Leave it to the only bachelor in the field of City Council candidates in the April 12 election.
Unintentionally, Daniel Lee was misquoted yesterday (“Sahli-Wells Avoids Saying Yes or No”) in his response to a question about rent control at a candidates forum the night before.
Speaking in the wake of incumbent Meghan Sahli-Wells’s non-answer, it sounded as if Mr. Lee said, “She stands alone.”
Audience members familiar with nursery rhymes, and sitting farther away, realized immediately that Mr. Lee had said “The cheese stands alone,” a line taken from the children’s classic, “Farmer in the Dell.”
How could a father of four sons not have realized that? Since my youngest is 26, evidently too many years have passed to remember.
Mr. Lee, the lone candidate to openly advocate for rent control, explained to our readers:
“To clarify, I’d just like to say that my comment was ‘the cheese stands alone.’ I was referring to myself and my contention that the way rent control has been implemented is bad but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to find a better way.”
Shame on me for not recognizing the line I heard often in my childhood – nearly 250 years ago.
How would a bachelor know “Farmer in the Dell?”?
For the last 11 years, Mr. Lee has read stories to children at El Rincon Elementary, a noble commitment.
The Farmer in the Dell:
The farmer in the dell,
The farmer in the dell,
Hi-ho, the derry-o,
The farmer in the dell.
The farmer takes a wife,
The farmer takes a wife,
Hi-ho, the derry-o,
The farmer takes a wife.
The wife takes a child,
The wife takes a child,
Hi-ho, the derry-o,
The wife takes a child.
The child takes a nurse,
The child takes a nurse,
Hi-ho, the derry-o,
The child takes a nurse.
The nurse takes the cow,
The nurse takes the cow,
Hi-ho, the derry-o,
The nurse takes the cow.
The cow takes a dog,
The cow takes a dog,
Hi-ho, the derry-o,
The cow takes a dog.
The dog takes a cat,
The dog takes a cat,
Hi-ho, the derry-o,
The dog takes a cat.
The cat takes a rat,
The cat takes a rat,
Hi-ho, the derry-o,
The cat takes a rat.
The rat takes the cheese,
The rat takes the cheese,
Hi-ho, the derry-o,
The rat takes the cheese.
The cheese stands alone,
The cheese stands alone,
Hi-ho, the derry-o,
The cheese stands alone.
Author: Unknown
Here is a further elaboration on “the cheese stands alone.”
It is part of a song. “The Farmer in the Dell” is not just a song but a dance. At the beginning, one child, the “farmer,” stands in the center of a circle, and the other children sing and dance around him/her. On the first verse, s/he chooses a spouse, and that child leaves the circle to join the farmer at the center. The spouse takes a child on the next verse; on the next the child picks a nurse; shortly after that it’s a barnyard menagerie that lasts long enough to pack the rest of the kids into the center, with the proviso that the last four characters “taken” are the dog, cat, rat, and cheese. The cheese, having no one left to “take,” stands alone, and gets to be the farmer on the next go-round.
