Chapter 19: Hey Diddle Diddle
Tolkien was seated at the kitchen table, trying to write a letter to his wife Edith, but his mind was wandering; the smell of the sausages Mrs Mac Govan-Crow was frying was distracting him; he folded the letter and placed it to one side. Tolkien wasn’t tired despite having returned to the cottage well after midnight; he was used to such hours: when his lecture preparation and marking were done and the children and Edith had repaired to bed, he would often adjourn to his room and work on his stories and languages until the early hours. He had always managed on little sleep and this morning he had woken sharp at six thirty, and on rising had opened the curtains a few inches to find the world wrapped in thick white mist.
‘Morning Tollers!’ Jack had entered the kitchen, his cheeks red and shiny from shaving, and he walked over to the stove and warmed his hands.
‘Morning Mr Lewis’ said Shona.
‘Morning Jack. Did you sleep well?’
‘Extremely well, for it seems I’ve slept through summer and here we are at winter again!’ He frowned at the mist shrouded garden and shivered. ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ Shona asked. ‘Those sausages smell delicious, Mrs Mac Govan-Crow! I’ll have what the professor here is having! Where’s Owen, Tollers?’
‘He went into the village to get the morning paper with Mr Mac Govan-Crow; he said he’d not be long.’
‘And how did you sleep?’ Jack asked, pulling up the chair beside Tolkien, raising an eyebrow, and waving his fingers at Shona’s baby, Alfred, who sat in a high-chair at the table’s end.
‘Well. I hope I didn’t disturb you; I went for a little walk after you had retired.’
Jack buttered some toast and raised an eyebrow again for Tolkien to continue.
‘To the Swallowhead. I had rather a moment of inspiration on the matter of the question you posed yesterday.’
‘Which question was that?’ Lewis asked, chewing.
‘Why in a landscape of dragons and one-eyed goddesses the river should be named after a dog. And it was Mrs Mac Govan-Crow here who helped provide the answer.’
Shona smiled as she approached the table and handed the men plates of sausages and fried mushrooms.
‘Bravo!’ said Lewis, grinning up at her. ‘And how did you help the professor?’ he asked her.
Shona smiled and shrugged. ‘I just told him a few things about Boann.’ She said, pouring Lewis a cup of tea.
‘Mrs Mac Govan-Crow,’ Tolkien explained, ‘kindly informed me that Boann, ‘white cow’ is referenced in the name of the Milky Way – which is ‘the path of the white cow’ and so I suddenly saw there might be a connection between the river on earth and that river of stars in the heavens...’
Lewis turned, a mushroom-laden fork poised before his lips; ‘You know, at college I had a rather splendid print of Tintoretto’s ‘Origin of the Milky Way’ in my rooms – you know the one, with the babe Heracles being pulled away from Hera’s breast and the milk from her bosom spurting up into the night sky; indeed a river of Milk!’ Lewis lifted the jug of milk from the table and poured it slowly, from a height, into his tea.
Lewis frowned. ‘… but where is the dog?’
Shona laughed. ‘Boann’s dog drowns with her when the river is formed. Ach! And you call yourself an Irishman?!’
Lewis coloured, much to Tolkien’s amusement.
‘The mention of the dog piqued my interest;’ Tolkien said, ‘if the Milky Way is an earthly reflection of the river Boyne, or vice versa, then Boann’s dog, and the bright hound of the Kennet must all somehow relate to the dog-star, Sirius, which stands guarding the banks of the Milky Way.’
Lewis smiled mischievously and turned to the babe Alfred sat in his high-chair and began to sing.
Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle
The cow jumped over the moon
The little dog laughed to see such fun
And the dish ran away with the spoon
Alfred seemed mesmerised by the older man’s puckish grin.
‘Exactly, Jack! Exactly! How did we not see it?’ Tolkien had begun laugh.
Shona looked between the two men, puzzled.
Lewis turned to Shona.
‘You see, Mrs Mac Govan-Crow…’
‘Shona, please!’
‘Shona, it’s a sort of running joke between us – we’re interested, as you know, in the origins of things, words, legends, names – and one of the things we’ve often talked about are nursery rhymes: hey diddle diddle included, well, you see there was a scholar named Halliwell-Phillips who had the wool pulled over his eyes by some joker who convinced him that the rhyme was really Ancient Egyptian and that the cow was the cow-goddess Hathor and the little dog the star Sirius…’ Lewis was grinning broadly.
‘Well, Tollers and I were discussing this just last week in the Bird and Baby – the Eagle and Child, our local pub - we were talking of this very thing, the dog being the star! How did we miss it?!’
‘But what does it really mean?’ Shona asked.
Tolkien turned to her; ‘No one is sure; it’s probably just nonsense. The cat and the Fiddle has been said to come from Canton fidelis, who was an English official in Calias, or Catherine de fidelis, Catherine of Aragon – but the astronomical interpretation is just wishful thinking – you see if the cow is the constellation of Taurus then it could never work - Taurus is always below the path of the moon.’ He looked at Lewis and smiled broadly.
‘Unless?’ Jack said, winking.
Tolkien laughed.
‘Unless – and this was my latest tongue in cheek interpretation – well, imagine a sailor on an early voyage to the Antipodes... once you reach the southern hemisphere the sky changes: the cow DOES jump over the moon, because Taurus is now viewed upside down, and the spoon, which could be the great bear, the ‘big dipper’ (and the dish if that is perhaps crater) due to the southern locality, disappear from their ever-circling position in the night sky... they flee below the horizon unlike the north - they run away...
‘Given that diddle can mean to topple, and the first word of the rhyme was once high, not hey – might it mean:
The sky is overturned
Both Leo and Lyra
Taurus jumped over the moon
Sirius laughed to see such fun
And Crater ran away with the Big Dipper.’
‘The rhyme is in reality nonsense, but it hasn’t stopped people reconstructing it.… come, sing us your man in the moon poem!’
Tolkien reddened. ‘I won’t inflict that on the child, Jack.’
‘What if the cow isn’t Taurus but Boann – if her road is the Milky Way does that go over the moon?’ Lewis asked, suddenly serious, deep in thought.
‘The path of the moon crosses it once a month… I imagine if Boann were to be walking that road she might have to leap over it at some point!’
The two men eyed each other for a few seconds then burst into laughter again.
‘We’ll continue this another time – Halliwell-Phillips redeemed, imagine!’ Lewis said.
‘Would you like more toast, Mr Lewis, Mr Tolkien?’ she asked, bemused.
‘Indeed we would, thank you!’ He turned to Tolkien.
‘I still like my own interpretation – that the cow is jumping over a reflection of the moon in a puddle, like Thomas Traherne’s brother…
‘As he went tripping o’er the King’s high-way,
A little pearly river lay
O’er which, without a wing
Or Oar, he dar’d to swim,
Swim through the air
On body fair;
He would not use or trust Icarian wings
Lest they should prove deceitful things;
For had he fall’n, it had been wondrous high,
Not from, but from above, the sky:
He might have dropt through that thin element
Into a fathomless descent;
Unto the nether sky
That did beneath him lie,
And there might tell
What wonders dwell
On earth above. Yet doth he briskly run,
And bold the danger overcome;
Who, as he leapt, with joy related soon
How happy he o’er-leapt the Moon.
Tolkien laughed.
Just then the door opened and Owen Barfield entered the room, a newspaper under the crook of his arm, closely followed by George, in a collar-less shirt and cap.
‘That’s good timing, Owen! Did you smell the sausages?’ Lewis teased.
Owen smiled. ‘I think we’ll need a cooked breakfast; there’s little heat in the day; we were spoiled yesterday by the sun but I doubt if we’ll see it today through that mist.’
‘It may clear.’ said Shona.
‘If the wind changes.’ remarked George.
‘Well I hope it does – we aim to climb Silbury today; there seems little point if there’s no view.’ Lewis said. ‘You’ve just missed Toller’s solution to the Kennet question, by the way – it’s called the bright dog because it refers to Sirius – the Avebury landscape seems to be a mirror of the heavens!’
Owen raised his eyebrows at Tolkien.
George Mac Govan-Crow walked to the stove and dipped a crust of bread into the sausage fat and began chewing.
‘That’s also in our beliefs,’ he began. ‘‘We Blackfeet call the Milky Way the ‘Wolf Trail’ – there’s a tale that explains it, of course, but it’s a three-pipe tale and for another night! Strange that both tales include dogs, well, a wolf and a dog… the Blackfoot name for Sirius is ‘dog-face’ and he guards the road of the souls. To join the ancestors one must give him food so one may travel the road.’
When he realised the three guests were regarding him in stunned silence he stammered:
‘Did I say something amiss?’
Lewis had risen from the chair and was scratching his head.
‘Not amiss, my good man; puzzling – no…amazing! You see, that’s also what the Ancient Greeks believed, to cross the Styx one would have to bribe Cerberus with meat lest he should devour one’s soul. My word! How can the same story pop up on two different Continents – Continents not linked culturally until Columbus?’
‘Then they must have been linked before Columbus – but way back, before any of our recorded history.’ Tolkien said.
‘The same as the bear myths we talked of last night?’ George asked.
‘Precisely.’
‘Either that’ said George, ‘or some Blackfoot must have got in his canoe a few thousand years ago and come over to teach the Greeks a thing or two!’ he turned and winked at Tolkien, who smiled broadly in return.
Tolkien was seated at the kitchen table, trying to write a letter to his wife Edith, but his mind was wandering; the smell of the sausages Mrs Mac Govan-Crow was frying was distracting him; he folded the letter and placed it to one side. Tolkien wasn’t tired despite having returned to the cottage well after midnight; he was used to such hours: when his lecture preparation and marking were done and the children and Edith had repaired to bed, he would often adjourn to his room and work on his stories and languages until the early hours. He had always managed on little sleep and this morning he had woken sharp at six thirty, and on rising had opened the curtains a few inches to find the world wrapped in thick white mist.
‘Morning Tollers!’ Jack had entered the kitchen, his cheeks red and shiny from shaving, and he walked over to the stove and warmed his hands.
‘Morning Mr Lewis’ said Shona.
‘Morning Jack. Did you sleep well?’
‘Extremely well, for it seems I’ve slept through summer and here we are at winter again!’ He frowned at the mist shrouded garden and shivered. ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ Shona asked. ‘Those sausages smell delicious, Mrs Mac Govan-Crow! I’ll have what the professor here is having! Where’s Owen, Tollers?’
‘He went into the village to get the morning paper with Mr Mac Govan-Crow; he said he’d not be long.’
‘And how did you sleep?’ Jack asked, pulling up the chair beside Tolkien, raising an eyebrow, and waving his fingers at Shona’s baby, Alfred, who sat in a high-chair at the table’s end.
‘Well. I hope I didn’t disturb you; I went for a little walk after you had retired.’
Jack buttered some toast and raised an eyebrow again for Tolkien to continue.
‘To the Swallowhead. I had rather a moment of inspiration on the matter of the question you posed yesterday.’
‘Which question was that?’ Lewis asked, chewing.
‘Why in a landscape of dragons and one-eyed goddesses the river should be named after a dog. And it was Mrs Mac Govan-Crow here who helped provide the answer.’
Shona smiled as she approached the table and handed the men plates of sausages and fried mushrooms.
‘Bravo!’ said Lewis, grinning up at her. ‘And how did you help the professor?’ he asked her.
Shona smiled and shrugged. ‘I just told him a few things about Boann.’ She said, pouring Lewis a cup of tea.
‘Mrs Mac Govan-Crow,’ Tolkien explained, ‘kindly informed me that Boann, ‘white cow’ is referenced in the name of the Milky Way – which is ‘the path of the white cow’ and so I suddenly saw there might be a connection between the river on earth and that river of stars in the heavens...’
Lewis turned, a mushroom-laden fork poised before his lips; ‘You know, at college I had a rather splendid print of Tintoretto’s ‘Origin of the Milky Way’ in my rooms – you know the one, with the babe Heracles being pulled away from Hera’s breast and the milk from her bosom spurting up into the night sky; indeed a river of Milk!’ Lewis lifted the jug of milk from the table and poured it slowly, from a height, into his tea.
Lewis frowned. ‘… but where is the dog?’
Shona laughed. ‘Boann’s dog drowns with her when the river is formed. Ach! And you call yourself an Irishman?!’
Lewis coloured, much to Tolkien’s amusement.
‘The mention of the dog piqued my interest;’ Tolkien said, ‘if the Milky Way is an earthly reflection of the river Boyne, or vice versa, then Boann’s dog, and the bright hound of the Kennet must all somehow relate to the dog-star, Sirius, which stands guarding the banks of the Milky Way.’
Lewis smiled mischievously and turned to the babe Alfred sat in his high-chair and began to sing.
Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle
The cow jumped over the moon
The little dog laughed to see such fun
And the dish ran away with the spoon
Alfred seemed mesmerised by the older man’s puckish grin.
‘Exactly, Jack! Exactly! How did we not see it?’ Tolkien had begun laugh.
Shona looked between the two men, puzzled.
Lewis turned to Shona.
‘You see, Mrs Mac Govan-Crow…’
‘Shona, please!’
‘Shona, it’s a sort of running joke between us – we’re interested, as you know, in the origins of things, words, legends, names – and one of the things we’ve often talked about are nursery rhymes: hey diddle diddle included, well, you see there was a scholar named Halliwell-Phillips who had the wool pulled over his eyes by some joker who convinced him that the rhyme was really Ancient Egyptian and that the cow was the cow-goddess Hathor and the little dog the star Sirius…’ Lewis was grinning broadly.
‘Well, Tollers and I were discussing this just last week in the Bird and Baby – the Eagle and Child, our local pub - we were talking of this very thing, the dog being the star! How did we miss it?!’
‘But what does it really mean?’ Shona asked.
Tolkien turned to her; ‘No one is sure; it’s probably just nonsense. The cat and the Fiddle has been said to come from Canton fidelis, who was an English official in Calias, or Catherine de fidelis, Catherine of Aragon – but the astronomical interpretation is just wishful thinking – you see if the cow is the constellation of Taurus then it could never work - Taurus is always below the path of the moon.’ He looked at Lewis and smiled broadly.
‘Unless?’ Jack said, winking.
Tolkien laughed.
‘Unless – and this was my latest tongue in cheek interpretation – well, imagine a sailor on an early voyage to the Antipodes... once you reach the southern hemisphere the sky changes: the cow DOES jump over the moon, because Taurus is now viewed upside down, and the spoon, which could be the great bear, the ‘big dipper’ (and the dish if that is perhaps crater) due to the southern locality, disappear from their ever-circling position in the night sky... they flee below the horizon unlike the north - they run away...
‘Given that diddle can mean to topple, and the first word of the rhyme was once high, not hey – might it mean:
The sky is overturned
Both Leo and Lyra
Taurus jumped over the moon
Sirius laughed to see such fun
And Crater ran away with the Big Dipper.’
‘The rhyme is in reality nonsense, but it hasn’t stopped people reconstructing it.… come, sing us your man in the moon poem!’
Tolkien reddened. ‘I won’t inflict that on the child, Jack.’
‘What if the cow isn’t Taurus but Boann – if her road is the Milky Way does that go over the moon?’ Lewis asked, suddenly serious, deep in thought.
‘The path of the moon crosses it once a month… I imagine if Boann were to be walking that road she might have to leap over it at some point!’
The two men eyed each other for a few seconds then burst into laughter again.
‘We’ll continue this another time – Halliwell-Phillips redeemed, imagine!’ Lewis said.
‘Would you like more toast, Mr Lewis, Mr Tolkien?’ she asked, bemused.
‘Indeed we would, thank you!’ He turned to Tolkien.
‘I still like my own interpretation – that the cow is jumping over a reflection of the moon in a puddle, like Thomas Traherne’s brother…
‘As he went tripping o’er the King’s high-way,
A little pearly river lay
O’er which, without a wing
Or Oar, he dar’d to swim,
Swim through the air
On body fair;
He would not use or trust Icarian wings
Lest they should prove deceitful things;
For had he fall’n, it had been wondrous high,
Not from, but from above, the sky:
He might have dropt through that thin element
Into a fathomless descent;
Unto the nether sky
That did beneath him lie,
And there might tell
What wonders dwell
On earth above. Yet doth he briskly run,
And bold the danger overcome;
Who, as he leapt, with joy related soon
How happy he o’er-leapt the Moon.
Tolkien laughed.
Just then the door opened and Owen Barfield entered the room, a newspaper under the crook of his arm, closely followed by George, in a collar-less shirt and cap.
‘That’s good timing, Owen! Did you smell the sausages?’ Lewis teased.
Owen smiled. ‘I think we’ll need a cooked breakfast; there’s little heat in the day; we were spoiled yesterday by the sun but I doubt if we’ll see it today through that mist.’
‘It may clear.’ said Shona.
‘If the wind changes.’ remarked George.
‘Well I hope it does – we aim to climb Silbury today; there seems little point if there’s no view.’ Lewis said. ‘You’ve just missed Toller’s solution to the Kennet question, by the way – it’s called the bright dog because it refers to Sirius – the Avebury landscape seems to be a mirror of the heavens!’
Owen raised his eyebrows at Tolkien.
George Mac Govan-Crow walked to the stove and dipped a crust of bread into the sausage fat and began chewing.
‘That’s also in our beliefs,’ he began. ‘‘We Blackfeet call the Milky Way the ‘Wolf Trail’ – there’s a tale that explains it, of course, but it’s a three-pipe tale and for another night! Strange that both tales include dogs, well, a wolf and a dog… the Blackfoot name for Sirius is ‘dog-face’ and he guards the road of the souls. To join the ancestors one must give him food so one may travel the road.’
When he realised the three guests were regarding him in stunned silence he stammered:
‘Did I say something amiss?’
Lewis had risen from the chair and was scratching his head.
‘Not amiss, my good man; puzzling – no…amazing! You see, that’s also what the Ancient Greeks believed, to cross the Styx one would have to bribe Cerberus with meat lest he should devour one’s soul. My word! How can the same story pop up on two different Continents – Continents not linked culturally until Columbus?’
‘Then they must have been linked before Columbus – but way back, before any of our recorded history.’ Tolkien said.
‘The same as the bear myths we talked of last night?’ George asked.
‘Precisely.’
‘Either that’ said George, ‘or some Blackfoot must have got in his canoe a few thousand years ago and come over to teach the Greeks a thing or two!’ he turned and winked at Tolkien, who smiled broadly in return.