page_title: Hark, Hark! The Dogs Do Bark
section_title: Popular usage
hierarchical_section_title: Hark, Hark! The Dogs Do Bark / Popular usage
caption_attribution_description: Detail of a 1914 political map of Europe, representing various countries with various breeds of dogs.
context_page_description: "Hark, Hark! The Dogs Do Bark" is an English nursery rhyme. Its origins are uncertain and researchers have attributed it to various dates ranging from the late 1000s to the early 1700s. The earliest known printings of the rhyme are from the late 1700s, but a related rhyme was written down a century earlier than that.
  Historians of nursery rhymes disagree as to whether the lyrics of "Hark Hark" were inspired by a particular episode in English history, as opposed to simply reflecting a general and timeless concern about strangers. Those who link the rhyme to a specific episode identify either the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the 1530s, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 or the Jacobite rising of 1715. Those who date it to the Tudor period of English history sometimes look to the rhyme's use of the word jag, which was a Tudor-period word for a fashionable style of clothing. But other historians ascribe no particular relevance to the use of that word.
  "Hark Hark" survives to this day largely as a nursery rhyme. It has been sufficiently well-known to permit writers to invoke it, sometimes in parodied form, in material not intended for children.
context_section_description: In both England and the United States, the rhyme became so familiar that authors often alluded to it, either in its entirety or to just its first line.
  Quoting the entire rhyme, but modifying a few of the words, was sometimes done as a way of making a point.  This is how it was used by an anonymous contributor to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, who was commenting on the general character of the Members of Parliament expected to be elected as a result of the soon-to-be enacted Reform Acts of 1832.  The contributor wrote that "it will be a strange sight to see the new delegates entering the metropolis, and will perchance remind you of your old nursery rhymes".  This was followed with the lyrics to "Hark Hark", but with the line "some in velvet gown" changed to "none in velvet gown" [italics in original]).  An 1888 example from the United States sees a similar thing being done in the caption of a political cartoon.  The cartoon lampoons Grover Cleveland's position on tariffs and changes the names of the garments to "Italian rags", "German tags" and "English gowns".
  Even without modification, the rhyme has served either to illustrate or to emphasize some point being made by the writer.  In an 1835 article in Blackwood's, an unidentified contributor linked nursery rhymes to various political issues, using "Hark Hark" in specific reference to the Reform Acts passed in Britain earlier that decade.  And the rhyme was used by Theodore W. Noyes in his 1900 journalistic correspondence to the Washington Evening Star to convey his impressions of the Sultan of Sulu's retinue, who were meeting with an American diplomatic delegation.
  It has also been used as an epigraph to some larger piece of work.  In the 1850s, poet Adeline Dutton Train Whitney used "Hark Hark" to introduce one of her works in Mother Goose for Grown Folks.  More recent years have seen the rhyme being used in similar fashion, but not in literary works.  Instead, it has appeared a few times as epigraphs to particular chapters in scholarly non-literary texts, including one written by Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto Polar and another by South African journalist Allister Sparks.
  The first line of the rhyme entered the official transcript of the New Zealand House of Representatives in 1953.  In September of that year, Eruera Tirikatene was asking a series of questions regarding Māori affairs.  At one point, Geoffrey Sim responded to Tirikatene's comments by exclaiming "Hark, hark, the dogs do bark!  It is difficult to get a word in," to which Tirikatene responded "You are like a dog barking at the moon."  Speaker of the House Matthew Oram immediately re-established order.
  In Men At Arms, a novel by Terry Pratchett, "Hark, Hark" is said to be a part of the Charter of the Beggars Guild.
caption: Detail from a 1914 cartoon map
exif: {"Image Tag 0x000B": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image ImageWidth": "7882", "Image ImageLength": "5750", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image ImageDescription": "PJM_2207_01, 9/20/16, 9:42 AM,  8C, 5978x8000 (16+0), 100%, Repro 2.2 v2,  1/20 s, R73.2, G50.0, B66.8", "Image Make": "Better Light", "Image Model": "Model Super6k", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "251", "Image YResolution": "251", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image DateTime": "2018:01:23 18:53:05", "Image ExifOffset": "2552", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4914", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "15712", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/20", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "600", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2016:09:20 09:42:", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2016:09:20 09:42:", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "540241/125000", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "7882", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "5750", "EXIF SensingMethod": "Trilinear", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}