Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

DESCRIPTION: "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells And pretty maids all in a row."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1744 (Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, according to Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: gardening
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (8 citations):
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 342, "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #9, p. 31, "(Mistress Mary)"
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 133, "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" (1 text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 83, "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" (1 text)
Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes, p. 44, "Mistress Mary" (1 text)
Solomon-ZickaryZan, p. 115, "One Dern Eggplant" (1 text, a parody of this but still basically the same text; it's just that "And one dern eggplant" is substituted for the last line)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #335, "Mary, Mary, quite contrary" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Tim Devlin, _Cracking Humpty Dumpty: An Investigative Trail of Favorite Nursery Rhymes_, Susak Press, 2022, pp. 85-90, "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" (1 text)
Roud #19626
NOTES [325 words]: This is one of those pieces for which a vast variety of explanations has been suggested. The Opies mention several religious explanations, but observe that different denominations give different meanings to the symbols. They also mention a possible connection to Mary Queen of Scots, leading them to add that the "pretty maids" might be the Four Maries of "Mary Hamilton" [Child 173]. This speculation goes back at least to Katherine Elwes Thomas, The Real Personages of Mother Goose, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1930, pp. 170-171; it is one of the few instances of a Thomas speculation which is not absolutely absurd.
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel also mentioned Mary Queen of Scots, plus Mary Tudor, and finally the Virgin Mary, in which case the garden has something to do with Mary's virginity.
Devlin, pp. 85-88, discusses the evidence for these hypotheses, none of which can be proved but none of which can be entirely excluded. He has another suggestion, however. He suggests on pp. 89-90 that the Queen Mary is Mary II (reigned jointly with her husband William III 1689-1694). As evidence he points out that Mary II liked gardening, and that "silver bells," "cockle shells," and "pretty maids" are all known names, or nicknames, of garden plants. This also has the advantage that the earliest version of the rhyme, from Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, is relatively contemporary with the events it describes -- there were still some people who remembered William and Mary at the time it was published, and so might remember childhood rhymes about Mary.
On the other hand, in that case, you'd think someone might have said something! It's an interesting hypothesis, the drawback, in this case as with all the others, is that we have absolutely no evidence that this poem is about anyone, royal or not. Even if Devlin is right about the plants being real garden plants (and I suspect he is right), it could just be someone's backyard flower plot. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: OO2342

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