froggie went a courtin

Subject: RE: froggie went a courtin
From: GUEST,ETS
Date: 27 Mar 09 - 10:53 AM

Annabelle, I'm wondering if we learned this song listening to the same family. I learned this song that way with the chorus (as I heard it/remembered it) being

"Kemi kimo, in the land of pharoh pharoh, come a rat trap pennywinkle Tommydoodle rattlebugar rat trap kemi won't you ki-me-oh."

Subject: RE: froggie went a courtin
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Nov 13 - 01:43 PM

Nicest version I've heard in a long time - from the cassette album, Here is a Health
Jim Carroll

There was a frog lived in a well
Fall aye linkum laddie
And a mouse that kept a mill
Tidy Ann, tidy Ann, ditherum di dum dandy

One day says the frog, I'm going to court
With my shoes as black as soot

The horse he rode was a big black snail
Saddle and bridle in under his tail

Frog rode up to the mouse's hole
Rapped the door stout and bold

Arrah missie mouse are you in?
Yes I am, I sit and spin

Arrah missie mouse will you wed?
Will you come into my bed?

Now uncle rat is not at home
Without his leave I'll marry none

Uncle rat he then came down
In his silk and muslin gown

Bring in the table til we dine
Change a farthing and bring in wine

Just as the talk was getting slack
In walked a kittling and a cat

Cat seized uncle by the crown
Kittling knocked wee mousie down

Horsey snail rode up the wall
Says the devil is among you all

Frog he then rode round the room
Just like any sporting groom

In came a flock of neighbour's ducks
Soon devoured the backelors up

Now this whole family went to rack
Between the kittling, ducks and cat

(From the singing of Annie McKenzie, Boho, Co. Fermanagh, recorded by Sean Corcoran)

Subject: RE: froggie went a courtin
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Nov 13 - 02:24 PM

The frog/mouse connection dates back to Aesop, though his fable goes in different directions. About a generation before Ravenscroft it had been adapted by Robert Henryson, who gave it an interpretation in terms of Orphic mysticism (the frog is the body, the mouse is the soul, and both are swallowed up while tied together in the river of life by a hawk signifying Death).

Ravenscroft's story ends badly for all concerned but in a different way from Aesop/Henryson, and doesn't make for such a simple allegory (having the soul and body swallowed up by different supernatural forces would be like Rudolf Steiner's myth of the Eighth Sphere). So maybe it's a parody? If so did Ravenscroft make it up, or was it circulating before his time, and if it was, what on earth was its intention? As a kind of contest of rival myths, it's a bit like the processes Robert Graves imagines in The White Goddess, where proto-Christian monotheists tell parodic reinterpretations of pagan traditions.