The Man in the Moon (nursery rhyme)

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Anonymous illustration from an 1825 reprint of Songs for the Nursery The Man in the Moon.jpg
Anonymous illustration from an 1825 reprint of Songs for the Nursery

"The Man in the Moon" is an English-language nursery rhyme with the Roud Folk Song Index number of 19744. It was first published in 1784 in Gammer Gurton's Garland , a collection edited by the antiquary Joseph Ritson, and has often been reprinted. It was adapted and parodied by George MacDonald and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Contents

Text

From Gammer Gurton's Garland: [1]

The man in the moon
Came tumbling down,
And ask'd his way to Norwich.
He went by the south,
And burnt his mouth,
With supping hot pease porridge.

Illustration by Leonard Leslie Brooke from Andrew Lang's The Nursery Rhyme Book (1897) The Man in the Moon (Brooke).webp
Illustration by Leonard Leslie Brooke from Andrew Lang's The Nursery Rhyme Book (1897)

From Songs for the Nursery: [2]

The man in the moon
Came down too soon,
To ask his way to Norwich;
The man in the south,
He burnt his mouth,
With eating cold plum-porridge.

Background

The man in the Moon is a character with a long history. He figures in medieval folklore as a peasant who has been banished to the Moon as a punishment for stealing thorns or brushwood. [3] He is the subject of one of the Middle English Harley Lyrics, "Mon in the mone stond and strit", dating from c. 1300. [4] He is also mentioned in Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid , in Shakespeare's The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream , [3] in two old English ballads, and in a Jacobite song. [5] Not satisfied with this source material, Katherine Elwes Thomas, an American writer described by one modern commentator as "incomprehensibly imaginative", [3] interpreted the nursery rhyme as a commentary on the later career of the 16th century Scottish political figure Lord Bothwell. [6]

Publication history

It is not known when the nursery rhyme was composed, although one 19th-century writer suggested that a clue might be found in the rhyme's mention, in some versions at any rate, of plum porridge, a once-popular dish superseded by plum pudding when the advent of modern cloth made its preparation possible. [7] "The Man in the Moon" was first published in 1784 by the antiquary Joseph Ritson in his collection Gammer Gurton's Garland. [5] Only one copy of this first edition survives. [8] A text of the nursery rhyme with significant differences from Ritson's appeared in Songs for the Nursery (1805), [5] and the rhyme was included in many other 19th-century collections. [9]

Illustration by Frederick Richardson from Eulalie Osgood Grover's Mother Goose (1915) The Man in the Moon (Richardson).webp
Illustration by Frederick Richardson from Eulalie Osgood Grover's Mother Goose (1915)

Settings

"The Man in the Moon" is traditionally sung to a tune identified by the musicologist Frank Kidson as that of a 16th or 17th century song called "Thomas I Cannot". [10] It has also been published with scores by Frederick W. Mills (as a vocal lancers) [11] and James William Elliott. [12]

Adaptations

George MacDonald included in his 1871 novel At the Back of the North Wind a combined parody of "The Man in the Moon" and "The Cat and the Fiddle", which he called "The True History of the Cat and the Fiddle". [3] [13]

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote two poems based, in whole or in part, on "The Man in the Moon". His "Why the Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon", written in March 1915, was, as the title suggests, a light-hearted explanation of the curious circumstances mentioned in the nursery rhyme. [14] [15] It was first published in 1923 in a volume called A Northern Venture, and later in a greatly revised version in his The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962). [16]

Another Tolkien poem, initially titled "The Cat and the Fiddle: A Nursery Rhyme Undone and Its Scandalous Secret Unlocked" when it was first published in the periodical Yorkshire Poetry in 1923, was a similar tongue-in-cheek attempt to reconstruct a nursery rhyme's original form. [17] [18] Its scene is a country inn where "the Man in the Moon himself came down one night to drink his fill". [19] Tolkien added further lines to this poem when adapting it for an appearance in The Lord of the Rings, and slightly revised it again for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, where it was retitled "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late". [20]

Citations

  1. ↑ Ritson, Joseph (1810) [1784]. Gammer Gurton's Garland: or, The Nursery Parnassus. A Choice Collection of Pretty Songs and Verses, for the Amusement of All Little Good Children Who Can Neither Read nor Run. London: R. Triphook. p. 19. Retrieved 17 May 2025.
  2. ↑ Songs for the Nursery (PDF). London: Tabart. 1808 [1805]. p. 27. Retrieved 17 May 2025.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Waltz, Robert B. "Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon, The". The Traditional Ballad Index. Retrieved 15 May 2025.
  4. ↑ Davies, R. T., ed. (1964). Medieval English Lyrics: A Critical Anthology. Chicago: Northwestern University Press. pp. 71–72, 314. Retrieved 17 May 2025.
  5. 1 2 3 Opie, Iona; Opie, Peter, eds. (1997). The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 346. ISBN   9780198600886 . Retrieved 17 May 2025.
  6. ↑ Thomas, Katherine Elwes (1930). The Real Personages of Mother Goose. Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard. pp. 196–197. Retrieved 17 May 2025.
  7. ↑ N., Fr. (7 June 1884). "Source of Nursery Rhyme". Notes and Queries. 6th Series. 9 (232): 458. Retrieved 17 May 2025.
  8. ↑ Immel, Andrea (15 January 2016). "Only Copy of 'Nancy Cock's Song-Book' (1744) Acquired". Cotsen Children's Library. Princeton University. Retrieved 17 May 2025.
  9. ↑ "Search for Roud no. 19744". Vaughan Williams Memorial Library Catalogues and Indexes. English Folk Dance and Song Society. Retrieved 17 May 2025.
  10. ↑ Kidson, Frank, ed. (1904). 75 British Nursery Rhymes (and a Collection of Old Jingles) with Pianoforte Accompaniment by Alfred Moffat. London: Augener. p. [4]3. Retrieved 18 May 2025.
  11. ↑ "New Edition of Orme & Son's Popular Dance Music. Nursery Rhymes. Vocal Lancers". The Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection. Johns Hopkins, Sheridan Libraries & University Museums. Retrieved 18 May 2025.
  12. ↑ "National nursery rhymes and nursery songs / set to original music by J.W. Elliott; with illustrations engraved by the Brothers Dalziel". Music Manuscripts Online. The Morgan Library & Museum. Retrieved 18 May 2025.
  13. ↑ MacDonald, George (2011). McGillis, Roderick; Pennington, John (eds.). At the Back of the North Wind. Peterborough, ON: Broadview. pp. 200–201. ISBN   9781554810307 . Retrieved 18 May 2025.
  14. ↑ Anderson, Douglas A. (2006). "A Northern Venture". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. London: Routledge. p. 459. ISBN   9780203961513 . Retrieved 18 May 2025.
  15. ↑ Garth, John (2003). Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 65. ISBN   9780618574810 . Retrieved 19 May 2025.
  16. ↑ Lauro, Reno E. (2006). "Poems by Tolkien: The History of Middle-Earth". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. London: Routledge. p. 519. ISBN   9780203961513 . Retrieved 19 May 2025.
  17. ↑ Carpenter, Humphrey (1977). J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. London: Unwin. p. 269. ISBN   9780049280373 . Retrieved 19 May 2025.
  18. ↑ Hargrove, Gene (2006). "Adventures of Tom Bombadil". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. London: Routledge. p. 3. ISBN   9780203961513 . Retrieved 19 May 2025.
  19. ↑ Kullmann, Thomas; Siemann, Dirk (2021). Tolkien as a Literary Artist : Exploring Rhetoric, Language and Style in The Lord of the Rings. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 246. ISBN   9783030692988 . Retrieved 19 May 2025.
  20. ↑ Shippey, Tom (2006). "Poems by Tolkien: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. London: Routledge. p. 516. ISBN   9780203961513 . Retrieved 19 May 2025.
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