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Sat in the corner, Eating a Christmas pie; He put in his thumb, And pulled out a plum, And said, What a good boy am I!
Little Jack Horner was anything but a good boy — he was a thief and a scoundrel! According to legend, the Bishop of Glastonbury sent his steward, Jack Horner, to King Henry VIII with a Christmas gift — a pie in which were hidden the title deeds to twelve manorial estates. (Hiding objects in pies was a common practice in those days. One recipe even called for blackbirds.) On his way to the king, Jack popped open the pie and stole the deed to the Manor of Mells, a real plum of an estate. To this day the Horner family resides there. |
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 On September 27, 2000, Helen Jenkins wrote: I think you will find that there was not a Bishop of Glastonbury, but there was an Abbot. www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/sceptred_isle/ The about link to the BBC confirms this.
On March 12, 2002, The13thSinner wrote: I would like to note that “Sing a Song of Sixpence” as followed: The rhyme is almost certainly older than 1744, but no earlier publication has been found (at least, not as of 1970). There are earlier indirect references. Shakespeare, in Twelfth Night: “Come on, there is sixpence for you; let’s have a song.” And a 1614 work by Beaumont and Fletcher includes the line, “Whoa, here's a stir now! Sing a song of sixpence!” According to the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, an Italian cookbook from 1549 (translated into English in 1598) actually contains a recipe “to make pies so that birds may be alive in them and flie out when it is cut up.” The ODNR also cites a 1723 cook who describes this as an earlier practice, the idea being that the birds cause “a diverting Hurley-Burley amongst the Guests.” It was not uncommon in the 16th century for a chef to hide surprises in the dinner pie; this is also reflected in the nursery rhyme “Little Jack Horner” (of which more later). So the most obvious explanation of “Sing a Song of Sixpence” is that it reflected an actual practice — baking a pie full of live birds that popped out when the pie was opened. As you state in “Little Jack Homer” about the title deeds and the blackbirds, my guess is that these are about the same thing or very simular things.
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