The Courtship, Marriage, and Pic Nic Dinner of Cock Robin. To Which is Added, Alas! The Doleful Death of the Bridegroom is the first outdoor dinner named a picnic in the modern sense.
When John Harris retold the old story of Sparrow’s fateful murder of Cock Robin, he named the birds’s outdoor wedding party a “pic nic dinner.” It must have seemed logical to him that the birds would prefer an outdoor setting. Before this, picnic dinners were indoor social events long established in Paris since 1694 and only recently introduced in London by the Pic Nic club in 1802. If you dined in the French style, faire á pique-nique, you contributed a share of food and beverages or paid part of the bill. The custom was almost unknown among the English except for those knowledgeable of French dining customs, such as the Pic Nics, a London social club named after the French custom. Their dinners were always indoors.
Following the piquenique style , Harris was aware that at a piquenique, guests would each contribute to the party. His logic was that if Jenny Wren and Cock Robin were married outdoors, dinner must be outdoors. The crude illustration for the original 1806 publication shows the birds gathered about a picnic cloth at which the guests “all sat or stood, / To eat and drink.” The 1814 edition is unambiguous—the cloth is outdoors under in the shade of an oak tree.
Harris borrowed the attributes, such as sharing, but moved the location outdoors. After they are married, Jenny Wren and Cock Robin’s “pic-nic dinner is set beneath a shady oak.
Harris’s birds bring a diverse menu. Robin brings currant wine and cherry pie (center), and dear sweet Jenny Wren brings her beauty; Raven brings a basket of walnuts; Dog brings meat on a bone; Owl brings a sack of wheat; Pigeon brings tares (greens), Squirrel gets a bag of nuts; and Magpie brings a piece of cheese. Sheep, being practical, brings wool for a bird’s nest. Little Mary, a girl accompanied by her mother, brings cheese, apples, bacon, and plums. Mary’s presence is usually ignored as an intrusion in an otherwise exclusively animal tale.
Featured Image: “Pic-nic Dinner” in an 1814 edition by an unknown illustrator.
See Peter Opie and Iona J. Opie. The Oxford Dictionary Of Nursery Rhymes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997; F. J. Harvey Darton. Children’s Books In England: Five Centuries Of Social Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.; Joyce Irene Whalley. Cobwebs To Catch Flies: Illustrated Books For The Nursery And Schoolroom, 1700-1900: London: Elek,1974 and S. Roscoe. John Newbery And His Successors, 1740-1814: A Bibliography. Wormley, Five Owls Press, 1973