I had a little nut tree…

I had a little nut tree is easily one of my favorite nursery rhymes. There has always been something, to me, beautiful and mysterious about it. Of all the nursery rhymes, this is the only one that has ever had a touch of the profound and reminds me of the mystical poems one would otherwise expect from a poet like Rumi.

I had a little nut tree,
Nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg,
And a golden pear;

The King of Spain’s daughter
Came to visit me,
And all for the sake
Of my little nut tree.

Her dress was made of crimson,
Jet black was her hair,
She asked me for my nut tree
And my golden pear.

I said, “So fair a princess
Never did I see,
I’ll give you all the fruit
From my little nut tree.”

I danced o’er the water,
I danced o’er the sea,
And all the birds in the air,
Couldn’t catch me.

If any of you are already familiar with this rhyme, then I’m sure you’re probably aware that it has been associated with actual events in English history.The poem was first recorded in 1797, printed in London in the Newest Christmas Box. At a later date, the antiquarian James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (who devoted himself to antiquarian research, specifically English literature, and later to a Life of Shakespeare) asserted that the poem was much older. Halliwell-Phillips was a man who loved literature. More importantly, and judging by his later interest in Shakespeare, he was keenly interested in the history behind the literature. When he gave up textual criticism in the 1870’s, he devoted himself to piecing together the particulars of Shakespeare’s life. This revealing bent for biography and explication is important when considering his opinions on the origin of A Little Nut Tree. As concerns this rhyme, Halliwell-Phillips wrote [this first link will take you to Google books and a reprint, I think, of the actual book from which the quote comes]:

“The following perhaps refers to Joanna of Castile, who visited the court of Henry VII in the year 1506.

‘I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear,
But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear;
The King of Spain’s daughter came to visit me,
And all was beacuse of my little nut tree.
I skipp’d over water, I danced over sea,
And all the birds in the air could not catch me.'”

[Notes and queries, Volume 72, by William White p. 521]

Because of my abiding interest in all things science, I’ve learned the value of skepticism. That extends to literary scholarship. Worth knowing is that Shakespeare scholarship was, and still is, rife with speculation, excess and outright fraud. I haven’t found anything to suggest that Halliwell-Phillips engaged in that sort of excess, but he was also a man of his times. If no information was forthcoming then speculation was fair game — the responsibility of the scholar, it seems, was often to speak even if there was nothing to be spoken of. This was a time when reputation often trumped the truth.

The first thing I wondered was whether the The Little Nut Tree was a fake. Don’t think it’s not possible. More than a few modern scholars speculate that some of the nursery rhymes in Mother Goose were cooked up. The 18th and 19th century was rife with forgers, the most famous being William Henry-Ireland. A recent book was written on Ireland called The Boy Who Would be Shakespeare. Or consider the struggling poet James Macpherson. He only gained real success when he fabricated the mythical Gaelic bard Ossian. He announced:

“Though the poems now published appear as detached pieces in this collection, there is ground to believe that most of them were originally episodes of a greater work … by a careful inquiry, many more remains of ancient genius, no less valuable than those now given to the world, might be found in the same country where these have been collected. In particular there is reason to hope that one work of considerable length, and which deserves to be styled an heroic poem, might be recovered and translated, if encouragement were given to such an undertaking.”

The English of the 18th and 19th century were besotted with their “newly” discovered literary past. The true genius of Shakespeare was just beginning to be appreciated and the corpus he left behind would have made any nation proud. The British, naturally, wanted more. They began looking in dusty pantries, the shelves of old libraries, and any other nook that might yield a new literary treasure (and fame). If it couldn’t be found, then arrangements could be made. To this day, scholars dispute the provenance of Double Falsehood. Just in the last decade, the Shakespearean scholar Brean Hammond made a name for himself by once again (just as the original scholar Lewis Theobald almost 300 years before) trying to link a forgery (at worst) to Shakespeare.

Collecting old sayings and nursery rhymes was undoubtedly part of this general besottment with literary history. There’s no reason to exclude the possibility that there wasn’t a touch of fraud in that collecting as well. Scholarly fidelity was understood a little differently. If a little ditty could be passed off as original, then what harm in that? It’s not as if they were forging a Shakespeare play or a fifth biblical testament. The world could stand one more nursery rhyme and the perpetrator could go to his grave knowing, in some small anonymous way, that a piece of himself had attained literary immortality. Not all the Mother Goose rhymes may be original, but there’s no way to know.

Fortunately, the modern scholar can narrow down the odds. For a rhyme like Monday’s Child, one can find precedent going all the way back to the 1500’s (and before). There are parallels, and poems like Monday’s Child are mentioned, in passing, by writers during the 17th century. These sorts of clues suggest that Monday’s Child is probably not a fake and could date back hundreds of years before it was officially recorded in the 19th century.

There’s no similar precedent for Little Nut Tree, but we do get some verification. In the same passage already quoted above, William White mentions that one “Mr. C.W. Penny supplies from memory the same verses, which were taught him about 1842.” Reading between the lines, this tells me that the question of forgery must have occurred to others, and the fact that the poem was being passed on, orally, in 1842, seems to have argued in favor of the rhyme’s provenance (and sufficiently so for those concerned).

This brings us back to Halliwell-Phillips, On what basis does he assert that the rhyme may have stemmed from the visit of Joanna of Castile to the court of Henry VII?

None.

Halliwell-Phillips provides no evidence to support his contention and he doesn’t claim to (which, to me, works in his favor). He writes: perhaps. When you read other analyses of this rhyme on the Internet and elsewhere, and when the analyses are written with an implied certainty, just remember this: It’s speculation. Just as Shakespearean “scholars”, in the past and present, have a rich history of fabricating biography (leading some on the “wild goose chase” of an Oxford, Bacon, or a Queen Elizabethan), Hallewill-Phillips was probably compelled, by the same urge, to speculate on the origins of A Little Nut Tree. (This kind of speculation, by the way, is no different than the speculation surrounding Browning’s My Last Duchess.) All of it makes for a good parlor game and keeps academics in business.

Wikipidia sums up the current thinking on A Little Nut Tree:

The characters in the nursery rhyme are believed to refer to the visit of the Royal House of Spain to King Henry VII’s English court in 1506. The ‘King of Spain’s daughter’ refers to the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. There were two daughters, Princess Juana and her sister Catherine of Aragon. The princess in the nursery rhyme is probably Catherine of Aragon who was betrothed to Prince Arthur, the heir to the throne of England. Arthur died and Catherine eventually married King Henry VIII. It was sad that “So fair a princess” had such a difficult life with Henry as she was the first of Henry’s six wives and discarded by the King to make way for Anne Boleyn. Queen Catherine was much loved by the British who were not fond of her replacement. The young, ‘King of Spain’s daughter’ relates to the young Catherine as a princess, and is immortalised in this old nursery rhyme.

Another site offers a variation on the same:

The characters in the nursery rhyme ‘I had a little nut tree’ are believed to refer to the visit of the Royal House of Spain to King Henry VII’s English court in 1506. The ‘King of Spain’s daughter’ refers to the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. There were two daughters, Princess Juana and her sister Katherine of Aragon. The princess in the nursery rhyme is probably Katherine of Aragon who was betrothed to Prince Arthur, the heir to the throne of England. Arthur died and Katherine eventually married King Henry VIII. It was sad that “So fair a princess” had such a difficult life with Henry as she was the first of Henry’s six wives and discarded by the King to make way for Anne Boleyn. Queen Katherine was much loved by the British people who hated her replacement, who they called ‘The Great Whore’. The young, beautiful princess relates to the young Katherine, as a princess and is immortalised in this old nursery rhyme.

The first question to ask is this: Why did Halliwell-Phillips suggest that Joanna of Castile (6 November 1479 – 12 April 1555) was the subject of the poem? No answer is forthcoming. There’s nothing in the poem to suggest Joanna of Castile but for the fact that the rhyme mentions “the King of Spain’s daughter”. (Joanna of Castile was briefly a guest of a younger Henry VIII due to a shipwreck.) This is probably why later scholars decided a more likely candidate would be Catherin of Aragon. (If we’re going to play this game, then the facts have to fit — at least a little.)

“I had a little nut tree…”

This is where interpretations of the poem remind me of Baconians or Oxfordians reading Shakespeare. It’s easy to read into poetry evidence that isn’t there and that’s because poetry is notoriously figurative and open to interpretation. (That’s largely what makes poetry so powerful.) So, if we want the poem to fit the facts, this is how we read the poem:

I had a little nut tree

This line refers to the genitals of Prince Arthur, Henry the VIII’s older brother. From there, we enter a hall of mirrors where speculation fits the poem to history and history to the poem.

Nothing would it bear

This is said to refer to either Arthur’s impotence or to infertility. (I personally think this is a peculiarly modern misinterpretation of the line.) Historians argue over whether Catherine and Arthur ever consummated their marriage. The matter was of paramount importance to Henry VIII (who later married her) and some  historians speculate that Catherine expediently lied, claiming that she and Arthur never consummated their marriage. On the other hand, Arthur was quoted as saying (the day after), that “Masters, it is good pastime to have a wife.” This sounds like a young husband who enjoyed himself. Then we enter into the hall of mirrors. Some scholars speculate that Arthur said this in order to cover up his impotence. Others counter that Catherine never raised the subject until Henry VIII evinced interest in marrying her. Worth keeping in mind is that nursery rhymes weren’t meant to be historically accurate. Indeed, if this poem really was inspired by the events surrounding Catherine and Arthur, it could have started out in the spirit of a modern day limerick — a jest and a way to explain occurrences that were steeped in gossip.

On the other hand, it’s also possible that the poem’s meaning is quite straightforward. All boys are born with “a little nut tree” that, by itself, ‘bears nothing’. That brings us to the next two lines.

But a silver nutmeg,
And a golden pear;

Nutmeg was a very valuable and sought after commodity that can be dated back to the medieval cuisine. It was used both as a powder and (more importantly as concerns our rhyme) as an oil (expressed from the nut). Continuing with  our interpretation, it’s hardly a leap to interpret the “silver nutmeg” as a bawdy and humorous reference to Arthur’s semen (presumably “expressed” by Catherine). The pear has a long tradition in pre-Christian and Christian iconography. According to an article by Jules Janick, “The Pear in History, Literature, Popular Culture, and Art“,

The first mention of the pear is found in Homer’s (9th century BC) epic poem, The Odyssey, confirming that the pear was cultivated in Greece as early as three thousand years ago. The pear is included as one of the “gifts of the gods” which grew in the garden of Alcinöus, the King of the Phaeacians…

By this, we learn that the pear was associated with divinity and royalty. Janick adds that “the grouping of pear, apple, and fig would persist in early Christian iconography, probably as a metaphor for sacred trees.” The idea of royal lineage as a sacred tree was a common place. Now, mix this in with the English proclivity for bawdy humor (in just about anything) and we come to Shakespeare:

Your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears, it looks ill, it eats drily; marry, ‘tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry yet ‘tis a withered pear. All’s Well that Ends Well i(1).

The comparison of a pear to a woman’s sex could have been original to Shakespeare, but I think it more likely that he was echoing common bawdy that equated the pear’s shape (just as we do today) to a woman’s belly and hips (pregnant or otherwise). What happens when we put all this together? The golden pear turns into an expansive pun and joke that combines the notion of Arthur’s lineage (the tree) and the golden pear (the royal womb). In other words, all that Arthur has to offer (and promise) is his semen, (the silver nutmeg), and an impregnated womb. The pear, or the womb, is gold because it will carry a royal child. (The mention of gold may additionally echo the gold of the crown.) “Nothing would it bear” can be understood, in the grammar of the day, not as meaning that Arthur is barren but that, because Arthur is a Prince, he can’t offer anything but the gold of his lineage. In other words, the Little Nut Tree, the prince’s genitalia, can produce nothing other than ‘silver’ semen and a ‘golden’ pear because of his royal lineage. Translation: The Little Nut Tree won’t settle for anything less than an equally royal womb. The Prince must wait for a Princess.

• More grist for the mill: From A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and their Significance: Pear / pair, appear / a pair 1.) Testicles. Pear-tree (‘pyrie’ – TWR): penis, as in Chaucer’s, ‘The Merchant’s Tale’, where May, wanting ‘peres’, climbed up the tree to her waiting lover. 2.) Copulate (L copula, sexual union, from co(m)-, with apere, to fasten). Pair: a mated couple; to match, couple. Aperire: to open (F).

Knowing that the nut, then as now, was a pun on testicles, and knowing that Chaucer used the word pear as a pun for the penis, still more possible interpretations arise: Nutmeg = Testicle; Silver = Semen; Golden = Royal; and the Pear equals the Penis. If the rhyme originated during Elizabethan times, then we might well expect all these puns and connotations to have existed at once. I personally find it compelling that Chaucer was punning on pear as far back as the 12th century. This suggests that the provenance of the The Little Nut Tree may be far older than anyone has yet suggested – easily predating the events of Catherine and Arthur.

Lastly, Janick makes the observation that “In many parts of the world the pear symbolizes the human heart which it resembles.” It’s all there.

The King of Spain’s daughter
Came to visit me,
And all for the sake
Of my little nut tree.

The king of Spain’s daughter is visiting in order to be impregnated – for the sake of his “little nut tree”, a euphemism for his royal lineage and its future.

Her dress was made of crimson,
Jet black was her hair,
She asked me for my nut tree
And my golden pear.

This is where the rhyme, as a history of Catherine and Arthur, runs aground. It was well-known during the time that Catherine was fair skinned, blue-eyed and red-haired – (nothing like the common Spanish caricatures). This is precisely the kind of gossip the people of Britain closely followed. Apologists will argue that the originator (or originators) of the rhyme probably had to conceal the true target of the poem but I find that a self-defeating argument. If it’s all but obvious to us, several hundred years later, who was targeted by the rhyme, then it would have been obvious to the court of Henry VIII. Would the change from red hair to “jet black” really have protected anyone? I doubt it. In fact, it might have been more insulting had Catherine’s appearance been described as jet black. This would  not have been considered praise.

I said, “So fair a princess
Never did I see,
I’ll give you all the fruit
From my little nut tree.”

This verse, given what has come before, is all but self-explanatory. Arthur will marry Catherine and they will ‘to bed’, where he will give her all the fruit of his “little nut tree”. Many versions of this poem end here. If this rhyme is truly about Arthur and Catherine, then it would imply that the poem was created before Arthur died.

I danced o’er the water,
I danced o’er the sea,
And all the birds in the air,
Couldn’t catch me.

This beautifully poetic stanza is probably best appreciated as describing the exhalation of lovemaking. A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and their Significance tells us the following:

• Dance Fornicate (‘daunce’ — TWR). Dekker and Middleton, The Honest Whore I, III.ii: a reformed whore reviles her ex-bawd who ‘guard’st the dore/Whilst couples go to daunching’. Danser: to dance, leap (Cot). Leap: coit (C;P). Cf. R2, II.iv.12 ‘ruffians [pimps – OED] dance and leap’. De la panse vient la danse: “when the bellie is full, the breech would be figging’ (Cot.)

As I’ve written already, correspondences like this encourage me to think that the poem is as old or older than the events of Catherine and Arthur, though there’s no way of knowing.  But does all this sound convincing? The thing to remember is that this is all, every bit of it, hearsay and gossip based on speculation by a 19th century amateur, almost 400 years after the fact. I personally think it’s a shame that this lovely rhyme, the loveliest of all nursery rhymes in my opinion,  has been buttonholed as a reference to Catherine and Arthur. I was saddened to read a comment like the following:

“The rhyme is neither charming nor cute, but politically ironic in origin, like most nursery rhymes. This one refers to the arrangement to marry the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon (who was by no means mad) to Prince Arthur (the elder son of Henry VII) and his failure to perform in the marital bed. Other cutesy ‘nursery rhymes’ originating in the Tudor/Stuart period include ‘Four & Twenty Blackbirds’ (ref. the decapitation of Anne Boleyn)’Little Jack Horner’ (ref. a contemporary Fat Cat trying to cream off from the Dissolution of the Monasteries) and ‘Ring-a-Ring of Roses’ which references the Great Plague. Then there’s ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary ..’ – a snide Protestant reference to Catholic Mary Stuart ….. Not so beautiful, but life as it was: viz. people wanting to comment on the activities of their political masters but afraid to do so overtly. (So, whats new?)”

My own speculation (I can’t stress that enough) is as follows: The wordplay, if that is what it is, makes me think the origins of the rhyme are contemporaneous with or predate the events of Catherine and Arthur. The original poem probably was not exactly like the poem that came down to us. It’s possible that the rhyme was associated with the events of Joanna of Castile or Catherine of Aragon but there is no evidence to support this interpretation. (It’s up to you to decide whether you accept this interpretation.) It’s likely that the original ‘girl’ was not “The King of Spain’s Daughter”. This was probably an alteration meant to suit (what were then) current events or could have been for other reasons (which I’ll touch on). If one is going to take the phrase “The King of Spain’s Daughter” literally, as evidence that the poem was intended to describe either Joanna or Catherine, then it’s willfully capricious and arbitrary to then disregard the fact that the rhyme describes the princess as having jet black hair. If the appellation “King of Spain’s Daughter” strongly argues for Joanna or Catherine, then the princess’s jet black hair as forcefully argues against the claim. As I wrote before, it was widely known that both women were fair skinned, blue-eyed and red-haired – qualities that were considered attributes of beauty, not dark or “jet black” hair.

I do not think this rhyme is about Joanna or Catherine.

“jet black hair…”

My own theory as to the identity of the princess with the jet black hair is steeped in folklore and mythology. In 1959, Eric Berne wrote an article called The Mythology of Dark and Fair: Psychiatric Use of Folklore. In the article, discussing northern European mythology, he writes that  “golden hair was an attribute of the pure and innocent maiden, while dark hair suggested the ardent, passionate, inexpressibly terrible temptress who offers the treasure trove of a great sin.” Dark hair and complexion was also seen, in a conventionally literary sense, as less desirable. It’s for this reason that Shakespeare could write his sonnets to the “Dark Lady” in the full knowledge that his audience would “get it”.

Sonnet 127

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;
But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:
For since each hand hath put on Nature’s power,
Fairing the foul with Art’s false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland’ring creation with a false esteem:
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.

Shakespeare’s contemporary, the poet Sidney, also stews in the sexual promise of the dark haired girl (and black’s contrary associations with death and mourning):

ASTROPHEL AND STELLA

VI

When Nature made her chief work – STELLA’S eyes
In colour black why wrapt she beams so bright?
Would she in beamy black, like painter wise
Frame daintiest lustre, mixed of shades of light?
Or did she else that sober hue devise,
In object best to knit and strength our sight?
Lest if no veil these brave gleams did disguise,
They sun-like should more dazzle than delight.
Or would she her miraculous power show?
That whereas black seems beauty’s contrary
She, even in black, doth make all beauties flow!
But so and thus, she minding LOVE should be
Placed ever there, gave him this mourning weed;
To honour all their deaths, which for her bleed.

In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129, the inviting dangers of the dark lady’s sexual excess are made explicit:

Sonnet 129

Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action, and till action, lust
Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme,
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe,
Before a joy proposed behind a dream.
All this the world well knows yet none knows well,
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

The point isn’t that Sidney or Shakespeare wrote the The Little Nut Tree, but that they wrote with the expectation that their audience understood the associations surrounding the dark haired girl and woman — that there is something of the forbidden and alluring about them: libidinous and desirable.

“the King of Spain…”

From what I can tell, the temptation has always been to assume that the “King of Spain” must be a literal historical figure. However, other features of the nursery rhyme don’t quite add up. My own hunch is that the “King of Spain” was more a symbolic reference than a literal one – like the King of the Elves.

If we think of the rhyme as having originated sometime between the 15th and 17th century, we find that relations between England and Spain could be surprisingly cordial and warm. Most importantly, Spain had discovered the Americas. Whole new trade routes were being explored. New and exotic products — herbs, spices and fabrics — were being exported to England, along with stories of fabulous wealth and strange peoples. For a period of time, the King of Spain must have seemed, indeed, like the King of a fabled magical horizon burgeoning with strange delights, untold riches and fantastic stories. (The newfound wealth and trade routes of the Spaniards would increasingly rankle the jealous British aristocracy.) My hunch is that the King of Spain, in The Little Nut Tree, is better  understood as a sort of mythical King in a land that allures with new and exotic wealth and strangeness.

In this light, the idea of the daughter with the jet black hair also makes more sense. She is the archetypal dark haired beauty who epitomizes the allure that is sexual, dangerous, promising, fecund, unknowable but desired. All of the previous analysis still stands, minus the intrusion of Catherine and Arthur. Not only that, but there’s an inner mystical beauty to the rhyme that makes itself felt – and may account for it’s survival.

I had a little nut tree,
Nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg,
And a golden pear;

As before, the nursery rhyme can be read as a little fable — a foretelling of every child’s sexual awakening (and its necessity). The little nut tree is the boy and young man’s genitalia. “I have a little nut tree”, says the mother to the little boy (as though speaking for him) and “nothing would it bear”. It cannot and never will without union (remember the pun on pear and pair) with a girl or woman. He has nothing to offer but a silver nutmeg (his semen) and a golden pear. The golden pair serves as a pun on his penis and symbolizes the fruit of his lovemaking – the golden (their combined love) pear or the impregnated womb.

The King of Spain’s daughter
Came to visit me,
And all for the sake
Of my little nut tree.

The King of Spain is every father and the Princess in the crimson dress and jet black hair is every daughter. The King of Spain is the mysterious, feared and powerful King whose alluring wealth is his mysterious and exotic daughter with the jet black hair. Someday, says the mother through the nursery rhyme, the King of Spain’s daughter will come to visit you all for the sake of your little nut tree.

Her dress was made of crimson,
Jet black was her hair,
She asked me for my nut tree
And my golden pear.

Crimson, as we all know, symbolizes passion and sexuality, but also suggests the blood of a woman’s virginity and her period – what she has to offer for the boy’s silver nutmeg. The daughter’s “jet black hair” (which is always symbolically jet black) symbolizes the daughter’s sexual allure, mystery and libido. She promises pleasure and wealth by asking for the boy’s golden pear (his penis). Their “pairing” (and his child in her womb) will make him a “King of Spain”.

I said, “So fair a princess
Never did I see,
I’ll give you all the fruit
From my little nut tree.”

…a dress made of crimson…

In these lines we can hear the mother, through the rhymes, instructing her son. She will be beautiful. Do not be afraid. Give her all the fruit of your little nut tree. Give her your silver nutmeg (your semen) and your golden pear.

I danced o’er the water,
I danced o’er the sea,
And all the birds in the air,
Couldn’t catch me.

In the closing stanza, without which (in my opinion) the poem is only half the poem it could be, the mother promises the boy the physical and spiritual ecstasy of sexual union, love and lovemaking (in terms he won’t yet understand). The mother could also be describing her own ecstasy, and that of his father’s, during the conception of their son. Read in this light, the poem is nothing if not a beautiful prompting and celebration of love and procreation.

Naturally, the bawdy and humorous elements are there; and the poem is enriched by them.

But there’s also a mystical undercurrent that captures my heart. We can read the little nut tree as our  soul. The King of Spain is the physical world and his daughter, the princess, is the gift he offers our soul — crimson, jet black, sexual and of the earth. The beautiful girl offers us both life and death. If we freely give to her all the fruit of our soul when she asks for it (both sexual and spiritual), the reward will be a physical and spiritual ecstasy — the golden pear. On that day we will dance o’er the water and dance o’er  the sea and not even the birds i’th’air will catch us.

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I danced o’er the water,
I danced o’er the sea,
And all the birds in the air,
Couldn’t catch me.