Long Live the Swing
In the big band swing era, musicians were treated like royalty. The musical court had a Duke, a Duchess, an Earl and even a Chairman of the Board. But there was only one King — Nat “King” Cole. His predecessor in our nursery rhyme was a popular king who ruled Britain in the third century. He loved music and didn’t have to rely solely on a fiddling trio for merriment. His daughter was said to have the most beautiful singing voice in the land. Does that sound familiar, Natalie Cole fans?
On May 14, 2001, Dave Howie wrote:
Old King Cole was a post-Roman occupation British King (circa 7th century). The Island of Britain was split up in many kingdoms then and the people were of the British race, speaking an early form of Welsh.
The pipe referred to is of the musical kind. Music was important in the ancient British culture. The “fiddlers three” is also a reference not only to the importance of music but that he had three musicians (who would be in fact harpists and not fiddlers). The bowl is a drinking bowl and alludes to his hospitality. Roman writings comment on the hospitality of the Britons who would invite a visitor in for a feast with music before asking his business.
On March 26, 2002, C.C.Barfoot wrote:
I looked up “Old King Cole” on your website. What a load of rubbish came from a certain Dave Howie. Nobody knows who the original Old King Cole was. There has been speculation that he was the British King from which the city the Colchester in Essex got its name. This particular king’s daughter, Helena, married the Roman general Constantius who eventually became the Roman emperor and she was the mother of Constantine the Great. But this is purely British legend (see Geoffrey of Monmouth).
If you want to know more, get in touch.
Best wishes,
Cedric Barfoot
On June 5, 2004, Josh Kyle wrote:
I am prompted to respond because I am troubled that the Internet can encourage rude communications that would not be tolerated in normal conversation.
With reference to your two postings on Old King Cole, both postings have some errors despite the strident tone of your second.
Much confusion arises in that there were three High Kings of Britain called Cole (or Coel). One at the time of the Roman conquest, a second Coel of Colchester reputed to be father-in-law to Constantine and the third circa 400 AD who was a King of North Britain (now Southern Scotland) when Rome withdrew from the island.
The third and last Coel (400 AD) would probably have spoken Latin and an extinct language branch of Brythonic most closely related to current Welsh and his exploits are recorded in traditional Welsh poems.
The existence of King Cole is not disputed and therefore is not “purely legend,” although indeed most of the details of his life are not known. The royal house in the UK today traces it’s line back to this last Coel.
For more information Early British Kingdoms is a good start at this address: www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/bios/coelhnt.html
On June 7, 2005, Margriet Annema wrote:
Hello there, I have just been reading Mary contrary as I did not know the text of the full rhyme and was puzzled by the arrival on my doorstep of a bespoken little Mary contrary bear, which I supposed to be a gardener and I could not fit in the bells and shells she was wearing (Now I do, of course) and saw the reference to Old King Cole. I read all the comments, but for us on the continent the rats-invaded town was of course Hameln in Germany, of which I think the story of the pied-piper could have been like this: People knew that after a year of misharvest their towns would be invaded by hungry rats, looking for food, which would be stored there for bad times. They also knew that in a rat-year there was likely to be a widespread illnes of some kind. So, they called upon a ratcatcher to rid the town of rats. He succeeded.
They also knew he was a survivor of the pest and was not likely to become infected by it again, so when , despite the ratcatchings, the pest came to their town, they took a very difficult decision. They send their children out of town with the one person who was likely to withstand the pest best, the ratcatcher. Alas, a few of the children were already infected, the whole group died and I don't think it would have been wise if the ratcatcher had gone back to tell the parents, do you. Now you will want to know about his pipeplaying, we all know children march better when accompanied by music, it would have made leaving easier for them, a bit of a party.
Now what I would like to tell you about “Old King Cole,” it has only slightly to do with the children's rhyme. Has anyone of you heard the version by that other great American singer (who also happens to have a singing daughter) Harry Belafonte. It is a hilarious song about hierarchy in the army, starting with the highest in rank ordering his lower ranged person to do something, which he should have done himself for his king. Of course, this lower person hands the order down to the next lower and so on, until the corporal orders his soldiers to do it. The soldiers, being soldiers, respond in the only logical way to them: “beer, beer, beer, said the soldiers,” “merry man are we, etc.” This song is on the album (vinyl) Belafonmte in Carnegie Hall, late 60-begin 70's.
Margriet Annema, the Netherlands.
On August 21, 2006, David Lander wrote:
Hi
The following is a letter I have had for probably 25 years written in the 1920’s about one of the names in our family tree and even though it’s a long letter, it makes reference to the three King Coels that could add to your interest in the rhyme, including another rhyme.
David Lander of Toronto
ORIGIN OF THE NAME "CULLIS"
by Frederick John Cullis, A.D.S
Kempsford House,
Brunswick Road,
Gloucester, England
October 11, 1923.
My Dear Sir:
My daughter, Professor Winifred Cullis, has requested me to write you something of what I know or believe respecting the certainly interesting surname "Cullis" by which our family, and presumably yours also, have been - through at least recent centuries - known to the world. You also ask if I can indicate where you and I come together in the joint use of the name, and I am here with pleasure, sending you, from memory, some notes respecting our name, and your and our relative claim to it, which I hope may interest you.
Notwithstanding a modern, competitive French origin of the same name, but otherwise applied, there need be no doubt whatever that, for us, our family name is, obviously and historically, a slight modification of "Coilus", the Latinized form of "Coel", this being the correct form of the name of three of the best known British kings. unhappily this genuinely ancient name has been made ridiculous in the silly rhyme of "Old King Cole". This is perhaps the stupidest of all attempts ever made to turn priceless fragments of ancient history to serve the turn of childish amusement and the monumental ignorance of these later times. We have no record of any ancient King Cole, but three kings Coel, occurring in the course of the long period of some five hundred years, remain amongst the most real personages of the remote period to which they belong.
In this connection you may perhaps deem it not unworthy of record, that in an ancient Sussex folk song, these three royal Coels, though at first chiefly connected with the more westerly counties of England, and never, especially as recorded, for Sussex, are not only thus popularly celebrated in their correct number and due order, but personally honoured in a chorus, which to the uninformed, may seen to be without meaning and simply ridiculous. When once explained, however, it is obvious that the song was emphasized by an anvil accompaniment, most "mete for use" by the unconquered and unconquerable early iron workers of the Sussex weald. It is, however, not a local but genuinely British loyalty which they expressed in their really notable refrain:
"Here's to the young Coel, and to the old Coel, and to the old Coel of all,
Twanki-dillo, twankidillo twanki-dil-lo."
The genuiness of the scrap of ancient but doubtless modernized and thus still used folk-lore may be regarded as at least suggested, by the way in which it looks backward successively from the youngest to the oldest of the certainly three Coels, and by its so tolerably indicating as it does in many a rustic gathering even now, the music of the anvils and the hammers of so very long ago.
The French or Norman cullis, a refined product of the cook's art, as also the better known port-cullis, the strong grating of the gate, which by sliding down into grooves still to be seen on either side of many an ancient gateway - denied admission in the time of war, comes from the Latin root, signifying to flow or glide, as may perhaps the present day Coulisse, the well-known name given to the outside body of Parisien financial brokers, through perhaps scarcely the surnames of Jean Calas, the unfortunate 16th century protestant martyr and that of Count Caylus, the somewhat later eminent French antiquary. These may, from our point of view, be regarded as having only and incidental similarity and being altogether too recent to be concerned in the origin of our certainly more ancient name.
You tell us that your original English home was in Pennyn. This is a small Cornish town, a little to the east of Falmouth, with its name aptly descriptive of its one straight street, sloping steeply from the Pen or hill behind, down to the waterside where the one industry of the place, the shaping of blocks of Cornish granite, is still actively maintained, near to the wharves, where they are transferred to the small sailing vessels, for transport to and insertion in the massive dock-walls, bridges and the lake, in many of the great works of the civil engineer all round the long coast line of this old England.
You will doubtless have noted how brick are nearly all the remains of ancient story, whether carved in stone, impressed on metal, or still preserved in documental histories or strangely kept alive amongst myths and fables of folklore. So it is that if you could make sure that your people have not been more recent immigrants but were already located there in the second century, B.C., you might claim this as at any rate suggesting that you represent the senior, original and central stem of all us ancient Cullises, and this owing to the fact that, whilst the first of all the Coels, "the old Coel of all" is universally spoken of as King Coel, one at least of the chroniclers somewhat inappropriately describes him as having been originally a "Duke of Cornwall". Thence he is said to have penetrated, in the year 128 B.C., into this Vale and extending well up into the Cotterswolde Hills. Here there is a considerable parish now and anciently known as Colesbourne, appropriately bounded on its eastern side by a young tributary of the Thames. This name would obviously be more correctly spelled Coelsbourne, with Coel's brook and therefore Coel's boundary to the east. The ruler then Cerin or Corin whose name at any rate is preserved to us in the later name of the Roman Corinium and in its modern form Cirencester. It was also in these later Roman times, in the earlier part of the second century of our era, that on the death of King Marcus, his son Coel, having as the chroniclers say "Spent all his young age in Italy" was summoned home to succeed his father as king of all the regions hereabouts, and to become not the "old Coel" of British tradition and the Sussex song, but also to be commonly recorded by the more polite Latinized form of his British name as King Coilus, thus introducing the original form of the family name which is now both yours and ours.
The still comparatively young Coilus, no doubt, had had a good time in Rome, since he was not only the son of Marcus and the grandson of Arviragus, British Kings tributary to Rome, but the grandson also of the young wife of Arviragus, a Roman princess and daughter of Claudius, given to Arviragus by the Emperor himself on his seventeen-day visit to Britain in the spring of the year L of our era to complete and celebrate the success of his conquest of this even then long coveted Britain. After coming to the kingship Coilus is said to have regularly paid tribute to Rome and to have reigned in great peace for the remaining all too brief twenty years of his life. It is, of course, quite easy to understand that Coilus himself, with his Roman sympathies and dignity, should willingly use this Latinized form of his British name, first introduced with him, but also used more than a century later by the last of the three Coels, then reigning in the extreme east of England, as the stubborn defender of Colchester against the Roman Constantius Cholris, then an aspirant and afterwards an attainer of the imperial dignity. Presently, on making a peace with Coilus, the latter as a seal of amity, gave his daughter Helena to the would-be emperor in marriage and so she became the great Empress of Helena, the reputed discoverer of the true Cross, the foundress of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and by far, the most famous woman known to the history of her time.
If, like me, you have daughters and grand-daughters to boast of. it may amuse them to reflect that if this famous ancient lady had not been in her youth the daughter of a
British king and therefore a princess, and if the common form of address known to us now, had only then been in use, she would have been familiarly recognized as little other than the Miss Cullis which has come to them today.
I have ventured to suggest that if you could only be quite sure that representatives of your line were already in Pennyn as early as the second century, B.C., you might very well claim to represent the original. stem of the whole family, while the rest of us us 10 no better than trace our attainment of it to some far later period, we, here, in particular, not to our knowledge, sharing your Cornish domicile and not acquiring the name until at least 1213 years after you might have so have done, we getting the first clue to the origin of our name only through the famous Domesday Book, the compilation of which was, by Gloucester, at a parliament held here first at that season of the year 1085?
Notwithstanding this, our possible family inferiority to you, I have taken the liberty of noting the fact, that your special service to this our late age of the world, must make you an authority in the business of the details of literary publication.
I hope that what I have thus written will not fail to be of some interest to you and peradventure to many generations of those yet to follow you in the long course of your branch -- or original Cornish stem of our clan, and - who may all the better realize the reality of ancient times and people because of this, their association, with the antiquities and dignities some records of which I have thus had the honour and privilege of sending to you so far away over and beyond what I myself have found long ago to be the stormy Western Sea.
If in this I have not quite succeeded in making you a present of the coveted distinction of a royal pedigree, for you and your heirs forever, I think that you will admit that I have truly succeeded in showing you that our name has an origin not only truly royal, but, as among other family names, of an almost unparalleled antiquity.
With my sincere compliments and congratulations and all manner of good wishes to you and yours, I remain,
Yours very truly
Frederick John Cullis
Comment at the bottom by Ada Ward:
Isn't this a remarkable letter from an elderly gentleman practically blind?
 
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