As I was going by Charing Cross

"As I Was Going By Charing Cross" Roud #20564
Written by	Traditional
Published	1808
Written	England
Language	English
Form	Nursery rhyme

'As I Was Going By Charing Cross' is an English language nursery rhyme, sometimes referred to as 'As I was going to Charing Cross'. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 20564.

Lyrics

Modern versions include:

As I was going by Charing Cross,
I saw a black man upon a black horse;
They told me it was King Charles the First-
Oh dear, my heart was ready to burst! ^[1]

Origin

Charing Cross with the statue of Charles I, to the right.

The rhyme is thought to refer to the equestrian statue of Charles I (r. 1625-49) which was erected after the Restoration in 1660 and was moved in 1675 to the old Charing Cross.^[1] The statue is largely dark in colour, but the 'black' may refer to the king's hair colour.^[1]

The last line may refer to the reaction of the crowd when he was beheaded, or it may be a puritan satire on royalist reactions to the event.^[1] The rhyme may also have been produced out of a combination of existing couplets. A traditional London street cry was:

I cry my matches at Charing Cross,
Where sits a black man on a black horse.^[1]

A note in a seventeenth-century manuscript at Oxford contains the lines:

But because I cood not a vine Charlles the furste
By my toth my hart was readdy to burst^[1]

The first part was printed as a children's rhyme in a variation of the more famous "Ride a Cock Horse" in Pretty Tales published in 1808, with the lyrics:

Ride a Cock Horse,
To Charing Cross,
To see a black man,
Upon a black horse.^[1]

The modern version, which may combines elements of this rhyme with a reference to the execution of Charles I, was first collected and printed by James Orchard Halliwell in the 1840s.^[1]

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 114-15.