Little Jack:
Little Jack Horner is a nursery rhyme. It has the Roud Folk Song
Index number of 13027.
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
It is claimed by some that the nursery rhyme is actually about
Little Jack 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.
In popular culture
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
Article text and photo are from the Wikipedia.org article on
the Little Jack Horner children's rhyme. All text is provided by
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