I Had a Little Nut Tree

DESCRIPTION: "I had a little nutmeg, 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 all of crimson.... She asked me for my nutmeg...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1939 (Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland); first printing appears to have been in one of the Tom Thumb songbooks (n.d. but c. 1790)
KEYWORDS: royalty food courting
FOUND IN: US(NE)
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, pp. 210-211, "I Had a Little Nut Tree" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 381, "I had a little nut tree" (2 texts)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #130, p. 106, "(I had a little nut tree)"
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 83, "I Had a Little Nut Tree" (1 text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 53, "I Had a Little Nut Tree" (1 text)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #228, "I had a little nut tree" (1 text)
Roud #3749
NOTES [1028 words]: Folklorists, ever desperate for an event upon which to hang a song, have connected this to the visit of Juana (Joanna) of Castile (the future Juana the Mad, 1479-1555, queen of Castile from 1505), the mother of the future Emperor Charles V. Juana visited England in 1506 during the reign of Henry VII. Apparently, according to the Opies, this hypothesis was adopted in Edith Sitwell's 1946 Fanfare for Elizabeth, who pictures it being sung to the daughters of Henry VIII.
This has the sort of problems that usually arise when modern scholars try to over-explain a nursery rhyme. For starters, Juana's father Ferdinand of Aragon was not King of Spain; he was King of Aragon, and it was not until Juana succeeded him in 1516 that Spain was properly a united kingdom. (Though, in fairness, Ferdinand was regent of Castile after his wife's death, so one might loosely call him King of Spain.)
Problem #2 is the dating; there is no hint of the existence of the song at the time of Juana's visit (although see below on "I have a new garden").
Problem #3 is the word "nutmeg"; the nutmeg tree grows natively only in parts of the Molucca Islands. Europeans didn't even discover them until the late sixteenth century (see the notes to "Of All the Birds"), and they could not have been known in England at the time of Juana's visit. Possibly there was some word other than "nutmeg" used in the original version, or there was a meaning for "nutmeg" which has been so completely forgotten that it does not appear in dictionaries, but if so, what?
It's also worth noting that, even if you project this song back 250 years before the earliest known version, there is still no real reason to connect it to Juana. Why not connect it to, say, Catherine of Aragon, Juana's sister, who happened to marry the son of Henry VII? (Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, in fact does so.)
For that matter, Katherine Elwes Thomas (Thomas, pp. 206-208) connects this not with the Tudors but with the Stuarts; to her, this is about Charles I's visit, before he came to the throne, to the court of Spain to see his intended bride -- international diplomacy being what it was, he was to be married to a woman he had not seen. (Thomas, it should be noted, found far-fetched historical explanations for a vast number of nursery rhymes. I can't help but notice the irony that, in the one instance where a nursery rhyme has a relatively Thomas-like explanation, she produced a different historical fantasy to explain it.)
There is even a a strong indication that the idea of this song predates the Tudors. Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 72 (cf. Patterson, pp. 130-131), prints a much earlier piece which begins
I have a newe garden and new is begunne;
Swych another gardyn know I not under sunne.
In the myddis of my garden is a peryr set
And it wele none bere bern but a pere jenet.
The fayrest mayd of this toun preid me
For to gryffyn here a gryf of myn pery tre.
(Index of Middle English Verse #1302)
In other words,
I have a new garden, and new is begun;
Such another garden know I not under sun.
In the middle of my garden is a pear [tree] set,
And it will no pears bear but an early pear.
The fairest maid of this town prayed (=begged) me
For to graft her a graft/shoot of her pear tree.
Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 73, sees clear kinship of that poem to this, and I agree. And it comes from the Sloane Manuscript (British Library Sloane 2593, cited as MSSloane2593), from the fifteenth century, which also contains "I have a yong suster," the earliest version of "I Gave My Love a Cherry," and quite a few other pieces in the Index. For this manuscript, see the notes to "Robyn and Gandeleyn" [Child 115]. Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 78, regards it as sort of a near-ballad that got deflected into a children's piece; that seems a little more speculative.
Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 73, observes that, in Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale," the two lovers go at it in a pear tree, and so suggests that pear trees were associated with sex.
In earlier editions, I questioned this, but it seems that there is evidence that pears (although perhaps not pear trees) had sexual associations. Karl Wentersdorf, on p. 129 of Patterson, describes several instances: Thibault's Li Romanz de la Poire describes a care where two people each take a bite of a pear and are irresistably attracted to each other. Wentersdorf also sees veiled English references in the romance King Alisaunder and the satire Mum and the Soothsegger.
The lines of Mum and the Soothsegger (904-905) are given by Barr as
Peris and plummes and pesecoddes grene,
That ladies lusty loken much after,
i.e.
Pears and plums and peascods green
That ladies lusty look out for
(I would note however that "lusty" need not mean "desirous of sex.") Barr's note on p 334 claims that "Pears are associated with female sexual appetite in a number of Middle English works" -- but cites only "The Merchant's Tale," the "I Have a New Garden" piece above, and a single line in Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale," comparing Alison to "the newe pere-jonette tree" (line 3248). So it sounds like everyone is citing the same list of references. There probably is an association between pears and sex, but not nearly as strong as that between, say, cherries and sex; I doubt that a mention of a pear automatically made people think of desire.
Whatever the origin of this item, it has inspired various imitations and parodies. Walter de la Mare, Come Hither, revised edition, 1928; #208, prints two under the collective title "Two Nut Trees." The first, credited to "Thomas Anon," simply adds a few lines. The second, by Edith Sitwell, is an independent poem about "The King of China's daughter," but clearly dependent upon this, because it also mentions nutmeg trees and the courting of the princess.
In the incidentals department: I learned this song somewhere along the line, I think from my mother, and my tune is not Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland's (and I know of no other printed traditional tune).
In 1945, Sheila Bishop wrote a short book A Silver Nutmeg and a Golden Pear. It's described as a story for children. I know nothing else about it, but it was clearly inspired by this. - RBW
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