SING a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye;
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing;
Oh, 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 the parlour eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes
When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose.
This rhyme has been a favourite for centuries and there are a number of stories about it. One story focuses upon Henry James Pye (1745-1831), who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1790. Unfortunately, Pye lacked one significant attribute for the role: he was a terrible poet. One of the first tasks given to him was to write an ode in honour of mad King George III’s birthday. The rhyme, peppered with references to feathered choirs and vocal groves, was ridiculed by other writers one of whom, George Steevens, immediately quipped of the long-awaited effort: ‘and when the pye was opened the birds began to sing; was that not a dainty dish to set before the king?’ Pye was later described as the worst Poet Laureate in English history; indeed, his successor, Robert Southey, once remarked: ‘I have been rhyming as doggedly and dully as if my name had been Henry James Pye.’ But let’s get back to the origins of the rhyme…
Songbirds were once a delicacy in England – and in some parts of Europe, especially France, they still are. It takes only a small leap of the imagination to see how food of days gone by could easily have inspired this rhyme. Royal meals have always been constructed to impress and, like showgirls jumping out of cakes, twenty-four live songbirds bursting out of a huge dish covered with an already-cooked pastry lid would certainly have wowed even the most jaded of royal diners. But there’s far more going on here than a banquet.
According to one theory, the king in the rhyme was Henry VIII, the queen Catherine of Aragon, his first wife, and the maid Anne Boleyn, his mistress and wife-to-be. Like several other rhymes, ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ has to do with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In those much more dangerous times, it was crucial to transport sensitive documents around the kingdom in as unobtrusive a way as possible. Like the title deeds in Little Jack Horner, they were sometimes concealed in pies, and many deeds to valuable properties formerly owned by the Church were gifted to the king by black-clad churchmen (blackbirds) looking for a place in government or in Henry’s new Church of England. These political schemers used the opportunity to betray their superiors in return for financial reward or status, but they made highly unreliable allies, as Anne Boleyn was to find to her cost. Once she had given birth to a daughter rather than the much desired male heir, they were ranged against her. A plot was fabricated by Thomas Cromwell and the poor girl was accused of adultery, incest and high treason, leading to her head being cut off in 1536 (down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose).
A much less likely theory, but my favourite nonetheless, is this one. Long before Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley glamorized piracy, there lived a man called Blackbeard (c. 1680-1718), king of the pirates. He lived during an age when ships from the great European nations sailed the seas in search of new lands to be plundered and vast riches returned to the ruler who authorized such activities. Ships’ captains and their crews could become amazingly wealthy if they returned home safely – a big ‘if as pirates often lay in wait for an authorized vessel to complete its voyage before attacking it as it headed for home, laden with bounty.
Blackbeard operated in and around the Caribbean Islands with a fair degree of success, and before long several nations had put a price on his head. As a result, he kept a low profile when recruiting for new crew at the start of each season’s campaign. ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ was his coded message to potential shipmates.
Blackbeard, unlike many pirate captains, paid his crew a decent daily wage of sixpence per man, thereby attracting the best rogue sailors around. The king of the pirates also offered seamen a pocket full of rye whisky a day – a leather pouch holding about a litre of grog – which would have been a big incentive for any sailor, who liked to drown his seafaring sorrows with a liberal dose of alcohol. (Traditionally, almost all of them.)
Blackbeard was fond of a springing surprises and one of his tricks, to lure a target vessel close enough, was to pretend his own boat was in distress and in danger of sinking. Sails would be arranged to make the ship appear as though it was in difficulty or had lost its mast in a gale. Honest sailors from passing vessels would then go to the rescue, little realizing that twenty-four of Blackbeard’s finest drunkards would be lying in wait.
As the target ship drew alongside, Blackbeard’s blackbirds would spring into action, usually with fearsome screams and shouts, jump aboard and quickly overpower the rival crew, killing as many as possible and then forcing those who surrendered to either join their gang or walk the plank.
This obviously refers to the pirate king himself. Money was the motivating factor behind his actions. It didn’t hurt to remind new recruits how lucrative piracy could be.
Blackbeard’s favourite ship, Le Concorde de Nantes, was stolen from the French navy in 1717. He renamed it the Queen Anne’s Revenge and probably liked to remind potential recruits of the celebrated theft.
A maid was pirate slang for a choice ship known to be laden with treasure, while the waters around the Caribbean and Carolinas were referred to as ‘the garden’.
Blackbeard’s ‘birds’ always had to be at the ready, and speed was often their best weapon – a surprise attack on a ship to ‘peck off her nose’ (maids and ships both being feminine) before the crew realized what was happening. All of which explains why ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ could be associated with seafaring ‘kings’ as much as land-based ones. Although personally I doubt it.