This Old Man
on 10.02.06, 10:39pm in life • digg this • comments (1)
As my oldest son (who will turn 3 in Feb) gets more into music, I’ve been particularly paying attention to the lyrics to kids songs, trying to understand or figure out their origins. For example, check out "This Old Man":
This old man, he played one;
He played knick-knack on my thumb (or on a drum).
With a knick-knack, paddy whack,
Give a dog a bone;
This old man came rolling home.
Pardon my naivety, but just what the hell does this mean? While certain nursery rhymes have interesting origins around the bubonic plague (according to Wikipedia this is just a rumor), like "Ring Around the Rosie" or references to Mary I in "Three Blind Mice", I can’t seem to find any information about "This Old Man".
Michael Brundage (October 5, 2006 @ 2:20 pm)
I looked up This Old Man awhile back for the same reason. There’s a page at http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=63833 and if you believe everything written there, apparently it dates back to at least c.1870 and the tune is supposedly “the Italian Montferina, a dance-tune much used for nursery-songs and games since it came to England in 1810.” The word “paddywhack” is apparently another name for the spinal column, as in giving the dog the spine from an animal.