Hickory Dickory Dock: A Song History
"Hickory Dickory Dock" is a nursery rhyme, listed as number 6489 in the Roud Folk Song Index.[1] Its earliest known printing is in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, dated to about 1744.[1] That first version spells the opening words "Hickere, Dickere Dock" and the little book illustrates the verse with a woodcut of a mouse climbing a clock.[2] Only one copy of the book is known to survive, and it belongs to the British Library.[3] The rhyme turns up again in Mother Goose's Melody, and Representative Poetry Online takes its text from a 1904 facsimile of a 1791 London edition of that collection.[4] Iona and Peter Opie gave it entry 217 in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes.[4]
Jean-Pierre Latz and Stollewerck, Tall-case Clock (Regulateur), boulle marquetry with gilt bronze mounts, 1744. Made in 1744, the year of the rhyme's earliest known printing; no mouse is included.
The origins of the verse and its nonsense words rest on theory rather than record: the Ballad Index suggests it may sometimes have been used to choose who is "it" in a game.[1] One theory traces the opening words to a sheep-counting system from Westmorland, in which hevera, devera and dick stood for eight, nine and ten.[2] The words have also been explained as an imitation of a ticking clock.[2] A further suggestion links the rhyme to Richard Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell's son and Lord Protector in 1658 and 1659, a hypothesis the Ballad Index finds unpersuasive.[1]
The astronomical clock in Exeter Cathedral has a hole cut in its door for the cathedral cat, which kept down the mice drawn by the animal fat used to grease the gears; cathedral historian Diane Walker dates a cat door there to 1598.[5] According to Smithsonian Magazine, the clock is sometimes put forward as the rhyme's inspiration, but no source consulted here documents the connection, so it is best treated as legend.[5] Shelley Stevens includes the rhyme in Baker's Dozen #9: My First Dulcimer Book, a set of twelve familiar tunes arranged for young hands, with one-string and two-string versions of most songs, all in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[6]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Hickory Dickory Dock".
- Antiquarian Horological Society: "Of mice and clocks".
- MyLearning: "Page From 'Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book', c.1744".
- University of Toronto Libraries, Representative Poetry Online: "Dickery Dickery Dock".
- Smithsonian Magazine: "Where Can You Find the Oldest Cat Door on Earth?".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Baker's Dozen #9: My First Dulcimer Book".
- Image: Jean-Pierre Latz and Stollewerck, Tall-case Clock (Regulateur), boulle marquetry with gilt bronze mounts, 1744. The Cleveland Museum of Art.