For Want of a Nail

DESCRIPTION: "For want of a nail the shoe was lost, For want of a shoe the horse was lost, For want of a horse the rider was lost, For want of a rider the battle was lost, For want of a battle the kingdom was lost, And all for the want of a horseshoe nail."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1640 (first three lines in Herbert's Outlandish Proverbs, according to Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: clothes horse battle
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 370, "For Want of a Nail" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #786, p. 291, "(For want of a nail the shoe was lost)"
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 36, "For Want of a Nail" (1 text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 169, "For Want of a Nail" (1 text)
Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes, p. 157, "For Want of a Nail" (1 text)
Roud #19527
NOTES [105 words]: The improbable Katherine Elwes Thomas, The Real Personages of Mother Goose, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1930, pp. 79-82, claims this is about Henry VIII, Wolsey, and the Reformation. Of course, she also claims Henry VIII was "daringly capable," rather than a bloody-minded narcissist, so that will tell you how seriously to take that idea.
With tongue more firmly in cheek, but also with more grounding in reality, Leonard Smith, Chaos: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 2, points to this as one of the earliest examples of chaos theory: a small cause having large but highly unpredictable effects. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.4
File: OO2370

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