OLD Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To fetch her poor dog a bone.
But when she got there
The cupboard was bare
And so the poor dog had none.
She went to the fishmonger’s
To buy him some fish,
But when she came back
He was licking the dish.
She went to the cobbler’s
To buy him some shoes,
But when she came back
He was reading the news.
For the origins of this rhyme we need to go back to the sixteenth century, to a prominent figure from this unique period in history, when religious and political sagas dominated the English way of life. Criticizing the rich and powerful – especially the monarch and the Church – was a dangerous pastime that could lead at best to a day in the stocks, where ill-wishers would come along and pelt you with stones or rotten vegetables, and at worst to being hanged, drawn and quartered or burned alive. Anonymously penned rhymes in the guise of nonsense verse for children therefore provided a safe means of letting off steam while also relaying vital information. Some historians believe Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard is meant to represent the Roman Catholic Church, with all the power and resources that particular organization had at its disposal, while the Old Mother is Cardinal Wolsey (c. 1470-1530), one of the most important and powerful churchmen of the sixteenth century, and at one time a close ally of King Henry VIII.
According to this interpretation, when Henry asked for a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (see Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary and Three Blind Mice), he sent Old Mother Hubbard (Cardinal Wolsey) to the Vatican (the cupboard) to obtain a bone (the divorce scroll) for the dog (the king himself). But, on finding that the cupboard was bare (the Vatican wasn’t going to sanction a divorce), Wolsey fell from favour with the king, who took his newly built palace at Hampton Court from him and rejected the Catholic Church into the bargain. The poor dog might not have got his bone but he became definitely much richer in the process.
But how do verses three, four and five fit into all this? For that we need to dig a little further into the history of the rhyme. The earliest publication of the poem was in 1790, as ‘The Adventures of Mother Hubbard and her Dog’, credited to one Sarah Catherine Martin (1768-1826), a British writer responsible for twelve other popular works on Mother Hubbard. It is claimed that a real Mrs Hubbard was housekeeper at Kitley House, Yealmpton, in south Devon where Sarah was a regular guest. But this is just hearsay, unfortunately, as there is no mention of either Sarah Martin or Mrs Hubbard in any of the very detailed literature about Kitley. The old Mother Hubbard, in this case, appears to be entirely fictitious.
In any case, the earliest reference to ‘Old Mother Hubbard’ dates back much further, to 1591, making it entirely possible that both suggested origins could be true. After all, the complete nursery rhyme does give the impression of being two separate poems welded together. The first two verses are very different from the remaining section in terms of construction (four lines instead of three), and the vocabulary of the first part seems simpler and older in style. So there is a strong indication that the first two verses were written at a much earlier date than the rest and could quite easily be about Henry VIII and Wolsey, while the remaining stanzas could have been added by Sarah Martin to give more colour to her series of adventures involving her favourite old lady and dog. At least, that is what I conclude from all this.