“But the child who is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe and good and gay”
Mothering Sunday“But the child who is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe and good and gay” is the line Verity Lockett uses to connect Sunday Small’s name and birth day with a warmly affirming picture of her nature. Repeated to Sunday over the years, the rhyme offers a small, personal counterweight to the harsh conditions of her workhouse childhood.
The Rhyme and Its Use
More than two years after Verity Lockett became the vicar’s wife, she was expecting her first child and spending less time volunteering at the workhouse. When she visited, she would repeat the Sabbath-day line to Sunday, whose name corresponded to the day on which she was born. Verity’s words make the rhyme an intimate gesture: she addresses Sunday not as an anonymous workhouse child but as someone whose identity and qualities deserve to be noticed.
Sunday as Its Subject
By thirteen, Sunday had grown taller and was one of the oldest girls in the workhouse. The narration describes her as pretty, with blue eyes, but emphasizes that her nature was what endeared her to most people. Verity’s assertion that Sunday lived up to her day of birth thus works as affectionate praise, not merely as a comment on her appearance. Sunday, however, was embarrassed by the rhyme, leaving a gentle contrast between Verity’s fondness for the saying and the girl’s self-conscious response to being made its subject.
Promise and Circumstance
The rhyme’s words associate Sunday with cheerfulness and goodness, while the surrounding account makes clear that her life has not been carefree. Across the preceding years she endured further stretches in the punishment room and several beatings, one severe; books lent by Verity helped her endure the workhouse. Sunday’s hope of leaving was also bound up with the fear of being parted from Daisy Branning and Tommy Branning. Against that background, the rhyme reads as a hopeful description offered by someone who recognizes Sunday’s kindness, not as a guarantee that her circumstances will be easy. Its recurring warmth belongs to their relationship, even as Sunday’s embarrassment keeps the exchange from becoming a simple declaration of happiness.
