The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #9306 Message #4224456
Posted By: Lighter
20-Jun-25 - 10:22 PM
Thread Name: Origins: This Old Man
Subject: RE: Origins: This Old Man
The words to the song appeared in Baring-Gould and Sharp's "English Folk-Songs for Schools" (London: Curwen, n.d. [1906]):
This old man, he played one, He played nick-nack on my drum; Nick-nack paddy-whack, give a dog a bone, This old man came rolling home.
...two...shoe...
...three...tree...
...four...door
...five...hive...
...six...sticks...
...seven...Devon...
...eight...gate...
..nine...line...
..ten...hen...
A "Devon" is a breed of cattle. B-G & S give no tune.
The English Dialect Dictionary defines "play nick-nack" as a North Country expression meaning "'To make a sound as with castanets or 'bones.'" The earliest example is from a text of "The Keach i' the Creel" printed in 1846.
The song, accompanied by the familiar tune, was printed in Lorraine d'Oremieulx Warner's "Kindergarten Book of Folk Songs" (N.Y.: G. Schirmer, 1923). The lyrics are the same, except for "three-knee," "eight-pate," and "nine-spine."
My grandmother, born in NYC in the 1880s, often used the word "paddywhack" somewhat humorously to mean a slap delivered to a child's bottom.