthings, say the bells of St Martins,
When will you pay me, say the bells of Old Bailey,
When I get rich, say the bells of Shoreditch,
When will that be, say the bells of Stepney,
How should I know, says the big old bell at Bow,
And here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes chopper to chop off your head.

I’d love to take the kids on a walk around London (though it might be too far for their little legs!) to show them some of the churches of this song. The sound of church bells is still a feature of my little corner of London as occasionally they have bell ringers at my local church, but more often than not, the noise of the church bells is rather drowned out by the sirens! From a historical point of view perhaps this helps to commuicate how significant the sounds of bells were in the soundscape of London pre-automobiles. In fact, the following song in ‘The Baby’s Opera’, the Walter Crane book from which the illustration below is taken, is called ‘St Pauls Steeple’ and has a very bell like melody as well.

It is of course a very old song, and there are all sorts of variations to the lyrics around. There is a game to go with it, where the child passing under the arch (as beautifully illustrated by Walter Crane above) at the moment of the ‘chop’ finds themself caught, and placed behind one side of the original arch.. culminating in a tug of war with the original arch holders in the middle. I’ve never tried it with any of my groups but will when the right occasion arises!

Ah! Vous dirai-je, Maman

Ah! vous dirai-je, maman,
Ce qui cause mon tourment?
Papa veut que je raisonne,
Comme une grande personne.
Moi, je dis que les bonbons
Valent mieux que la raison.

Roughly translated:

Ah! I tell you mummy,
What is causing me torment?
Daddy wants me to reason
Like a grown-up
Me, I say that sweets
are worth more than reason.

The song first appeared in print the mid 1700s, 1761, 1771 depending on what you read. The tune you will recognise as Twinkle, Twinkle, Baa Baa Black Sheep, or even the Alpabet song..

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote an amazing set of variations on the tune in the 1780s.

I love this version by Lucienne Vernay et les Quatre Barbus (a French group from the late 50s who made several albums of French childrens songs), which is a nod to the Mozart arrangements, though not using them in their entirety.