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Online Exclusive for #425
"King William Was King George's Son": Adult Reflections on a Childhood Game in Princeton, Bonavista Bay
By Evelyn Osborne
King William was King George's son
All of royal race he run,
And on his breast a star he wore,
Pointing to the governor’s door.
Come choose to the east,
Come choose to the west,
Choose the very one that you love best,
If she's not there to take your part,
Choose another
with all your heart.
Down on this carpet you must
kneel,
As the grass grows in the field,
Kiss your partner, kiss her sweet,
Rise again upon your feet.
(As
learned by Sylvia (Quinton) Ficken, in Princeton, Bonavista Bay)
Readers may recognize the above rhyme as the
children's game King William, popular in Newfoundland and
throughout North America and the British Isles. As with many such
games, adult situations are implied within the text and actions: war,
love, courtship, marriage, politics and royalty. This article will look
at the game as it was played in Princeton, Bonavista Bay in the 1950s,
through the memories, reflections and lived experiences of two sisters;
my mother, Louise (Quinton) Osborne and my aunt, Sylvia (Quinton) Ficken.
Louise and Sylvia were born just prior to Confederation and
grew up in the small outport community (pop. 120). They attended one and
two room schoolhouses and did not receive electrical or telephone
services in their community until the early 1960s. In Princeton, King
William was exclusively a young children's game. Teenagers "were
just too old to play with us," Sylvia explained. "If you were in Grade
Two you don't expect someone in Grade Ten to play with you." King
William was played whenever children gathered, but most often at
school break times, with other games such as Here we go Gathering
Nuts in May, Green Gravels, Ring Around the Rosie, and
skipping games like Red Rosie Apple.
Origins and Ancient
Wedding Traditions
King William exists in multiple published variations
throughout the western English-speaking world, and over 200 notations of
the rhyme can be found in Memorial University's Folklore and Language
Archive (MUNFLA).
Variants of King
William predate its first publication in William Wells Newell's 1883
Games and Songs of American Children. Newell believes the origins
of the verse refer not to English royalty but to a 1287 incident in
Scandinavia, in which a young aristocratic Swedish man took his
sweetheart, promised to a Danish nobleman, to Norway. The theme of a
returning lover finding his beloved about to marry another is common in
folktale and song; often it involves the man identifying his loved one
before they are reunited. This is transferred to the game when the child
'King William' must find his sweetheart amongst all the children in the
circle.
King William was
King George's Son / All of royal race he run
Who was 'King William'?
And was he 'King George's son'? Indeed he was. King William was the son
of King George the Third (also known as Mad George) and brother of King
George the Fourth. According to my mother Louise, "of royal race he run"
refers to William's pure royal bloodlines. She explained that King
William, also called the Sailor King, was not expected to gain the
throne, but eventually did at the age of 60. And although he did have 10
children with an actress he had no surviving legitimate heirs, so the
monarchy was handed to his niece Victoria. His acknowledged marriage to
Caroline of Brunswick was a loveless, arranged affair, and Louise
believed this was evidenced in the lines "If she's not there to take
your part / Choose another with all your heart".
Louise noted that William was not the only of George the
Third's children to be the subject of a children's rhyme, as his older
brother, the Duke of York, was known as an incompetent military man,
resulting in the well known:
The Grand Old Duke of York he had ten
thousand men
He marched them up to the top of the
hill and he marched them down again
And when they were up they were up
And when they were down they were down
And when they were only half way up they
were neither up nor down
Prince William in
Newfoundland
In 1786, William wrote to his brother George that
he would spend the next three years dividing his time between
Newfoundland, the West Indies, Nova Scotia and Jamaica. Sent out with
his own ship, The Pegasus, a 28 gun frigate, William celebrated
his 21st birthday in Placentia in the colony of Newfoundland.
He was there for the summer to act as magistrate and preside over the
fishery. Reputedly, he was a fair and good magistrate; however, he was
harsh on the Roman Catholic population, attempting to stop church
construction and banning use of the hall where they conducted mass. Both
Aunt Sylvia and Louise thought politics could be an element of the
rhyme, noting the lines "And on his breast a star he wore / Pointing to
the governor's door." They thought this referred to his naval
experience and need to treat the governors respectfully in order that
his laws would be enforced.
His birthday revelry was
the subject of much talk as he became exceptionally inebriated aboard
ship and carried on with the crew, who very nearly killed him with their
antics. During his time in Newfoundland other gossip started about
William’s "carousing", eccentricities and temper. Louise told a tale of
William sending a serving girl outside during a storm and then barring
her re-entrance, an action leading to her death. Surprisingly, Louise
also related a connection with her aunt's husband's family! Apparently
her aunt's husband's first wife, who had "gone mad" was rumored to be a
descendant of one of William's early escapades. In the Trinity family
house there was a sword hanging in the front hall:
and I recall a sword
hanging in their hallway as you came in thru the front door, they had a
large, not exactly a chair, I don't even know what it was called, but it
was a seat with a high, high back; it was over six feet high or more.
And hanging on that was a very elaborate sword.
Although nothing was
ever directly stated about the sword, it was implied that it had
belonged to King William himself. Unfortunately, this sword and other
items disappeared from the house, while it was empty, after a great
uncle's death.
Louise was convinced
that the rhyme is connected to this particular King William, as he was
the only William that was also a son of a George, although the game or
melody might be related back to an earlier game. Due to the British
tendency to satirize their royalty, she believed that the rhyme would
have surfaced around his coronation in 1830.
Children vs. Adult
Kissing Games
In
Princeton, King William was a young child's game and adults did
not play this or similar games. However, just up the coast in Plate Cove
and Red Cliff, Bonavista Bay, an adult kissing dance was performed. Also
known as the cushion, pillow or chair dance, the kissing dance has been
notated both in England and in Newfoundland and filmed by the CBC's Land and Sea with host Dave Quinton (1978). I found two versions of a
kissing dance done in Bonavista Bay. At some dances, including Keels
and Plate Cove, there was a ring with a central figure and the
participants were kissed out until the ring was gone. In Red Cliff
there was both an excluding and inclusive version. The inclusive
variant was danced as a sort of front loading conga line. The person
with the handkerchief would kiss someone; the kissed would then join in
front and kiss another. Adults performed this kissing dance during or after the community dances. In Keels and Plate Cove, it was an elimination ring game and the final person left was considered the fool.
King William in Adult Life
There seems to be a
resurgence in interest in the King William game in my family,
partly due to the release of the rhyme by the Newfoundland group Bristol's Hope (1997). I have heard Louise and Sylvia sing and reminisce about the rhyme several times in connection to the CD.
At a family gathering
Sylvia pointed out a copy of her lithograph depicting children playing
King William in a garden. This painting is indicative of her
style and attention to local subjects and characters. On the back of
her framed copy she had penciled the words of the verse, which she
checked for me and I wrote down. Sylvia stated that she chose King
William as it was "one of the good games, one of the favorites."
Evidently others held the same opinion as she stated that, after she had
finished the lithograph, strangers:
would even phone me and
say, 'we used to, ya know, we used to play that,' anybody my age will
know what you're talking about if you said 'King William was King
George's Son,' so I think it was played widely.
Sylivia's lithograph
depicts five children in a ring, with a younger child in the center.
There is a dog wanting to join, and an adult female watching from a door
way. In the background are hills, boats, a stage, men on the wharf and
the garden; altogether a pleasant and idealized childhood setting in
outport Newfoundland.
"King William"
and other ring and line games such as "Here we go Gathering Nuts in May",
"Green Gravels", "Ring Around the Rosie", and skipping games
including "Red Rosie Apple" have also been linked to marriage or
fertility rites, or funerals in the case of "Green Gravels".
Despite such potentially grave and adult connotations these games
provided innocent entertainment for children in outport Newfoundland.
Certainly, the parents were likely only concerned that they be played
outdoors, as Louise pointed out that when "you have a group of kids
going around and round and round, shouting and laughing and singing out
loud in a circle… it isn't the sort of thing you can do indoors".
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