He Marched Them Up to the Top of the Hill
| "The Grand Sometime Duke of York" | |
|---|---|
| Nursery rhyme | |
| Published | 1642 |
| Songwriter(due south) | unknown |
"The Grand Old Knuckles of York" (besides sung as The Noble Knuckles of York) is an English children's nursery rhyme, often performed as an action song. The eponymous duke has been argued to be a number of the bearers of that title, specially Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (1763–1827) and its lyrics take become proverbial for futile activity. It has a Roud Folk Song Alphabetize number of 742.
Words [edit]
Statue of Frederick, Duke of York, in Waterloo Place, Westminster, London
A modern version is:
Oh, the grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the height of the loma,
And he marched them downwardly again.When they were upward, they were upward,
And when they were down, they were downwards,
And when they were only halfway up,
They were neither up nor down.[1]
Origins [edit]
Richard Tarlton in the 1580s with his pipe and tabor
Like many popular nursery rhymes the origins of the song have been much debated and remain unclear. Unusually the rhyme clearly refers to an historical person and debates accept tended to circulate around identifying which Duke is being referred to in the lyrics.[1] The lyrics were not printed in their mod form until relatively recently, in Arthur Rackham'due south Mother Goose in 1913.[2] Prior to that a number of alternatives have been found including a notation that in Warwickshire in 1892 the song was sung of both the Knuckles of York and the King of France; from 1894 that information technology was sung of Napoleon.[i] The oldest version of the song that survives is from 1642, under the title 'Old Tarlton's song', attributed to the phase clown Richard Tarlton (1530–1588) with the lyrics:
The King of French republic with forty 1000 men,
Came upwards a colina and so came downe againe.[3]
Every bit a consequence, the statement has been made that it may have been a common satirical verse that was adapted as advisable and, because it was recorded in roughly the modern form, has go fixed on the Knuckles of York.[1] Candidates for the duke in question include:
- Richard, Duke of York (1411–1460), who was defeated at the Battle of Wakefield on 30 December 1460. Richard's ground forces, some 8,000 strong, was awaiting reinforcements at Sandal Castle in Wakefield (the castle was built on top of a Norman motte). He was surrounded by Lancastrian forces some three times that number, but chose to sally forth to fight. Richard died in a pitched battle at Wakefield Dark-green, together with between 1 third and one half of his army.[iv]
- James II (1633–1701), formerly Duke of York, who in 1688 marched his troops to Salisbury Evidently to resist the invasion from his son-in-law William of Orange, simply to retreat and disperse them as his support began to evaporate.[5]
- The almost mutual attribution is to Prince Frederick, Knuckles of York and Albany (1763–1827), the second son of King George Three and Commander-in-Chief of the British Army during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.[1] His nearly significant field command was during the Flanders Campaign of 1793–94. Despite the British troops having some success against the French, in the summer of 1794 the Duke was obliged to retreat into the Netherlands and he was subsequently recalled to England.[6] Flemish region having something of a reputation for being flat, the specific location of the "colina" in the nursery rhyme has been suggested to exist the town of Cassel which is built on a hill which rises 176 metres (about 570 feet) above the flat lands of French Flanders in northern France.[1] Apart from the ducal title in the song and the events of their lives at that place is no external evidence to link the rhyme to any of these candidates.
Song [edit]
"The K Old Duke of York" is likewise sung to the melody of "A-Hunting Nosotros Will Go".[7]
Dutch version [edit]
A Dutch adaptation of the song replaces the Duke of York with Maurice, Prince of Orange (1567–1625), whose practice of training mercenaries (completely new, and mocked at first) became famous following his success in war. It is not known when the British song crossed the North Sea, but nowadays information technology is well-known within the Dutch scouting movement.[8]
| De held prins Maurits kwam | The hero Prince Maurice came |
References [edit]
- ^ a b c d e f I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford Academy Printing, 1951, second edn., 1997), pp. 442–443.
- ^ East. Knowles, Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (Oxford: Oxford University Printing, 1941, sixth edn., 2004).
- ^ J. Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps and Henry Chettle, eds, Tarlton'south Jests: And News Out of Purgatory (Oxford: Oxford Academy Press, 1844), p. xxix.
- ^ J. Swinnerton, The History of Britain Companion (Robson, 2005), p. 149.
- ^ C. Roberts, Heavy words lightly thrown: the reason behind the rhyme (Granta, 2004), p. 44.
- ^ J. Black, United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland every bit a armed services power, 1688–1815 (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 195.
- ^ Cub Scout Songbook. Male child Scouts of America. 1955.
- ^ "De held prins Maurits". Scouting Marca Appoldro. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Old_Duke_of_York
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