Origins: Nickety, nackety, noo../Cooper of Fife

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: Janet Elizabeth
Date: 01 Dec 09 - 09:19 AM

Lots of interesting stuff here, thanks you all :-)
I sag it at school and I want to sing it this year for my Scottish country dancing cronies at their Christmas ceilidh (Scottish style). They all know the tune and the dance - see http://my.strathspey.org/dd/dance/6995/ - but they don't know the song. It'll educate them as well as make them laugh.
What makes it an interesting dance is the ten thingies (bars?) to a formation instead of the usual eight.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: beeliner
Date: 01 Dec 09 - 11:45 AM

This is the song that the children are singing in The Birds as Melanie (Tippi Hedren) waits in the schoolyard. VERY spooky in that context!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: Richie
Date: 20 May 13 - 12:29 PM

Hi,

What is an approximate date for "The Tidy Hussey"? 1817? What would be an appropriate tile for an appendix to Child 277?

1) Slattern Wife (couldn't find broadside)
2) Tidy Hussey

Steve couldn't find your article online- is there a link?

Richie

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 May 13 - 02:36 PM

Richie,
Sorry to mislead you. I thought I'd done a Dungbeetle article on it on Mustrad but it appears it was one of those I didn't get round to finishing. I'll check out my notes and post any results on your thread.

Whilst flicking through this thread I found at least one example which has for its text 'The Slattern Wife' as opposed to 277. The big problem is where you only have a single verse and chorus, it could be either song. The chorus and probably the tune seem to be shared particularly in America but also see aforementioned 'Willie went to Westerdale' on the YG site which is definitely not a 277. My Master Title for The Slattern Wife, purely based on frequency of use in Britain is 'Robin-A-Thrush' (all one hyphenated word) Roud number 2792. As I said somewhere on your thread I think I have ancestry going back to the 17thc.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 21 May 13 - 11:10 AM

LOL... I'm an American who did not learn the Wee Cooper o Fife from Burl Ives... I learned it from Alex Campbell's The Best Loved Songs of Bonny Scotland back in 1966. Mom got that album and A L Lloyd & Ewan MacColl's Row Bullys Row from good old Publishers Clearing House when I was in grade school. When we couldn't get additional copies, I confiscated them for myself when I went off to college. sorry, mom.


It did take my some time to figure out all the words through Alex's thick brogue. I'm still trying to figure out all of "Twa Heids are better than Yen", another fine bothy song.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: May Queen
Date: 21 May 13 - 05:50 PM

Rather disgracefully The Wee Cooper O'Fife appears in a singing book I used at school (Singing Together - Autumn 1978) with a disturbing picture of said Cooper beating his wife with a belt...quite how they thought that was appropriate for 7 year olds I have no idea.

This is a horrible song and I wonder why Janet (several posts above)thought it would make her 'cronies' laugh?

I realise the original song was written in a day when this behaviour was accepted but do we really need to keep singing it today?


Just as a aside, in The Bury new Loom I believe the chaps 'pickers' went "Nickety Nack"...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 May 13 - 06:22 PM

The JOKE goes back to the 16th century. It is and was then a piece of fiction, okay so it's a black joke, but if we keep on sanitising like this there'll be no humour left in the world at all! It is not suggesting you should go out and beat your wife, nor is it condoning it. It is a piece of fiction, a joke.
Does this mean we have to cut out all the cuckolding jokes as well? You girls had better stop singing 'O dear O'. It's not fair to men!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: May Queen
Date: 22 May 13 - 04:57 AM

Well well that did make you cross didnt it Steve?!

Ok my response....

"keep on sanitising like this" I was only suggesting the subject of THIS song should be taboo.I am not aware I have promoted the sanitising of other songs elsewhere and I am in fact a fan of cuckolding songs. Had this song ended with the wife cuckolding her vile husband I would have liked it much better :-)

My other point about it being sung in schools (and particularly the illustration mentioned) is also valid. Imagine you are a child who's mother is being beaten at home and you see and read the message in this song...

I am, in fact, opposed to the overly PC generation we live in and feel that much satirical and black humour is lost because of modern attitudes. I do however not see the satire or black humour of this song and feel that certain subjects should not be trivialised.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 22 May 13 - 09:31 AM

good grief... to take a line from the Peanuts comic strip

the song most encountered in my school books for "folk song" was Frankie & Johnnie... how's that for confusing and not a great tune either for kids- imho

and if you go through the verses... he DID NOT actually hit his wife, which is part of the joke...

1. the wife is what we would now refer to as "high maintainence" - not much of a domestic partner in any case

2. he uses the sheepskin as a ploy to threaten her into cooperation

3. the ploy works

the tradition is filled with songs about dark subjects, and if I were teaching kids the "Wee Cooper of Fife" I would see this as an great opportunity to broach the subject of conflict resolution - without violence... though my sad experience has been that there are too few who use the opportunity when it arises.

As I kid I bristled a bit at the thrashing line - but I also felt that the wife was far from being a nice person herself.

also, make no mistake about it... wife beating is a whole different kettle of fish, just like rape has less to do with lust, this is more to do domination and aggression mixed with other negative traits.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 22 May 13 - 04:24 PM

'2. he uses the sheepskin as a ploy to threaten her into cooperation'
In the Child versions it doesn't specify whether he actually puts it into action or not, but in many of the later versions from oral tradition he goes whickety whack on her back (i.e., the sheepskin). In some even later versions the animal skin motif is dropped altogether.

The song is an item from our past, our heritage, and as much as we nowadays abhor the content, it is a dangerous thing to deny the past, even for 7-year-olds. How early should we start teaching the Holocaust for instance? The song could certainly be used as a starting point for the discussion of our violent/mysogenist past, or present even!

As the thread is about 'The Wee Cooper of Fife' I think children would just accept it for what it is as most of us did when we sang it, a jolly little song. I think even a 7-year-old can understand it is an old song and a piece of fiction. If we were to slim down the school repertoire of all references to violence etc. we would end up with a repertoire of those incipid 18th century pastoral pieces and bore them to death.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 22 May 13 - 05:52 PM

At Edinburgh Uni I had briefly a boyfriend from Kirkcaldy . Apart from being largely unintelligible due to his thick Fife accent and far too much beer, he sang this Cooper From Fife song at me, and even in those days I thought it was sexist and male-chauvinist. I told him to piss off.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 23 May 13 - 08:11 AM

Would you have done the same, Eliza, had he sung 'Chevy Chase' (A shortened version I hasten to add), or the rest of the Child ballads that deal with mostly murder, incest and similar bouts of mysogenism?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 23 May 13 - 04:03 PM

Well, he seemed such a stroppy individual, even if he'd sung the Lord's Prayer it would have come across as a rallying cry for the Scottish Nationalists. He hated the English, women, Catholics, Watney's beer (I agree on that one!) Celtic FC, in fact he hated almost everything! He's now a much-revered Professor at a Scottish Uni, so I hope he's toned himself down a bit. By the way, one of his friends (he did have a few) was Gordon Brown! I found him to be rather a vague drip.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Nickety, nackety, noo, noo, noo
From: GUEST,GUEST in southern indiana
Date: 01 May 22 - 09:12 PM

Hello,
None of you will probably ever see this, but the version I grew up hearing was on the "Peter Rabbit" storybook album, on the B-side, which was the story "the Gingerbread Boy". The song was part of this story, sung by a woman, making no mention of wife-beating. The album was made by a group of young actors, I think at a college in Boston, and I got it in 1970.

Subject: RE: Origins: Nickety, nackety, noo../Cooper of Fife
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 May 22 - 09:15 AM

Okay, without condoning any of the violence in 'The Wife Wrapped in Wether skin' I think it needs putting in context. First of all we know the ballad is quite old, at least as old as 1800, probably a lot earlier.
The story is built around the clever idea that he is not allowed to beat his wife for she is of a higher class, but he can beat a sheepskin to soften it. The wife is very lazy and won't do any work around the house that a normal wife of that period would have been expected to do, so he puts the sheepskin on her back and beats that, so that when she rushes off to complain to her rich relatives he can say he was only beating his sheepskin and the wife was holding it for him. Yes, I know, very weak, but you had to be there. Oh, and in the longer versions it does the trick.

Subject: RE: Origins: Nickety, nackety, noo../Cooper of Fife
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 02 May 22 - 01:49 PM

The first time I ever heard the song was whilst watching Alfred Hitchcocks 'The Birds'. Tippi Hedren is sitting near a school and the children are singing it whilst the birds are seen gathering.

Subject: RE: Origins: Nickety, nackety, noo../Cooper of Fife
From: Felipa
Date: 03 May 22 - 04:26 PM

Because the Mudcat website was unobtainable most of today, Laurel Paulson-Pierce started a discussion of this song on the Mudcat facebook page.

There are three versions of Nickety, Nackety aka I Married Me a Wife in the Max Hunter collection.
https://maxhunter.missouristate.edu/songinformation.aspx?ID=657 (links to the other two songs are at the bottom of that page)

Laurel shared a recording by Chubby Parker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt2ZKLlbVTE

None of these songs include the verses about wife-beating which we find in The Wife Wrapped up in a Wether's Skin or The Wee Cooper of Fife.

Subject: RE: Origins: Nickety, nackety, noo../Cooper of Fife
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 May 22 - 05:47 PM

Hi Felipa
The texts of all 4 of those songs are actually versions of a different song that goes back to the 17th century, Master Title, Robin-a-Thrush (Roud 2792). I think what has happened is that the Wee Cooper verses from The Wife Wrapped (Roud 117, Child 277) have become attached to the Robin-a-Thrush chorus in Scotland some time in the dim and distant past. The result has been that we come across other quite different hybrids of the 2 songs. The texts are easily separated if not the choruses.

The sluttish behaviour of the wife in both is quite different (I can itemise these if required but they're easily spotted) and The Robin-a-Thrush song has no wife beating of any kind.

Bronson wasn't aware of this so you find a mixture of the 2 in his volumes.

Subject: RE: Origins: Nickety, nackety, noo../Cooper of Fife
From: Felipa
Date: 03 May 22 - 07:21 PM

yes, Steve, I see the difference between the inept wife and the wife who is too proud to do menial labour.