Little Jack Horner

For people with a similar name, see Jack Horner.

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William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for Little Jack Horner, from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose

Little Jack Horner is a nursery rhyme. Roud Folk Song Index 13027

Rhyme

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner,

Eating a Christmas pie:

He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum,

And said, “What a good boy am I!”

Origins

Little Jack Horner, illustration by William Wallace Denslow.

Jack was actually John Horner, steward to Richard Whiting, the last abbot of Glastonbury Abbey before the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII of England. Legend has it that, prior to the abbey's destruction, the abbot sent Horner to London with a huge Christmas pie which had the deeds to a dozen manors hidden within it. During the journey Horner opened the pie and extracted the deeds of the manor of Mells in Somerset. The manor properties included lead mines in the Mendip Hills, hence "He pulled out a plum" from the latin (plumbum) for lead. While records do indicate that Thomas Horner became the owner of the manor, both his descendants and subsequent owners of Mells Manor have claimed that the legend is untrue.

A 16th-century rhyme noted

"Hopton, Horner, Smyth and Thynne:

When Abbotts went out, they came in."

The first publication date for "Little Jack Horner" is 1725, but all the common English nursery rhymes were long in circulation before they appeared in print.

Other versions

Another version was printed in The Beano in a joke on nursery rhymes:

Little Jack Horner

Sat in a corner

Eating a huge Christmas pie

He should have checked the sell-by date

After all, it was mid-July

The character of Jack Horner appears in the Fables comic book by Bill Willingham, where it is revealed that he is also most of the other Jacks featured in fairy tales, nursery rhymes, etc. The now-grown Jack is a chancer, amiable for the most part, but not overly competent, as a rule; as such, most of his get-rich-quick schemes are doomed to failure.

He also appears in "The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds", a short story by Neil Gaiman, as a hard-boiled detective investigating the murder of Humpty Dumpty.

The following alternative has circulated without attribution:

Diminutive John Horner

Seated in a mural intersection

Masticating pastry

Inserted his pollex dexter

And, extricating a delectable fruit, exclaimed:

"O! Am I not prodigiously precocious?"

Bob Dylan referred to the rhyme in a lyric, "Little Jack Horner's got nothing on me," in the song "Country Pie" on his Nashville Skyline album.

Jack Horner is also mentioned in the song "Ain't Misbehavin'", written by Andy Razaf, Thomas "Fats" Waller and Harry Brooks: "Like Jack Horner, in the corner, don't go nowhere, what do I care..."

British Glam-rock band Slade also used a reference of this rhyme in "Did yer mama ever tell ya".

Comedian Jackie Vernon came up with this nightclub-terminology version: "Little Jack Horner sat in a corner; no cover, no minimum."

The following version, with commentary, was written by Dave Morrah as Heinrich Schnibble for the Saturday Evening Post:

JOHANN HORNER

Der smallisch Johann Horner
Ben gesitten in das corner
Der Yuletiden strudel gestuffen.
Der thumber in-gesticken
Und out-gepullen quicken
Mit burnen under blisters gepuffen!

Der oldisch rhymer ben claimen Johann is outgepullen ein plum mit braggen, "Ach! Ich bin ein gooten boy!" Is ein mistooker. Iss gooten youngischers ben gesitten in das corner? Nein. Johann ben ein littlisch schtunker under der fader und mutter ben outgaben der punishen. Ich ben gethinken iss better ein backwhacken. Und midout strudel. (Source: Fraulein Bo-Peepen And More Tales Mein Grossfader Told, by Dave Morrah, 1953.)

References

• William Stuart Baring-Gould and Ceil Baring-Gould, The Annotated Mother Goose: Nursery Rhymes Old and New, Arranged and Explained, New York: Bramhall House Publishing, 1962