MY father left me three acres of land,
Sing ivy, sing ivy;
My father left me three acres of land,
Sing holly, go whistle and ivy.
I ploughed it with the ram’s horn,
Sing ivy, sing ivy;
And sowed it all over with one peppercorn,
Sing holly, go whistle and ivy.
I harrowed it with the bramble bush,
Sing ivy, sing ivy;
And reaped it with my little penknife,
Sing holly, go whistle and ivy.
I got the mice to carry it to the barn,
Sing ivy, sing ivy;
And threshed it with a goose’s quill,
Sing holly, go whistle and ivy.
I got the puss to carry it to the mill,
Sing ivy, sing ivy;
The miller he swore he would have her paw
And the cat she swore she would scratch his face,
Sing holly, go whistle and ivy.
This nonsense rhyme, which shows step by ridiculous step how not to run a farm, sheds an interesting light on how things were actually done in the past. An acre of land was originally thought to be the area of farmland that could be ploughed by an ox in half a day. From the seventeenth century, this was standardized to 4,840 square yards, or about the size of a modern football pitch. Thus, however you measure it, three acres represents a reasonably large plot of land.
Ploughing that amount of land would have needed oxen or horses and a proper plough. The crop to be planted – pepper – was very valuable but one that would never grow in Britain’s cold climate. Pepper was a highly prized spice, first used by the Egyptians as long ago as 2000 bc. Thanks to their natural longevity (they could last for many years) and their shortage of supply, peppercorns were once valued as highly as gold and were often used as trading currency. In the Middle Ages, explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo set off on their adventures in the hope of finding new sources of pepper and other valuable spices.
Rather than weeding the fields, the song’s hero uses the brambles as an impossible rake (I harrowed the field with a bramble bush); rather than a scythe he uses a penknife; he gets mice and cats to carry the crops for him, and tries to thresh it with a feather (a goose’s quill). In short, it’s a farmer’s sly song about what might happen if a landowner gifted some of the land to his own offspring (My father left me three acres of land). With no farming know-how, they wouldn’t have a clue how to go about things.