Pudding tame

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>According to Iona and Peter Opie _Lore and Language of Schoolchildren_ (the
>best UK study, albeit published in 1950s, of such material), who quote the
>rhyme as 'US' and specifically 'Maryland' my earlier suggested link to
>dialect 'pudding time' is wrong. They trace the term to Sussex and add -
>
>" 'Pudding and Tame' seems to preserve the name of the fiend or devil,
>'Pudding-of-Tame', listed in Samuel Harsnet's Popish Impostures, 1603."

I saw 2-3 US instances from different states from ca. 1900. I think this
rhyme must have come from England, though; the resemblance to "Pudding of
Thame" [this is how it is printed in Harsnett's book, at least in the 1603
edition which I reviewed] is too strong to be coincidence IMHO.

I think "pudding time" is apt. It is probably old enough (1546, OED), it
was not narrowly limited in dialect AFAIK, and it makes a good-enough joke,
the sense presumably "No need for my name, just call out 'pudding time'
[i.e., 'time to eat'] and I'll appear." Cf. the 20th-century [and probably
earlier?] joke: "You can call me anything, as long as you don't call me
late for dinner." However, I would like the rhyme to be maintained. Was
"time" pronounced to rhyme or nearly rhyme with "name" in ca.-1500 England,
perhaps? Or could it be regional? Can we do without the rhyme?

If one reads only Opie's footnote (above), one might think that the
expression in question was perhaps a conventional ca.-1600 epithet for
Satan, like "Old Scratch" maybe. But this is not the case at all: rather,
in Harsnett's book (seemingly a skeptical and sarcastic review of some
contemporary 'exorcisms'), multiple devils during exorcism identify
themselves with various whimsical names (some recognizable from slang,
contemporary songs, etc.) (some of the names were later used by Shakespeare
in "King Lear"), and this one was recognized from/as an already existing
joke, which I suspect was simply the same rhyme still known today.

-- Doug Wilson