The Silver Sage
Are you ready? Come on along and read some homespun poetry as well as a jot and tittle regarding distinguished poets and their works. Gael offers a positive balance of her own nostalgia notes and poetic meanderings with those of others. [Editor's note: Gael no longer contributes to Silver Planet, but we have made her archived blog entries available as a service to our readers.]
Over the Moon
I asked if anyone had a favorite moon poem. An honest reader posted a comment that it was Hey Diddle Diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the best part being the cow jumped over the moon.
I smiled at the comment and then began some serious research into that
particular nursery rhyme. After all, nursery rhymes help children with
rudimentary vocabulary skills and were a fundamental building block in
the early education of today’s baby boomers. Hey Diddle Diddle was one of my favorites too. Who wouldn’t laugh at the vision of a cow jumping over the moon?
Like me, you probably read it, memorized it, and said it to yourself when you were young. Now you recite it to your grandbabies. I never delved into the authorship. Perhaps your parents were scholarly types who required you to know a little about the authors of nursery rhymes, but I was simply encouraged to enjoy them and doodle a sketch or two.
Hey Diddle Diddle first appeared in print in 1765. The saying “high diddle diddle” dates to Elizabethan times. Even Shakespeare used the expression. I was not aware until now that intrigue surrounded this English nursery rhyme. Only a theory, mind you, but some think the rhyme referred to a scandal that occurred during Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, who reigned in the late 1500s, did not take kindly to scandal within the royal court and confined offenders, royal or otherwise, to the dreaded Tower of London.
Various versions have been written through the years. Hey Diddle Diddle has been sung by the Electric Company and used as a Sesame Street theme. The most attention-grabbing idea? Mapping the poem to the springtime skies of the northern hemisphere. Huh? Really?
Yes! Grab your star chart and think about this from Wikipedia:
| Hey diddle diddle, the Cat (Leo – the Lion) and the Fiddle (Lyra – the Lyre), the Cow (Taurus – the Bull) jumped over the Moon (the Moon); the Little Dog (Canis Minor – the Lesser Dog) laughed to see such sport, and the Dish (Crater – a dish shaped constellation) ran after the Spoon (Ursa Major – the Big Dipper) |
If you are not interested in star charts, that tidbit may not fascinate you, but I found it very engrossing. I learned that the Hey Diddle Diddle pattern of constellations is seen around midnight in mid-February and then lost by June. Who knew!
Hey diddle diddle,
The cat played the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
By Gael Stuart
The Silver Sage Blog
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