minstrel: Re: Cutty Wren

[Lisa and Ken Theriot]

JK,

You asked about the Cutty Wren:

[Where are you going, says Milder to Malder
Where are you going, says Festle to Fose
We may not tell you. says the younger to the elder
Out to the green wood, says John the Red Nose]


Well, there's a short question with a long answer.  "Cutty Wren" is one of 
those songs that has been around for so long that it's been fiddled with 
beyond any stretch of knowing what it used to look like.


There's a pretty good discussion at 
http://mysongbook.de/msb/songs/notiz/ncutywren.html where a German lady has 
encapsulated a lot of articles about the song (her ideas are a bit extreme, 
but the precis of previous discussion is worth looking at).  There seems to 
be general agreement that the song dates to around the time of the 
Peasant's Revolt in 1381 and the death of Wat Tyler.  The idea of giving 
"the poor" the incredibly minor largesse of a wren's rib bone is certainly 
in keeping with the sentiments of the day, and as the wren was called "the 
King", it was a safer way to talk about whacking the monarch.


There are extant versions where "Festle" and "Fose" are "vassals" and 
"foes", where "Malder" is "moulder" (as in, rot in the grave).  There are 
later versions reaching to the ridiculous:


Where are you going says Millda to Molda,
Where are you going says Millda again.
Off to the Arndale said Molda to Millda,
To open a shop called Kentucky fried wren.


The names were probably originally representative of political figures, but 
I haven't found any discussion that any significance has been preserved 
with certainty.  I've seen "miller to moulder" used as a comment that "all 
the hard-working common folk were going to die", or as a nod to the recent 
Black Plague, but I think that's a stretch.  "John the Red Nose" is clearly 
somebody unpopular, so it might be Richard II, though he's likely the wren; 
perhaps John of Gaunt, who would be a well-known enough figure to turn up 
in a song (and one of his houses was burned in the rebellion), but that's a 
guess.


Hope that helps.


Adelaide