by
Poet's Day

A Secret Never to be Told

A Secret Never to be Told
by
Poet's Day

This week’s poem is the nursery rhyme “One for Sorrow” which I have chosen because of its association with magpies and games.

Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told.

Anonymous

Poem 459. One For Sorrow

One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told.

Eight for a wish,
Nine for a kiss,
Ten a surprise you should be careful not to miss,
Eleven for health,
Twelve for wealth,
Thirteen beware it’s the devil himself.

I have picked this poem because Rachel and I have been watching and enjoying the three series of Detectorists, the Mackenzie Crook comedy about a pair of men who go out metal detecting for their hobby. The third series is much associated with magpies and opens with a version of the poem by The Unthanks. I have also picked it because it is associated with the children’s game hopscotch and so it is a tenuous link to the games evening we are joining later.

Although the poem itself is not great literature, it is interesting because it exists in many versions: the one presented above is fairly common up to “Seven” but the subsequent lines appear in a Lancashire version. There are other variants:

One for sorrow,
Two for mirth,
Three for a wedding,
Four for a birth.

Or perhaps:

Three for a wedding,
And four for a death.

After that there is still more variation:

Five for silver, six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told

Or:

Five for rich, six for poor,
Seven for a witch, I can tell you no more.

Or:

Five for England, six for France,
Seven for a fiddler, eight for a dance.

Or:

Five for heaven, six for hell,
Seven, you’ll see the devil himsel’

Magpies are generally considered to bring ill tidings or bad luck. Their association with thievery goes back before Rossini’s opera La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie). According to The Folklore of Discworld (which covers a lot of interesting folklore from our world), Spanish peasants believed that each one has seven bristles from the Devil’s beard amongst its feathers and within its body seven bladders of bitter gall; they were popularly supposed to be capable of robbing Hell of its gold. Their behaviour prompts dark suspicions that they pry into others’ business and gossip with all and sundry about it. It was said that they enjoyed disasters and had preferred to perch on the roof of Noah’s Ark and enjoy watching the world drown. In the series of Detectorists, their thieving reputation is brought to the fore.

I like it because of the immense variation in texts and it makes me wonder how each version arose.

I have chosen the sequence from the end of episode 1, series 3 of Detectorists where The Unthanks sing the song and the objective for the series is set.

I have drawn extensively on the magpie lore in the “Beliefs of Lancre” section in Chapter 9 of “The Folklore of Discworld” by Jacqueline Simpson and Terry Pratchett. The Discworld, as ever, provides a reflection of our world and so its folklore is inspired by our own.