Re: Mairzy Doats
- Subject: Re: Mairzy Doats
- From: A* L*
- Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 12:04:42 +0000
> --- Carolyn Stone <parthenia@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > As American as apple pie, Tim, written by Jerry
> > Livingston (1909-1987), who
> > went on to write another such called "Bibbiti
> > Bobbiti Boo," and to be
> > elected to the Song Writers Hall of Fame for his
> > efforts, and by Al Hoffman
> > and Milton Drake; the sheet music was copyrighted
> > 1943. "Mairzy Doats" was
> > sung on The Hit Parade for 12 consecutive weeks in
> > 1944, and led the list
> > for two weeks. But I don't know beans about
> > Isoplexis spectrum. Carolyn
> > Stone
> >
>
>Actually Carolyn, I think the lyrics if not the song may predate apple pie In his paper "The Garden outside the Walls" (Dumbarton Oaks 1986) Jean Givens wrote "Curiously there is one other unconventional source that may preserve a memory of the same practice (ie the use of ivy and holly as fodder during medieval periods of famine) - a popular song which always seemed to me to be nonsense, if not nonsense syllables:
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
(Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.
A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you?)
This ditty preserves the trace of a verse that goes back to the
fifteenth century and perhaps even further, for an earlier version of
both the song and of an English children's rhyme is preserved in the
British Library, MS Sloane 4 a medicinal text dating back to about
1450……"
I started to check the reference but found so much material on ivy (and
holly too) in the fifteenth century, including the suggestion in another
Medieval poem that only owls would eat ivy, that my conscience got the
better of me and I went out and did some work. Goats will eat just about
anything but I don't remember any of our trees having ivy on them when
we grazed a flock of sheep through our woods. I had always assumed that
it had been torn off by cattle during hard winters as they have a
higher reach than sheep. Obviously there is scope for a lot of research
here for those bored with watching soaps on the telly….or haven't got
nurseries to run in the incessant rain. Sorry, I don't know anything
about beans either
Anthony
