Tinker, Tailor
| "Tinker Tailor" | |
|---|---|
| Roud #802 | |
| Song | |
| Written | England |
| Published | 1695 |
| Form | Nursery rhyme |
| Writer(s) | Traditional |
| Language | English |
"Tinker Tailor" is a counting game, nursery rhyme and fortune telling song traditionally played in England, that can be used to count cherry stones, buttons, daisy petals and other items. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 802. Its American version is commonly used by children for "counting out," e.g. for choosing who shall be "It" in a game of tag.
The most common modern version is:
The most common American version is:
Skipping version from the 70s:
A similar rhyme has been noted in William Caxton's, The Game and Playe of the Chesse (c. 1475), in which pawns are named: "Labourer, Smith, Clerk, Merchant, Physician, Taverner, Guard and Ribald."
The first record of the opening four professions being grouped together is in William Congreve's Love for Love (1695), which has the lines:
When James Orchard Halliwell collected the rhyme in the 1840s, it was for counting buttons with the lines: "My belief - a captain, a colonel, a cow-boy, a thief." The version printed by William Wells Newell in Games and Songs of American Children in 1883 was: "Rich man, Poor man, beggar-man, thief, Doctor, lawyer (or merchant), Indian chief", and it may be from American tradition that the modern lyrics solidified.
A. A. Milne's Now We Are Six (1927) had the following version of "Cherry stones":
The "tinker, tailor" rhyme is one part of a longer counting or divination game, often played by young girls to foretell their futures; it runs as follows:
During the divination, the girl will ask a question and then count out a series of actions or objects by reciting the rhyme. The rhyme is repeated until the last of the series of objects or actions is reached. The last recited term or word is that which will come true. Buttons on a dress, petals on a flower, bounces of a ball, number of jumps over a rope, etc., may be counted.
There are innumerable variations of the rhyme:
A 2013 variation:
In Nella Larsen's novel,"Passing",it is referred to by character Irene Redfield. "Rich man,poor man, Beggar man,thief, Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief."
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