Jack Sprat
Jack Sprat could eat no fat,
His wife could eat no lean,
And so between them both you’ll see,
They licked the platter clean.
Where the rhyme comes from
Jack Sprat began life as a proverb rather than a children’s song. It appears in John Clarke’s collection of sayings of 1639 in an older shape: “Jack will eat not fat, and Jull doth love no leane. Yet betwixt them both they lick the dishes cleane.” The name itself is older still — in the 16th century “Jack Sprat” was a nickname for a person of small stature, a sprat being the tiniest of fish.
The saying entered the nursery-rhyme canon when it was printed in Mother Goose’s Melody around 1765, though the Opies note in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes that it may well have been said to children long before anyone thought to write it down. The modern four-line wording, with its tidy “platter clean”, settled during the 18th and 19th centuries.
What does it mean?
At its plainest the rhyme is a small domestic joke and a thrifty moral: two people who want opposite things waste nothing between them. As a proverb that was very likely the whole point — a neat picture of a well-matched pair, and of not letting good food go to waste.
Two grander readings are often repeated, but neither has contemporary evidence behind it:
Charles I and Henrietta Maria. A popular theory, put forward by the history writer Linda Alchin, casts Jack as King Charles I — a notably short man — left “lean” when Parliament refused him taxes, who with his queen Henrietta Maria “licked the platter clean” once he had dissolved Parliament and raised money himself. It is an appealing fit, but it is a modern interpretation rather than a documented origin.
King John and Isabella. An alternative folklore tradition, borrowed from the Robin Hood legends, applies the rhyme to the unpopular King John and his queen Isabella of Angoulême, emptying the country’s platter between them. Again, this is a later story told about the rhyme, not a record of how it came to be written.
Sharing it with children
Jack Sprat is a lovely lap rhyme because the whole thing can be done with two hands. Hold up a thin finger for Jack and a round fist for his wife, and let them nod to each other on their lines. On “licked the platter clean”, sweep a flat palm in a big circle and finish with a satisfied smack — toddlers will join in on that last line long before they can say the rest.
It also makes a gentle first conversation about differences: one person likes this, one likes that, and together they manage rather well. At the table, ask a child what they would leave on the plate and who in the family would happily eat it — a small, cheerful lesson in sharing and in not wasting food.
Extra verses to sing
These verses aren’t traditional — they’re ours. Sing them on if the supper isn’t finished.
Jack Sprat would eat no crust,
His wife would eat no crumb,
And so between them both, you see,
The birds were glad they’d come.
Jack Sprat could drink no cream,
His wife could drink no tea,
And so between them both, you see,
The cat had both for free.