Then Money came, and chinking still,
What tune is this, poor man? said he:
I heard in Music you had skill.
But thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.
Money and music and the music of money: Handy Dandy has an ear for all this.
One variant of the game’s jingle goes:
Handy dandy, riddledy ro,
Which hand will you have, high or low?
“Riddledy ro” might remind us that Handy Dandy is himself something of a riddle.
Michael Gray saw what Dylan had got in his hand and up his sleeve.112
He got that clear crystal fountain
He got that soft silky skin
He got that fortress on the mountain
With no doors or windows, so no thieves can break in
Riddledy ro:
In marble halls as white as milk,
Lined with a skin as soft as silk,
Within a fountain crystal-clear,
A golden apple doth appear.
No doors there are to this stronghold,
Yet thieves break in and steal the gold.
The answer to the good riddle is an egg.113 Handy Dandy is a bad egg. And Handy Dandy might be an alias for Humpty Dumpty. I wouldn’t envy him, or them, if I were you. Easy to fall into, though . . .
There is comedy in what Dylan makes of the world of the nursery rhyme. But there is danger, too, and tragedy. For the celebrated instance of “handy dandy” is the one from King Lear. Justice, the cardinal virtue, is everywhere vitiated by corrupt justices. The mad King interrogates the blinded Earl.
LEAR: No eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light, yet you see how this world goes.
GLOUCESTER: I see it feelingly.
LEAR: What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes, with no eyes. Look with thine ears. See how yond Justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark in thine ear: change places, and handy-dandy, which is the Justice, which is the thief.
(IV, vi)
If I were a writer of songs, I would prick up my ears at “Look with thine ears”. The merciless indifference of “handy dandy” is set within an exchange that speaks of the world (“how this world goes”, in tune with “all the time in the world” and “around the world”), and of madness (“What, art mad?” – “you talking crazy”), and of money (“There’s money for thee”, “no money in your purse”), and even of “O let me kiss that hand”. All of these might be felt to figure within Handy Dandy, as do both the sin of envy and the sin of lust, which Lear excoriates in this scene. And as does the vision that Lear has of sin and of its wealthy imperviousness to the virtue that is justice:
Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pygmy’s straw does pierce it.
Covetousness
Gotta Serve Somebody
There is a story of a country squire who, leaving church after having heard tell (once more) of the Ten Commandments, took some comfort to himself: “Well, anyhow I haven’t made a graven image.”114
Only one of the seven deadly sins is granted one of the Ten Commandments to itself. For although anger may lurk within “Thou shalt do no murder”, and lust within “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, these Commandments neither identify nor identify with one particular sin. But the sin of covetousness has its very own Commandment, the Tenth, no less. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his servant, nor his maid, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is his.” Do not covet his wife or his maid, even though you may happen to find your pleasure in somebody’s mistress or in having women in a cage. Do not covet his servant, and do remember that you yourself are going to have to serve somebody. You may be this, that, or the other,
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
The Old Testament concurs with the New Testament in the warning against covetousness that is Gotta Serve Somebody. “Lay not up for yourself treasures upon earth,” Christ urges in the Sermon on the Mount.115
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk
Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk
Might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread
May be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
The Victorian provocateur Samuel Butler put in a word against the word of the Lord, that we cannot serve God and Mammon.
Granted that it is not easy, but nothing that is worth doing ever is easy. Easy or not easy, not have only we got to do it, but it is exactly in this that the whole duty of man consists.
If there are two worlds at all (and about this I have no doubt) it stands to reason that we ought to make the best of both of them, and more particularly of the one with which we are most immediately concerned.116
Gotta Serve Somebody is unrelenting, and this in itself presented its creator with a challenge. How do you vary the unrelenting? And how, once you have started on the infinite possibilities of You may be anything-you-care-to-name but you’re gonna have to etc., will you ever be through with instances and remonstrances? You are assuredly characterizing all these people most vividly, with no end of styptic scepticism, but you’re gonna have to serve notice on the song sometime.
But the first thing of which to take the force is the combination of the song’s inexorable speed with its radiating deftness of sidelong glances, sly touches and chances. Take the opening verse, which opens, very diplomatically, on to the summit of the social world:
You may be an ambassador to England or France
You
