ratmmjess, posts by tag: folklore is fun - LiveJournal

You all know about murder ballads, of course--ballads which tell the story of a murder. And you know that Olde Time England had an enormous murder rate; if I'm remembering correctly, Oxford had well over a thousand murders per year for several decades in the...er...13th century? 14th? (If pressed I can track down the citation, but it would take me a while) (Historical murder statistics is an unexpectedly absorbing topic, to read and--judging from the comments of article-writers--to research and write).

But you really have to read some of the murder ballads to understand how hard and cold people could be back then. Gangsta rappers had nothing on these people. Here's two to give you an idea of what I mean:

I'm sure everyone remembers jumprope rhymes, from when they were children, right? This list will undoubtedly refresh your memory--it's scary how many of those came back to me when I looked at them.

Back in the 1920s a lot of those were altered to include Charlie Chaplin's name--you can see a few examples of these farther down the page. One not included here was coined around 1917:

Charlie Chaplin went to France
To teach the ladies how to dance,
And this is what he taught them--
First the heel, and then the toe,
Skip and a hop and away you go.
Salute to the king, bow to the queen,
And turn your back on the Kaiserine.
 

However--and here's what piqued my interest about this little phenomenon--in Utah, during World War Two, the last line became


Maybe there's some Mormon folklore about a crippled old king I don't know about. If not, I can't help but wonder why Utahan tots would be sticking up their nose to the Fisher King, especially during WW2. Surely they'd want him healed, so the wasteland of Utah could be redeemed? Unless, of course, these were Fomorian children, descendants of those who fled to Utah after the Battle of Mag Tured...?

"Belief in fasting upon a person was strong in England as late as the 16th century. A certain Mabel Brigge was hired by another woman to fast upon a certain man, ostensibly to effect the return of stolen money, but actually to effect his death. Mabel was executed in 1538 for causing the death of a man by fasting. He stumbled and broke his neck before her fast was over. This kind of fasting was called the Black Fast and was believed in as a potent spell. It was abolished by the church before the end of the century." [Needless to say, the roleplaying world needs the definitive Elizabethan rpg. I'd hope stuff like this would be a part of it]

The cucking-stool, "a chair in which disorderly, and especially scolding, women or cheating shopkeepers were exposed and sometimes immersed for punishment by public derision; often confused with ducking-stool and sometimes called choking-stool. The original idea was evidently to punish by the embarrassment of being seen publicly on a stool intended for private use, since the cucking-stool was made to resemble a close-stool and since, more particularly, the word 'cuck' meant to defecate. The ducking of the prisoner, chair and all, in a stagnant pond, was a later refinement. The 'coking-stole' was in use in Cornwall in the 13th century and is frequently referred to in English literature thereafter until the 18th. The latest recorded punishment thereby was in Leominster in 1809." [That's a part of Regency life not often referred to].