Kid's Songs, Lullabies and Nursery Rhymes For Your Little Stars

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This old man, he played one
He played knick-knack on my drum
With a knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone
This old man came rolling home

This old man, he played two
He played knick-knack on my shoe
With a knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone
This old man came rolling home

This old man, he played three
He played knick-knack on my knee
With a knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone
This old man came rolling home

This old man, he played four
He played knick-knack on my door
With a knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone
This old man came rolling home

This old man, he played five
He played knick-knack on my hive
With a knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone
This old man came rolling home

This old man, he played six
He played knick-knack on my sticks
With a knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone
This old man came rolling home

This old man, he played seven
He played knick-knack up in heaven
With a knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone
This old man came rolling home

This old man, he played eight
He played knick-knack on my gate
With a knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone
This old man came rolling home

This old man, he played nine
He played knick-knack on my line
With a knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone
This old man came rolling home

This old man, he played ten
He played knick-knack on my hen
With a knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone
This old man came rolling home

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The earliest known version of this counting rhyme, "Jack Jintle", was taught to Anne Geddes Gilchrist by her Welsh nurse, Elizabeth Piercy, in the 1870's. Gilchrist published Piercy's version in 1937, in "The Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society":

My name is Jack Jintle, the eldest but one,
And I can play nick-nack upon my own thumb.
With my nick-nack and pad-lock and sing a fine song,
And all the fine ladies come dancing along.

My name is Jack Jintle, the eldest but two,
And I can play nick-nack upon my own shoe.
With my nick-nack and pad-lock and sing a fine song,
And all the fine ladies come dancing along.

The rest is forgotten, but the numbers probably went up to ten. In the first verse the singer, suiting the action to the word, rapped with her knuckle on her thumb; in the second rapped on the sole of her shoe; in the third on her knee, and so on. Elizabeth Piercy was our Welsh nursemaid and illiterate when she came to us at the age of seventeen. She was a good singer, but one could make no sense of some of her scraps of English songs, though she sang well in Welsh and taught me to sing songs in that language.

This old action-song, belonging to the day before such things were introduced into the school curriculum, is here printed in the hope that it may elicit other variants which may help to elucidate its origin. It belongs to the cumulative class of which This old man came rolling home is a war-time route march specimen. The only other version I have seen of Jack Jintle is set to the tune of the Italian Montferina - a dance-tune much used for nursery-songs and games since it came to England in 1810. Mr. Kidson's version is a stick-dance, but arranged as such by himself - many of his games being adaptations. The 'nick-nack' may perhaps provide a clue. In the ballad of Burd Isabel and Earl Patrick occurs the verse:

The Knichts they knack their white fingers,
The ladies sat and sang,
'Twas a' to cheer bonnie Burd Bell,
She was far sunk in pain.

This suggests some finger-trick more than mere snapping. 'Knackers' is an old name for castanets or wooden 'bones'. Strutt quotes under Fool's Dance an allusion (1649) to a person dancing the Spanish morisco with 'knackers' at his fingers.

A variant of the same tune was known in our nursery days to a child song As Tommy was walking one fine summer day.

The modern version was published in 1906 in "English Folk-Songs for Schools" by Cecil Sharp and Sabine Baring-Gould.

Several alternative versions were collected in England in the early twentieth century with a variety of lyrics and titles, such as "Old Joe Padlock," "Old Joe Nigalock," and "Old Tommy Kendall".

The term "Paddywack" was used from at least the early nineteenth century to describe an angry person, specifically a "Brawny Irishman". From at least the 1970s sensitivity over possible racism has meant that the song is often sung as "Knick-knack patty-whack", particularly in the United States.

Origins text ©2011 TwinkleTrax Children's Songs.