Little Jack Horner - Cultural References

Cultural References

In literature

• In his satirical novel Melincourt (1817), Thomas Love Peacock has five go-getting characters contribute to a song in which they describe how they misuse their trades to fleece the public. It begins with the recitative

Jack Horner's CHRISTMAS PIE my learned nurse

Interpreted to mean the public purse.

From thence a plum he drew. O happy Horner!

Who would not be ensconced in thy snug corner?

Each character then describes the nature of his sharp practice in a stanza followed by the general chorus

And we'll all have a finger, a finger, a finger,

We'll all have a finger in the CHRISTMAS PIE.

• Lord Byron mentions Jack in his Don Juan (Canto the Eleventh, stanza LXIX, 1823). It is the ancestor of many allusions since then, remembering him for little more than sitting in a corner.

• Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, in "A Tale of Two Cities," originally published in the Saturday Review (Vol.VIII, No.216, December 17, 1859), sarcastically compares Charles Dickens with Jack Horner, so as to show that Dickens is a hypocrite:

"The grandfathers of the present generation were, according to him, a sort of savages, or very little better. They were cruel, bigoted, unjust, ill-governed, oppressed, and neglected in every possible way. The childish delight with which Mr. Dickens acts Jack Horner, and says What a good boy am I, in comparison with my benighted ancestors, is thoroughly contemptible."

In comics

• The character of Jack Horner appears in the Fables comic book by Bill Willingham, where it is revealed that he is also most of the other Jacks featured in fairy tales, nursery rhymes, etc. The now-grown Jack is a chancer, amiable for the most part, but not overly competent, as a rule; as such, most of his get-rich-quick schemes are doomed to failure.

In popular music

• In the 20th century there are references to Jack Horner in songs by such musicians as Fats Waller and Bob Dylan but most refer to little more than the fact that he sat in a corner.

• There is a reinterpretation of the rhyme in a Chumbawamba lyric from their album The Unfairy Tale (1985). "Jack Horner" is put in the corner for resisting the racist and self-regarding interpretation of history given by his teacher. Eventually the children rise up to defend him:

But when the head walked in the children made such a din.

They said, 'Jack get up, you got to get out, don't let them push you about, you know they'll keep you in that corner till you're dead. Jack get out, don't sell out, don't compromise with christmas pies. Keep shouting back, you tell 'em Jack, don't swallow none of their crap. Calling Jack Horners everywhere, don't bend to authority which doesn't care, you know they'll keep you in that corner 'till you're dead.'

Jane got up, she helped Jack out, she said, 'Teachers, don't mess us about, we won't listen to your dirty lies. It's you who've got your fingers in the pie. People die, you don't question why, we won't study your lies, we won't eat your christmas pie, we won't eat dead animal pie, we won't eat nukiller pie, we won't eat your pie r squared, and if you really cared, neither would you.'

• The 1990 album Pornograffitti by the American rock band Extreme, contained a song called "Lil' Jack Horny" that contained references to this nursery rhyme among others.