Four and Twenty Tailors

DESCRIPTION: Four-and-twenty tailors chase a snail (ending in defeat); depending on the version, four-and-twenty others (blind men, young maids, auld wives) have equally unlikely adventures
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1784 (Gammar Gurton's Garland, according to Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: humorous talltale fight animal
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Kinloch-TheBalladBook XIII, pp. 48-49, (no title) (1 text)
Ford-VagabondSongsAndBalladsOfScotland, pp. 271-272, "Neerie Norrie" (1 text)
Greig/Duncan8 1699, "Quo the Man to the Jo" (8 texts, 5 tunes)
Greig-FolkSongInBuchan-FolkSongOfTheNorthEast #14, p. 2, "The Man to the Green Joe" (2 texts); "Folk-Song in Buchan," p. 23, "The Man to the Green Joe";
Porter/Gower-Jeannie-Robertson-EmergentSingerTransformativeVoice #11, "I'll Sing to Ye a Story" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 495, "Four and twenty tailors" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #90, p. 86, "(Four and twenty tailors)"
Montgomerie/Montgomerie-ScottishNurseryRhymes 143, "(Four-and-twenty Highlandmen)" (1 text)
DT, TAILOR4
ADDITIONAL: W. Christie, editor, Traditional Ballad Airs (Edinburgh, 1876 (downloadable pdf by University of Edinburgh, 2007)), Vol II, pp. 192-193, "The Man to the Green Joe" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #1036
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Hey the Mantle!" (style)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Back o' Benachie
Quo' the Man to the Green Jo
NOTES [188 words]: This is a very amorphous piece; the Digital Tradition version has very little in common with Kinloch's except the initial reference to the Hunting of the Snail, and the meters are different. There seems to be a whole genre of Improbable Scots Songs, many of which are not traditional. But there are so many references in the DT text that I imagine the piece belongs in the Index.
It is perhaps significant that the "heroes" of this alleged "adventure" are tailors, since tailors were regarded as the most feeble of all workers; see, e.g., the notes to "Benjamin Bowmaneer"; also the notes in Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes trying to explain why it took nine, or four-and-twenty, or some other number of tailors to make a man.
The mention of humans fighting snails is interesting because, according to an article in The Conversation in 2023, there was a tendency in illuminated manuscripts, mostly in the thirteenth century but sometimes later, to show humans, often in full armor, fighting giant snails. No explanation for this phenomenon has been found. The article cites this rhyme without having an explanation. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: KinBB13

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