The Found Moorfields Journals

In Three Parts:

Part the First: Of Madness & Melancholy
Part the Second: The Stone of Folly
Part the Third: Divine Lunatics


*Attention: ADULT CONTENT (not so bad....but still adult reading. Thank you)

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Showing posts with label Little Moorfields. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Little Moorfields. Show all posts

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Tom Tell-truth.....



 (The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 1951; pp. 312-3) quote a single verse from James Orchard Halliwell's The Nursery Rhymes of England (1842):

As I was walking o'er little Moorfields,
I saw St. Paul's a-running on wheels,
With a fee, fo, fum.
Then for further frolics I'll go to France,
Where Jack shall sing and his wife shall dance,
With a fee, fo fum.


This seems to come from the ballad of Tom Tell-Truth [c. 1676]

I see St. Paul's steeple run upon wheels, fal la la
I see St. Paul's steeple run upon wheels and in the middle of all Moor-fields,
With a fa la, fa la la la, fa la la la la la la.



The precise locality of these strange happenings is here lost, but it is probable that it was Moorfields as in the broadside edition and the nursery rhyme. This would be an appropriate setting for a nonsense song, for in 1675 the old Bethlem Hospital was moved to Moorfields from Bishops Gate Without.