Old King Cole (I)

DESCRIPTION: Cumulative: "Old King Cole was a merry old soul, and a merry old soul was he. He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl and he called for his --- three." Sundry (soldiers/courtiers) are called in, make suitable remarks, and wait for the next rank
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1776 (Herd); the nursery rhyme form is quoted in William King's "Useful Transactions in Philosophy" (1708/9)
KEYWORDS: cumulative soldier drink humorous bawdy royalty
FOUND IN: US(Ap,SE,So) Britain(England(Lond,North,South),Scotland(Aber)) Canada(Mar) Ireland
REFERENCES (31 citations):
Gardham-EarliestVersions, "OLD KING COLE"
Kennedy-FolksongsOfBritainAndIreland 302, "Old King Cole" (1 text, 1 tune)
Williams-Wiltshire-WSRO Mi 661, "Old King Cole" (1 text)
Roud/Bishop-NewPenguinBookOfEnglishFolkSongs #112, "Old King Cole" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ford-VagabondSongsAndBalladsOfScotland, pp. 151-153, "Old King Coul" (1 text)
Greig/Duncan8 1710, "Old King Cole" (3 texts, 3 tunes)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishSong, p. 19, "Old King Coul" (1 text)
Chappell-FolkSongsOfRoanokeAndTheAlbermarle 107, "Old King Jimmy" (1 text, in which the same first stanza is repeated several times: "Old King Jimmy called for his wine And called for his fiddlers three," "Old Farmer Jimmy called for his wine..." "Old Preacher Jimmy..." "Old Sailor Jimmy...")
Sulzer-TwentyFiveKentuckyFolkBallads, pp. 26-27, "Old King Quine (Cawein)" (1 text, 1 tune)
Bush-FSofCentralWestVirginiaVol4, pp. 39-41, "Old King Cole" (1 text, 1 tune)
Randolph/Legman-RollMeInYourArms I, p. 158, "Old King Cole" (1 fragmentary text, 1 tune)
Morgan/Green-RugbySongs, pp. 106-108, "Old King Cole" (1 text, quite dirty)
Owens-TexasFolkSongs-2ed, pp. 117-118, "Old Kinkaid" (1 text, 1 tune)
Chappell-PopularMusicOfTheOldenTime, pp. 633-635, "Old King Cole" (1 text plus an excerpt, 2 tunes)
Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic II, pp. 171-173, "Old King Cole" (1 tune, which may or may not be related as no text is given)
Creighton-SongsAndBalladsFromNovaScotia 91, "Old King Coul" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear, pp. 96-97, "Old King Cole" (1 text, 1 tune, which runs through the military hierarchy from privates to generals); p. 97, "Old King Cole -- 423 Squadron" (1 text, a version customized for the airmen of the 423 squadron)
Lomax/Lomax-OurSingingCountry, pp. 204-205, "Old King Cole" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 112, "Old King Cole" (2 texts)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #206, p. 143, "(Old King Cole)"
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 140, "Old King Cole" (1 text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 56, "Old King Cole" (1 text)
LibraryThingCampSongsThread, post 57, "Old King Cole Was a Merry Old Soul" (1 mention, from user John5918, posted August 31, 2021)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, pp. 263, 294, 295, 315, 395, "Old King Cole" (notes, with a partial text of a local version on p. 294)
GirlScouts-SingTogether, pp. 96-97, "Old King Cole" (1 text, 1 tune)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #401, "Old King Cole was a merry old soul" (1 text)
OneTuneMore, p. 49, "Old King Cole" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 278, "Old King Cole" (1 text)
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, (Joan McCaskill, collector), "Rope-Skipping Games", Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jun 1948), p. 12, "(Old King Cole)" (partial text with game description)
DT, KNGCOLE* KNGCOLE2*
ADDITIONAL: Tim Devlin, _Cracking Humpty Dumpty: An Investigative Trail of Favorite Nursery Rhymes_, Susak Press, 2022, pp. 93-99, "Old King Cole" (3 texts)
Roud #1164
RECORDINGS:
Martin Gorman, "Old King Cole" (on Voice07)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 20(269), "Old King Cole," J. Harkness (Preston), 1840-1866 ; also Harding B 11(2808), "Old King Cole"
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Old King Cole (II)" (character)
cf. "Old King Cole (III)" (character, form)
cf. "Old King Cole (IV -- Marching Cadence)" (character, form)
SAME TUNE:
Old King Cotton (Fred W. Allsopp, Folklore of Romantic Arkansas, Volume II, p. 199)
NOTES [571 words]: Randolph/Legman-RollMeInYourArms I has a bawdy version of the drinking song and nursery rhyme. - EC
Various explanations have been offered for "King Cole." Colchester is said to have been named after a third century kinglet named Cole; Geoffrey of Monmouth's history, V.6, describes a "Coel Duke of Kaercolun/Colchester" as living in the time of Constantius the father of Constantine the Great -- but Geoffrey made up most of his history. (He also gave us King Lear and much of the basic story of King Arthur). As the Opies comment, "If the old chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth (1147) could be trusted, which he cannot be, King Cole had a daughter who was well skilled in music." They go on to note that the identity of Cole has been discussed at least since the early eighteenth century.
It might be worth noting that, although Geoffrey's history is almost all fiction, and we have no quality sources for British history in the period preceding Constantius, Geoffrey's work is very popular. So it might possibly have inspired this song even though it is not historical.
Scotland had a King Colin (967-971). Various merchants and minor noblemen have also been suggested, and Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel mentions the Celtic kinglet Coel Hen. Needless to say, none of these identifications is convincing.
Also: Pipe? As in tobacco? Remember, tobacco came from the Americas. (Devlin, p. 95, remarks that "pipe" might mean the musical instrument, not the thing you fill with tobacco. True, but how many kings were pipers?) And the violin was not invented until the sixteenth century; before that, there were viols, not fiddles. So if Cole was a real person from the era of Geoffrey or Colin of Scotland, he had a lot of anachronisms hung on him.
Devlin, p. 95, mentions as another possibility one Richard Cole, born 1568, who was a member of the gentry; chronologically he is a better fit, but of course wasn't a king. Another idea is that the song is about a twelfth century Thomas Cole, the subject of one of Thomas Deloney's songs, which brings back the problem of anachronisms and still doesn't make him a king.
I'm amazed no one has tried to change the name to "King Coal." A Newcastle rhyme, perhaps?
Devlin's conclusion, on p. 99, is that it really is about the Roman-era Coel. If so, it simply has to be by a more modern author. (English didn't *exist* in the third century!) So I'd be inclined to look for the author, not the meaning -- knowing the former would probably explain the latter. - RBW
Parody: Bodleian, Harding B 11(2809), "Old King Cole," J. Sharp (London), c.1845 - BS
David J. Bercuson, Maple Leaf Against the Axis: Canada's Second World War, 1995 (I use the 2004 Red Deer Press edition), p. 82, describes the 423 Squadron mentioned in Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear's "Old King Cole -- 423 Squadron" text: "No. 423 Squadron, formed in May 1942, flew the heavy four-engine Short Sunderland flying-boat on convoy escort and anti-submarine patrols until the end of the war. Its crews destroyed two U-boats and shared in the sinking of one other, beginning with U-753 on 13 May 1943." (This was the one it shared in sinking, according to Bercuson, p. 140.) Another U-boat it sank was U-439 -- although the U-boat, even while sinking, managed to shoot down the Sunderland, killing five of the crew and wounding the rest (Bercuson, p. 83). They flew from Castle Archdale, Northern Ireland (Bercuson, p. 143). - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: K302

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