Mark O'Brien

The line by John Ball, 14th-century English priest, is this:

"When Adam delved and Eve span,

Who was then the gentleman?"

It means that when the first people were digging in the earth (delving) to grow their own food and spinning their own cloth, where were the people of privilege (the gentlemen) who profited from the labor of others while they lived at leisure? The implied answer is: there were none. All were equal. All had to fend for themselves. No one was higher than another, and no one got a free ride.

This nursery rhyme dates back to England in the 1300's. The Black Death had killed a third of the population and the surviving peasants were feeling bolder and demanding freedom from their serfdom, whereby they had to work for nothing for the Lord of the Manor. They were very religious people and the rhyme is saying that when God created Earth and Adam and Eve there were no Lords of the Manor then, so why should there be any now. In other words it was a revolutionary slogan.

Adam and Eve were created by Jehovah (God).

Ralph Meredith has written:

'When Adam delved'