T is for Tub

        (My theme for this year’s A to Z Blog Challenge is traditional English language nursery rhymes, and their block printed illustrations.  Be sure to check out the Master List of my fellow A-Z bloggers.)

Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub,

And who do you think they be?

The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker.

Turn them out, rogues all three!

        Clearly, the midnight snacks of meat pies and chocolate cake were going to have to stop.

        What are these men doing in the tub?  Why are they rogues?  This is a puzzling one indeed.  I imagine parties that got out of hand: the candlestick-maker brings candles for nighttime light, of course, the butcher brings meat pies, and the baker brings chocolate cake… but it all got a little messy and now they find themselves scrambling to clean up before they all have to get back to work in the morning.

        Most other illustrations show our men sitting in the tub, and often the tub is even afloat, as this one by Reed.  The candlestick-maker trying to use his candlestick for a telescope is a clever touch, but otherwise these wise men could just as well hail from Gotham!  Gwenda Morgan’s interpretation below is of the same school, but I like the way her three men are each distinctly recognizable by their outfits and accoutrements.  Still, why does boating in a tub get them labelled as rogues?

        As it happens, there are versions that explicitly state that the three men were out to sea, so presumably that explains where the illustrators are coming from, even though Reed, for example, doesn’t include the nautical lyrics in the version of the rhyme that’s printed with his nautical illustration.  (Even more baffling, of course, is the version in which they all jump out of a rotten potato!  I can’t even begin to explain that one.  It’s enough to make a man stare, for sure.)

        The earliest printed versions of the rhyme had three maids in a tub, and some scholars suggest that the rhyme is about the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker ogling the maids at a peep show.  “Rub-a-dub-dub,” it is alleged, was “a phonetic association of social disapprobation, analogous to tsk-tsk.”  Well, that may or may not have been so historically, but to me “rub-a-dub-dub” most definitely suggests washing up with plenty of bubbles, so that’s what I’ve illustrated.  (By the way, even when we’re alleging soft porn, no one seems to suggest that the three men were naked together in a hot tub.)

        What reasons can you suggest for being in a tub?  And I don’t need to say “keep it clean,” because it’s a tub full of suds, so of course it’s clean!

        A final note for impressionable children:  Never leave a piece of chocolate cake unattended.

[Pictures: Rub-a-dub-dub, rubber block print by AEGN, 2002 (Image from my book);

Color wood engraving by Philip Reed from Mother Goose and Nursery Rhymes, 1963;

Detail from Nursery Rhymes, wood engraving by Gwenda Morgan, 1970 (Image from Kevis House).]