Martin Swart/Schwartz, Stoke, and nursery rhymes

Whilst looking up information on the diets of medieval children, particularly the very youngest children (essentially porridge, porridge, and more porridge), I ran across this little rhyme connected to the rising on behalf of Simnel and the Battle of Stoke in 1487:

Martin Swart and his men, sodledum, sodledum,
Martin Swart and his men, sodledum bell.

Walter Scott, in Waverley, renders the lines thus (saying that they came from "an old play" where "the singer boasts: 'Courteously I can both counter and knack/Of Martin Swart and all his merry-men.'"):

Martin Swart and his men,
Saddle them, saddle them,
Martin Swart and his men,
Saddle them well.

Two thoughts sprang to my mind:

1) The structure and scansion seems quite close to that of our old friend "London Bridge", does it not? All it would take for the scansion to match up perfectly would be to add another syllable to "Martin Swart and his men", perhaps by either drawing out "Swart" or adding "all" between "and" and "his".

2) How much faith can we put into Sir Walter as a reliable and accurate transmitter of literature and lore? I seem to recall that great care needed to be taken, along with a few grains of salt, when reading his works.

"Saddle them" and "Saddle them well" sound like a very neat, in fact pat, way of rendering what other sources state are mere nonsense words made strictly for the rhyme's sake. But it's almost too pat, if you take my meaning. (I haven't found anything online about "the old play" from which Sir Walter, and no other source I've been able to find, says the lines come. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.)

Tamara

Tamara, John Skelton wrote this long poem (d. 1529):http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tme/16th/SKELJAP3_TEXT.html

Quoting a part of it:
"With hey troly loly, lo whip here Jak,
Alumbek sodyldym syllorym ben,
Curyowsly he can both counter and knak,
Of Martin Swart, and all hys mery men,
Lord how Perkyn is proud of his Pohen,
But ask wher he fyndyth among his monachords
An holy-water-clark a ruler of lordes."

The poem in its entirety is rather strange; hard to fathom what he's actually talking about. But I assume the part about 'counter and knak' and Martin Swart and 'all hys mery men' is referring to a popular ballad?
(Funny how 'Perkyn' and Crowland are also mentioned in the poem.)
Pansy

Tamara says:

Thanks, Pansy!

Skelton's poem reads very much like a comic satire of Simnel's pretensions, the sort of thing intended to curry favor with the son of the man against whom Simnel rose. Note the first two parts of it:

Of all nacyons under the Heuyn [Heaven],
These frantyke foolys I hate most of all,
For though they stumble in the synnes seuyn [sinnes seven],
In peuyshnes [peevishness] yet they snapper and fall,
Which men the vii deadly sins call,
This peuysh proud this prender gest,
When he is well yet can he not rest.

A swete suger lofe and sowre bayards bun [Bayard being originally the name of a legendary horse, by the 15th/16th c. used mockingly for an old, blind, foolish horse -- hence this verse compares a sugar loaf to a horse's "bun" or buttock]
Be sumdele lyke in forme and shap,
The one for a duke the other for a dun;
A maunchet for Morell thereon to snap,
His hart is to hy to haue any hap,
But for in his gamut carp that he can,
Lo Jak wold be a Jentylman.

Tamara

I bet this will be in a certain book within eleven months.

From: [mailto: ] On Behalf Of khafara@...
Sent: 17 February 2014 20:29
To:
Subject: [Richard III Society Forum] RE: Martin Swart/Schwartz, Stoke, and nursery rhymes

Tamara says:

Thanks, Pansy!

Skelton's poem reads very much like a comic satire of Simnel's pretensions, the sort of thing intended to curry favor with the son of the man against whom Simnel rose. Note the first two parts of it:

Of all nacyons under the Heuyn [Heaven],
These frantyke foolys I hate most of all,
For though they stumble in the synnes seuyn [sinnes seven],
In peuyshnes [peevishness] yet they snapper and fall,
Which men the vii deadly sins call,
This peuysh proud this prender gest,
When he is well yet can he not rest.

A swete suger lofe and sowre bayards bun [Bayard being originally the name of a legendary horse, by the 15th/16th c. used mockingly for an old, blind, foolish horse -- hence this verse compares a sugar loaf to a horse's "bun" or buttock]
Be sumdele lyke in forme and shap,
The one for a duke the other for a dun;
A maunchet for Morell thereon to snap,
His hart is to hy to haue any hap,
But for in his gamut carp that he can,
Lo Jak wold be a Jentylman.

Tamara

My belated apologies to Sir Walter Scott -- he probably did indeed get it from an old play, namely one by W. Wager. If you're reading this, J A-H, please take note:

I found the reference in Google's preview portion (the whole book isn't online otherwise I'd have bought it by now) of Michael Orme's Medieval Children. And as it turns out, on re-reading the Orme excerpt, I must apologize to Sir Walter Scott, as he very likely got the ditty from W. Wager's play The Longer Thou Livest, though Wager himself may have picked it up elsewhere. (The reference is on page 143, if you're looking for it in your physical copy.) I was Googling away looking for information on the diets of medieval infants in the nursery and tumbled onto Orme's book and the "Martin Swart" ditty. Curious, I put the search terms "martin swart and his men" into the Google search box and turned up a sheaf of references to Scott's "Waverley" novels.

Interestingly, while the very first reference Google posts is to John Payne Collier's The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of Shakespeare, wherein I found both the "counter and knack" and "Martin Swart..." parts of Scott's cite, these from the pen of John Skelton. Collier's 'Martin Swart' and 'counter and knak' references And here's another reference to it, in Dyce's The Poetical Works of John Skelton: Poetical Works of John Skelton

So that is that. For now.

Tamara