Good King Cole
And he call'd for his Bowle,
And he call'd for Fidlers three;
And there was Fiddle Fiddle,
And twice Fiddle Fiddle,
For 'twas my Lady's Birth-day,
Therefore we keep Holy-day,
And come to be merry.
-from William King’s Useful Transactions in Philosophy for January and February 1709
Does it look familiar? It sounds close enough to me. Perhaps you’ll recognize the one I remember:
Old King Cole was a merry old soul,
And a merry old soul was he;
He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl,
And he called for his fiddlers three.
Every fiddler, he had a fiddle,
And a very fine fiddle had he;
Oh, there's none so rare, as can compare,
With King Cole and his fiddlers three.
-Roud Folk Song Index #116
Welsh Storytelling in the Dark Ages
The old nursery rhyme doesn’t necessarily matter. It came with a tune, one I don’t recognize, but it’s a good example of the Welsh tradition of oral storytelling. More importantly, oral poetry was historical and genealogical record keeping when few people could read and write.
Those responsible for telling such stories, often put to melody, were called bards. In popular culture, they are called minstrels and troubadours. Bards were well-trained, held in high regard, and usually worked for nobility. Putting stories into rhyme and/or music made them easy to remember. Not just for the bards and the people of the courts, but the for preservation of culture and law.
There were several problems with bardism. First and foremost, the storyteller was obliged to please their sovereign through exaggeration and excessive praise, leading their audiences to believe the exaggerated description and feats of the subject to be true. Family History just one of the ways information was passed along in this manner.
To make things worse, time became the enemy. As the stories were passed from one storyteller to the next, truths were lost and heroic feats became even more exaggerated. If you’ve ever played Gossip or the telephone game, you know that as the story is passed from one person to the next in several repetitions, it becomes so convoluted that the final repetition bears little resemblance to the next. These stories were passed on for hundreds of years before they were finally put in writing.
Along with adulation of warriors like King Arthur made great in battle, stories of noble feats by the ruling class became commonplace in early Christian culture as well. Royalty often became part of the Christian canon in this manner. Any canonized subject of the bards could metamorphose into saints over time. Evidence of this truth is found in pedigrees of many early Brittonic leaders, including close relatives of King Arthur and Old King Cole.
Oncee quill met parchment, the many adulations became a solid format keeping the story straight if it hadn’t already fallen prey to hagiography, an exaggerated focus on the lives and so-called miracles attributed to both men and women.
So what does Old King Coel have to do with this?
While cleaning up my research, I found a family tree connected to a Welsh king in Roman occupied Briton named Coel Hen. The Welsh term for hen is old, leading to the translation of Old King Coel. Although there is some speculation that our Old Coel is the subject of the nursery rhyme, there is very little proof. There were other King Coels, but this one may have been the oldest. Our old Coel lived in the fourth century, while the first known publication of the rhyme appeared around 600 years later.
Nevertheless, a titillating piece of evidence connecting King Coel Hen to several Arthurian characters, including King Arthur himself, appeared in family tree format about 600 years later. And this is where the story gets interesting, especially since it tells us a lot about the people of Wales, both in culture and legend. King Coel Hen may even make a more than one royal connection through King Arthur’s brother to Mary Davis.
Thanks for sticking through this. As Mark Twain put it, “If I had more time I would have written a shorter book. I’ll probably do some editing on this post and adding a landing page for King Coel Hen during the next week. If you’d like to help out, constructive criticism is welcome in the comments.
More about King Arthrwys, King Coel Hen, Vortimer and Myrddyn and how they relate to Mary Davis next week!
StoriesFromthePast 