I just came across this passage from Wikipedia :
It is often noted that the name of the legendary Welsh king Coel Hen can be translated ‘Old Cole’ or ‘Old King Cole’. This sometimes leads to speculation that he, or some other Coel in Roman Britain, is the model for Old King Cole of the nursery rhyme. However, there is no documentation of a connection between the fourth-century figures and the eighteenth-century nursery rhyme.
This I think is a classical example of misplaced exactitude, a particularly venomous snake in the grass of the Garden of Reason.
The passage seems blissfully unaware that both these statements may be true :
- the light verse ‘Old King Cole’ refers to the historical figure of Coel Hen
- the light verse ‘Old King Cole’ does not preserve direct traditions about Coel Hen
Who could possibly think that ‘Old King Cole’ preserves the faintest echo of any historical tradition?
Nothing at all is known about the good old king except his whereabouts were located in the north (northern England or southern Scotland). Were certain facts about him retained in folk memory in contrast to the black hole of the written record? Did ‘folk’ remember (for a period of 1,300 years) that the king was merry, that he had a bowl and a pipe, and that he not only had three fiddlers but he ‘called them’? Were these the precious facts at last preserved for prosperity in the ditty?
Why did he have only three fiddlers? Or did he have many but called only that number? What type of pipe? we want to know. What was in the bowl? Was King Cole always merry? Did the writer of the ditty know this? Did he pass on to us less than he knew? Did the folk have other traditions the dittist knew nothing of? Did Coel Hen eat mutton? Did he have a warm coat in the cold winters? Did he climb mountains?
Surely the folk knew these things. Sadly, all we have left is the dittist’s ditty.
Of course, to look at things at least a little sensibly, we might note that King Cole has ‘fiddlers three’ because ‘a merry old man was he’. If he was the ‘merriest of men’ (though that does not scan) he would no doubt have had ‘fiddlers ten’.
Coel Hen is a mistical figure from the earliest days of the recorded history of Britain. He is among the earliest figures in the native tradition. Hence the mist.
It is not hard to imagine that a wit, some time after ‘Good King Cole’ had been published in 1709 (in the journal ‘Useful Transactions in Philosophy’, no less), remembered Coel Hen, knew it meant ‘Coel the Old’, and so Old King Cole was born. Our wit correctly thought linking King Cole to Coel Hen would add a bit of character to the verse.
Maybe, maybe not. Either way, ‘Old King Cole’ can be both a reference to the historical Coel Hen and yet not be a historical record of him.