Home Again, Home Again

I'm the only person you know who bothers to think of things like this, let alone write about them. But bear with me. Once again, I've uncovered hidden mysteries.

Many moons ago, my father was fond of reciting a certain line of verse as he steered his Pontiac Thunderchief into the driveway of our New Jersey home. "Home again, home again, jiggety jig," he would always announce, as we arrived at 74 Canoe Brook Parkway, the center of my tiny universe during my formative years.  

As we all know, this is part of a much longer nursery rhyme which includes the verse: "To market, to market, to buy a fat pig/ Home again, home again, jiggety jig."  When my wife told me she had never heard of that nursery rhyme, I was taken aback. "It's that one about riding a cock-horse to Banbury Cross," I patiently explained, beginning to recite it in full until she exclaimed that I was driving her crazy. 

As it turns out, I was wrong. The two phrases come from separate and distinct nursery rhymes, although they are structurally similar. Analyzing end-word rhymes, both follow an a-a-b-b pattern: 

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, (a) 
To see a fine lady upon a white horse. (a)  
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, (b)  
And she shall have music wherever she goes. (b)

That's the same rhyming scheme we see in: 

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig, (a)
Home again, home again, jiggety-jig. (a) 
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog, (b)
 Home again, home again, jiggety-jog. (b) 
To market, to market, to buy a plum bun, (c)
Home again, home again, market is done. (c)

I frankly cannot recall from university literature courses whether the number of syllables per line is supposed to follow a strict pattern. But I counted them anyway. "To market, to market" follows a strict classical 11-10-11-10 syllabic structure, bringing to mind titan wordsmiths of the past. Spenser. Marlowe. And Shakespeare, of course. Don't forget Shakespeare. 

The first line of "Ride a cock-horse" has 9 syllables, followed by 10, 11 and 10 syllables respectively. Intriguing: 9-10-11-10. Was it deliberately designed that way? Perhaps there were two more lines, continuing the syllabic pattern to 12-10. Completing the cycle.  What happened to those two final lines, now lost in the mists of time, like in a Dan Brown novel? What secrets lie concealed here? Diabolical conspiracies? Ancient heresies? Buried treasure? What does it all mean? 

Hidden mysteries, indeed. 

Old Silver

On a snowy winter day, I was checking my mail box at the post office. A little girl was trying to buy stamps from a vending machine, putting coins in one by one. 

She was having trouble. One of the coins kept getting rejected. She retrieved it and put it through the machine several times -- same result. The vending machine refused to accept it. 

Finally, she asked me: "Do you have a quarter? The machine won't take this one."

She handed me the coin. I immediately saw that it was a pre-1964 quarter. I gave her old quarter back to her and told her to hang on to it. "It's got silver in it," I told her. Then I gave her a shiny new one. The machine took it.  

Good deed done, I trudged off into the snow with my mail.

The Dumfriesshire Hoard

A treasure hunter with a metal detector has unearthed a hoard of Viking gold and silver, one of the most significant ever discovered in Scotland.  This haul includes a gold cross (photo below), armbands and brooches. Estimated value: 1 million pounds sterling. 

As you can see in the video included in the excellent BBC story (link below), the lucky fellow who found it looks like a stereotypical Scottish hard man. With his burly, broken-nosed air of bald-headed  menace, this guy could easily pass for a Glaswegian knee-breaker in a novel by Denise Mina or Ian Rankin. He also resembles Phil Mitchell on Eastenders and Mike Tindall, Zara Phillips' rugby-playing husband.     

Links:

Viking treasure haul unearthed in Scotland - BBC News, October 12, 2014

1000-year old Viking treasure hoard found in Scotland - Reuters

Dumfriesshire Hoard - Wikipedia

Cross, circa 900 AD, from the Dumfriesshire Hoard.

There also exists a Dumfriesshire Hound. But that is another story.