The Law Locks Up the Man or Woman
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common;
But lets the greater felon loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
Commentary
I’ve always thought of this one as a nursery rhyme that didn’t quite make it. More fairly, it’s balanced somewhere between traditional nursery rhymes like ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ and biting social commentary like Cleghorn’s “The Golf Links” [Poem #216], with a dash of the proverb thrown in.
The reason today’s poem never made it as a nursery rhyme is fairly obvious - it’s too explicit. Traditional ‘hidden meaning’ nursery rhymes were slyly humorous, veiling their ridicule in allusion. Of course, at the time of writing, the allusion would have been totally transparent, and ensured that the rhyme got passed around with a wink and a nudge in taverns and on street corners. Later generations would see it merely as an amusing children’s poem, but there again it would get handed down from parent to child, until it was ubiquitous.
On the other hand, today’s poem’s meaning is clear in general terms. It’s even relevant enough that people can still relate to it. However, the Inclosure Act to which it refers was passed hundreds of years ago; the poem is no longer current, and loses something thereby. And, lacking the enforced whimsy of the more allusive nursery rhymes, it was never seen as a children’s poem - rather than being passed down as attractive nonsense when it lost its topicality, it faded into a sort of semiobscurity.
One aspect of the nursery rhyme it has shared is alteration via the folk process. There are several versions floating around, from minor variants like the substitution of ‘villain’ for ‘felon’, to the following from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations:
"The fault is great in man or woman
Who steals a goose from off a common:
But what can plead that man's excuse
Who steals a common from a goose?"
–The Tickler Magazine, 1 Feb. 1821.
Like Swift’s poem on lesser fleas, though, I am fairly confident that the folk process has improved the original - poems that are handed down orally tend to undergo a rather ruthless evolutionary winnowing. If they’re not good enough, they don’t get repeated, and if a mutated form is more quotable or pleasing, it has a very good chance of replacing the original.
— Martin
Links
An alt.quotations thread on the poem:
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=dpbsmith-B90F%40news.cis.dfn.de
The Inclosure Act, in context
[broken link] http://www.coprolite.care4free.net/page70.html
http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010136ernle/010136ch7.htm
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
lists · 2 December 2002
MD> ‘The Law Locks Up the Man or Woman’
This is quoted in the introduction to Edward Potts Cheyney’s Social and Industrial History of England [1901].
A similar idea was expressed by Schiller:
It is criminal to steal a purse,
daring to steal a fortune,
a mark of greatness to steal a crown.
The blame diminishes as the guilt increases.
Shakib
Cats3Quaker · 23 February 2003
yet still they steal our common wealth
by devious act and greater stealth
Cats3Quaker · 15 October 2003
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose. (Anon.)
Common Wealth
The law protected not the goose,
When it let the villains loose,
Where the law was so passive,
So many villains now here live.
Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair,
Who protected common snatcher,
Did not for the common care,
Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher.
Under the care of this pair,
Were made the greatest common-raids.
Theft that left common bereft,
Were made most in the last two decades.
So I find it no surprise: common crime is on the rise, For they have simply drawn a line, to arbitrarily define, What is crime and what is not, though in truth it’s ‘tommyrot’. The thieving of the bureaucracy, is stealing still from you and me.
The thieving of the bureaucrat, to fund the ‘wanabe’ fat cat, With PFI, creates common debt, for children who’re unborn as yet. I’m sorry that I use derision, to prompt eye to open and envision The slow return to slavery that will be this pair’s legacy.
It is clear you see for such low-cunning fraud-wit, To go thieving off-balance-sheet and escape audit, For, although we always inherited National Debt, We also inherited assets: real wealth to offset.
The equivalent of this in the PFI boom,
Is that you inherit a contract to consume.
And whether you find that you want this or not, Already this share of your wealth they have got.
Their contracts require they meet the ‘rat’s ends, Needs they ignore of those who the brass spends. Isn’t it strange, these two: right-wing: extremist, Bequeath to a free state such a fate: Stalinist?
First Published on web site: gothicx.co.uk
David J. Weston · 12 December 2006
A fellow in Port Patrick has added the following:
And with multinationals on the loose,
They steal people, commons, and the goose.
David J. Weston,
Stranraer,
Scotland.