The truth behind ‘Knick-knack Paddywack’

The truth behind ‘Knick-Knack Paddy whack’? by Kevin Patrick Murphy

 The source of the Nursery Rhyme “This is old Man”, has been unearthed in the archives of RTE – the Irish Broadcasting Company. It refers to the variety of punishments meted out on the Irish poor during the Great Famine of 1846-53, when a million starved to death and another million were forced to emigrate, despite the fact that the country was a net exporter of food during the whole period.

During the Famine ninety six percent of Irish Land was ‘owned’ by people who didn’t live there – Grandees who had got the land through gift, often through fealty to royalty or chieftains, and felt no allegiance or sense of either ownership or belonging to that land. They lived elsewhere, often in big houses in England, so were ‘absentee landlords’. I live in the ‘Dukeries’, seat of four Dukes, and of Viscount Galway, whose other titles included Clanricarde, Imanney and Tyaquin in Ireland.

Being absent, they still wanted to profit from their estates of course, either not knowing, or ignoring that they were rotting and stinking through the failure of the staple of the poor in the Potato Blight.

This old man, he played one,
He played knick knack on my thumb.
With a knick knack, paddy whack,
Give a dog a bone.
This old man came rolling home.

Not that it was Viscount Galway, but this one old man played one merry hell and sent troops to evict people who would not – could not – pay the rent. The playing on the drum could be heard over the hills and sank fear into the very hearts.

This old man, he played two, He played knick knack on my shoe.

Another old man played on two – shoes, leaving a million barefoot children to starve to death.

This old man, he played three, He played knick knack on my knee.

We know of punishment three which continued into our lifetimes – kneecapping – shooting people’s knees to cripple them and be a warning to others to pay up.

This old man, he played four, He played knick knack on my door.

Sanction four followed the knock at the door and would be the tearing down of the main house beam and torching.

This old man, he played five, He played knick knack on my hive.

Punishment five would be setting the hives on the people – a reference to the stinging of whips as they were chased away from their family homes.

This old man, he played six, He played knick knack on my sticks.

Retribution six played upon the few sticks of furniture some of the evicted would still have and the Gombeen men would buy for a bag of meal, or worse, kicking the dog when he’s down – not giving him meat – only a bone.

With a knick knack, paddy whack,

These punishments have gone into the lexicon of sufferings borne by the people – all the whacks on the ‘Paddies’, as they became known the world over, when they washed up on foreign shores.

This old man, he played seven, He played knick knack up in heaven.

The dead kept the faith and seven took them up to Heaven with number eight knocking on the Pearly Gate.

This old man, he played eight, He played knick knack on my gate.

Finally there is this old man he played nine, he played knick-knack on my spine – a treble pun: knick knacks are small possessions, sold, stolen and burnt; paddywhack is the ligament from the neck and spine of sheep and cattle – a final piece of ‘meat’ the poor could chew on to stave off hunger; nick-nacks are also the vertebrae used in the famous game of Knucklebones, Fivestones, or Jacks played since even Sophocles attempted to date it. It is played the world over and often used angular bones such as vertebrae. Just as in that other Nursery Rhyme where “The Ring o’Roses” was a symptom of the great plague, he sad reference in this children’s nursery rhyme, is to the vertebrae of tens of thousands of unburied children which would continue to be found in fields and ditches around every town or village of Ireland for the next fifty years.

The rhyme for the final verse expresses the fear that the famine would return another year, so the old man, the devil, would play ten and come again.

This old man, he played ten. He played knick knack once again

Each verse concludes to remind all listeners of the relentless greed behind it all – the exploitation of the starving by the rich old man and his venal Gombeen man (agent) – living the life taken from Riley, and in his drunkenness he came rolling home.

With a knick knack, paddy whack, Give a dog a bone, This old man came rolling home.

 A truly fanciful notion of Kevin “Paddy” Murphy

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