Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme Michael Joseph (bio) Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme. By Chris Roberts. New York: Gotham, 2005. Heavy Words Lightly Thrown by Chris Roberts describes itself as "the seamy and quirky stories behind favorite nursery rhymes," which is a pretty direct way of saying that the book is not meant to instruct but amuse. In a brief note at the end, Roberts says there are many theories about nursery rhymes, and his "book has gone for the most interesting and plausible" of them. Thus, it is a work of scholarship only in the sense the Oxford English Dictionary defines scholarship as applying "to educational attainments of a more modest character." That is, the scholarship of a gentleman. Heavy Words is divided into forty chapters. The chapters are organized around a discussion of a particular rhyme, although several chapters group together thematically related rhymes; so, for example, there is a chapter on "relationship rhymes," another on animals, and a third on [End Page 207] lullabies. Despite the claims of the subtitle, the selection process does not really favor favorite rhymes. (I find it doubtful that "William and Mary, George and Anne" is anybody's favorite.) Again, "seamy and quirky" seems to be of signal importance in deciding what gets treated or left out. Roberts also tells us in his "Preface to the U.S. Edition" that he has included two additional rhymes, "Yankee Doodle" and "Rock a Bye Baby," because of their clear American associations. Presumably, Americans will be more inclined to buy a book that includes rhymes made in America. (Personally, I find it very discouraging that a writer or publisher could make that assumption, although I believe it a safe one.) Making the book more American-friendly, the editors had Roberts write a glossary defining some of the English slang. I think the pronounced English accent of the book is one of its selling points, and the glossary is also a part of the entertainment. In truth, it is hard to decide whether Roberts is being authentically English and Gotham Books, his publisher, is taking advantage of him, or whether he is just laying it on. I would guess a little of both. Although the book makes a few glancing attempts to relate nursery rhymes to children, it does not try to analyze them as children's literature. Therefore, students and scholars interested in the children's literature connection would do better to look at older works such as Opie's Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Lucy Rollin's Cradle and All, Marina Warner's No Go the Bogeyman, and Lissa Paul's verse section of the recent Norton Anthology of Children's Literature. I can say that I found Heavy Words occasionally amusing. Roberts is a clever writer—probably better than most of us—and when he writes about the rhymes themselves he can be perceptive, as he is, for example, when he observes that "the pumpkin shell' in which "Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater" keeps his spouse could almost be rhyming slang for "suburban hell." And, again, when he notes that the words of "Yankee Doodle" were adlibbed "in the manner of a rapper, just to keep the dance hall jumping." He is clearly enhancing our appreciation of nursery rhymes by contextualizing them within ongoing cultural behaviors and as organic elements within a living language. However, there is too much of what we might call gentlemanly sneering in Heavy Words. Roberts's narratives not only tend toward the clubbable loquacity of a tour guide, but they are also imbued with a palpable and persistent disdain for others, which, ironically intended as it doubtless is, gets annoying as heck. "The rhyme is saying that lard-arses won't get anywhere with the birds and might be bullied" he tells us about "Rowley Powley"; and then "if the old rhyme is correct, who will kiss the fatties in the first place?" Presumably, funny names for the overweight are acceptable because they are part of his English shtick. More subtle or pernicious, perhaps, in discoursing on the "favorite rhyme" "As I Was Walking o'er Little Moorfields," Roberts...