Ingenious Devices

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 290, 12 January 1945, Page 9

Ingenious Devices

Most of our nursery-rhymes date from Tudor times and just after, and a large number are concerned with the religious quarrels of those days. The devices to which the adherents of the various sides resorted to publish their criticisms is seen from the following verse, published in 1655. If read straight through it appears to be an expression of Protestant faith, but if read in two columns, down each side, up to and from where commas have been inserted, a very different viewpoint is found. I hold as faith, what England’s Church allows What Rome’s Church saith, my conscience disavows, Where the King is head, that Church can have no shame, The flock’s misled, that holds the Pope supr preme. Where the altar’s drest, there’s service scarce divine. ‘ The people’s blest, with table, bread and wine, He’s but an ass, who the Communion flies. Who shuns the Mass, is Catholic and wise. Hardly less thinly-veiled in their significance, nursery-rhymes were created to mock Henry VIII. and his plundering of the monasteries.

To the same troubled times can be traced the rhyme > of Little Jack Horner. It is ‘known that Jack Horner was the steward of the Abbot of Glastonbury.* When Henry took over

the monastery, Horner was given the title-deeds of the monastery properties to carry to the King. These were hidden in a ple for safety, but it is said that, by accident or design, the crust was broken and Horner took out the "plum" of the title deeds to the manor of Mells, which his family possesses to the present day.