There has been an interesting exchange of letters in the newspaper from people recalling rhymes, songs and sayings, usually from their childhoods, and usually said or sung by people who were old then. These old verses are often in dialect or what maybe the remnants of an old and probably forgotten language. I suppose the most famous is the counting system used by shepherds in the north of the country, yan, tan tethera, made more famous by the composer Harrison Birtwistle in an opera.
The letter in the newspaper which particularly interested me was from a man who quoted a song from his Norfolk grandmother in old Norfolk dialect. He wonders if it is a dialect with some meaning, or if it is just nonsense… who can ever know?
There was a little mouse and he lived in a mill
And if he isn’t dead he’s a-living there still
With a shim-sham pommy-diddle rig-dog
bunny-minny ky-mo
Ky-mo nair-o, kilcock air-o
Shim-sham pommy-diddle rig-dog
bunny-minny ky-mo
Sugar, sugar, sugar lally-loon
Sugar on the popcorn, sugar popacoon
Rolts on the banjo, tra-la-la
Caroodle-nicka-wedda-nicka-brawny
English specialises in these ‘flip-flop- words such as shim-sham, they are frozen reduplicative phrases apparently… and Norfolk is full of words used today which are unusual, such as bishy-barney-bee for a ladybird, tittermatorter – see-saw, and pollywiggle meaning tadpole. Even accounting for that there are some very unusual ‘words’ in this little rhyme!
Lois Elsden 