Little Jack Horner - Definition

Little Jack Horner is a nursery rhyme.

Rhyme

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner,

Eating a Christmas pie:

He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum,

And said, “What a good boy am I!”

Origins

Jack was actually Thomas Horner, steward to Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury. Legend has it that, prior to the Abbey's destruction during the Dissolution of the monasteries commanded by Henry VIII, the Abbot tried to avoid the event by sending Horner to London with a huge Christmas pie that had the deeds of a dozen manors hidden in it. During the journey Horner opened the pie and extracted the deeds of the Manor of Mells in Somerset. While records do record that Thomas Horner did become the owner of the manor, both his descendants and subsequent owners of Mells Manor have claimed that the legend is somewhat libellous.

A 16th-century rhyme noted

"Hopton, Horner, Smyth and Thynne:

When Abbotts went out, they came in."

The first publication date for "Little Jack Horner" is 1725, but all the common English nursery rhymes were long in circulation before they appeared in print.

Reference

• William Stuart Baring-Gould and Ceil Baring-Gould, The Annotated Mother Goose: Nursery Rhymes Old and New, Arranged and Explained, New York: Bramhall House Publishing, 1962