Behind the Hard Working Nursery Rhyme “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe”

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes is famous for saying that life can be “Nasty, brutish, and short.” In other words, life is hard, life is difficult and human beings are born into it only to figure out how to survive—and, if we’re lucky, thrive.

But how do people thrive? How do they succeed and climb up the proverbial social ladder? Well, more often than not, for most of us, it’s through hard work. Labor. Innovation, invention, discovery and things along those lines.

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And that, in its own simple way, is exactly what the classic nursery rhyme, “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe” is all about. Let’s dive into the meaning of the work here below.

Face The Day

When you open your eyes on a give morning for the first time, often the thought that crosses your mind is: What am I doing today? Maybe you have to drive someone somewhere or maybe you have a big job due and you need to impress the bosses. Either way, there is likely something on your to-do list. Which is where we begin the nursery rhyme at hand.

First published in 1805 in London in the collection, Songs for the Nursery, “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe” is an inspirational ditty about the building of good habits and a steady work ethic, all while masquerading as a simple counting nursery rhyme. While there are several variations of different lengths, most renditions of the rhyme begin:

One, two buckle my shoe
Three, four out the door
Five, six, pick up sticks
Seven, eight lay them straight

What is this but a plan? Put your shoes on tight, head outside and begin work. The task, of course, is simplified to picking up sticks and laying them straight, but in its own quaint little manner, that is a metaphor for everything: Come across disorder and order it.

Continuing The Job

Many versions of the rhyme continue, increasing in both number and in human evolution.

Nine, ten big fat hen
Eleven, twelve dig and delve
Thirteen, fourteen maids a-courting
Fifteen, sixteen maids in the kitchen
Seventeen, eighteen maids in waiting
Nineteen, twenty my plate’s empty

Life cannot be ALL hard work, of course. So, what happens after you’ve put in a good day? You get to eat. And the more you toiled the more you’re deserving of some good fare. Like a fat hen (perhaps fried). But then, more work comes: dig and delve. Perhaps for the foundation of a home?

Continuing along the journey, then comes courtship and romance, once you’ve done your job well and have proven to yourself and others around you that you can sustain a living. Then it’s more cooking, your wife (this is olden times, after all) working to make the home. Then as you get older, you can hire people (a made in waiting) to attend to your needs, too. It’s all part of the plan.

Finally, your plate goes empty. Which is really a superb last line. It could mean you’re out of food, so you must go back to work. It could mean, your home life is so good that someone is about to cook for you and then serve you. It could mean you need a new job or purpose—no more sticks, time to move on to bigger and better challenges. Or, it could mean you’re no longer alive and your plate remains empty.

Either way, it’s a conclusion, which leads to a new beginning. Time for those shoes to get buckled (by somebody) again!

Final Thoughts

It’s really quite amazing how rhymes begin and refine and get shared throughout time. While “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe” was first published (that we know of) in 1805, the rhyme could have first been sung decades or centuries earlier, in some form another.

But as with so many nursery rhymes that stand the test of time, they live on not just for their language or sing-songs at face value. There almost always is something deeper below. Yes, the rhyme here is kept alive for it’s melody and aid in teaching children how to count. But more than that, it tells us how to live. How to keep going. And how to survive this at times nasty, brutish existence.

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