Know something about this song or lyrics?
Add it to our wiki.
Who would be a poor man, a beggarman, a thief - if he had a rich man in his hand.
And who would steal the candy from a laughing baby's mouth if he could take it from the money man.
Cross-eyed Mary goes jumping in again.
She signs no contract but she always plays the game.
She dines in Hampstead village on expense accounted gruel, and the jack-knife barber drops her off at school.
Laughing in the playground gets no kicks from little boys: would rather make it with a letching grey.
Or maybe her attention is drawn by Aqualung who watches through the railings as they play.
Cross-eyed Mary finds it hard to get along.
She's a poor man's rich girl and she'll do it for a song.
She's the rich man stealer but her favour's good and strong: she's the Robin Hood of Highgate- helps the poor man get along.
And who would steal the candy from a laughing baby's mouth if he could take it from the money man.
Cross-eyed Mary goes jumping in again.
She signs no contract but she always plays the game.
She dines in Hampstead village on expense accounted gruel, and the jack-knife barber drops her off at school.
Laughing in the playground gets no kicks from little boys: would rather make it with a letching grey.
Or maybe her attention is drawn by Aqualung who watches through the railings as they play.
Cross-eyed Mary finds it hard to get along.
She's a poor man's rich girl and she'll do it for a song.
She's the rich man stealer but her favour's good and strong: she's the Robin Hood of Highgate- helps the poor man get along.
Add your thoughts
Log in now to tell us what you think this song means.
Don’t have an account? Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. It’s super easy, we promise!
* Ian Anderson in Disc and Music Echo, 20th March 1971.
Who would be a poor man a beggerman, a thief
if he had a rich man in his hand
Who would steal the candy from a laughing baby's mouth
if he could take it from the money man
Cross-eyed Mary goes jumping in again
It is asking who would choose a hard life if she could have an easy life. And the first line in the next verse answer by saying Cross Eyed Mary would choose the hard life.
She eats in Hampstead, using an expense account, but chooses to eat a poor man's food, gruel.
She is 'the poor man's rich girl' a girl that chooses to associate with the seedy side of life.
Mary is just a rich girl who is slumming it... nothing more.
the song was written in 1970/1. at that time, highgate school was single-sex, boys only. highgate didn't start taking girls until the late 1990's and only became fully-coed in 2003. so that kind of destroys your whole theory, you idiot.
she couldn't have gone to the "elite" highgate school, but more likely one of the regular grammar schools nearby. next time, do your research.
wankers--There's really no need to be so rude. Chill out, okay? Also, Highgate is not only a school, but an English suburb--and a very wealthy one, at that. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… So jsbst18's interpretation still stands. Take a chill pill, okay?
Neglect comes to mind. Parents fault I'd guess. Cross eye'd = no eye care.
People have to scrape out a living. Gotta do whatcha gotta do.
Neglect
Neglect
Neglect...!
RJ
What drove me to come here, though, was when I read Wikipedia's page on the song... To my complete shock, the explanation given there is that Cross-Eyed Mary is a pious thief stealing money from the rich and giving it to poor homeless beggars like Aqualung. After seeing that interpretation, I decided to come see what others thought about it here and find out whether my belief was the bizarre & unusual one, or if the wacky one is whoever posted that theory to Wikipedia!
I'm certain she's a child prostitute, and like someone else said, doing rich men since they'll pay better; I've also heard it referred to as stealing from or extorting lonely men desperate enough to pay in money & gifts for the intimate contact. (Sometimes because they're spoiled jerks, sometimes because they've let work take over any hope of a personal life...) She might also be stealing on a literal level if allowed into their home. But instead of spending the money on all the things she can't get from her poverty-stricken family, she's giving it to her father to help support the household -- very much what a girl who is making a good wage does if her parents are poor.
It's also possible that having the crossed eyes means that Mary can't do well in school because of sight issues, and figures nobody will hire or or want to be with her romantically because of her disfigurement -- basically wiping out both her chance to support herself or find someone else to support her. Left with THAT future, it would make sense that she'd take whatever money & fake affection she can get even if it does mean prostitution; heck, I know normal attractive well-educated/successful women that are like that in rapid serial monogamy because their self-esteem was always so low.
All of the above might also explain why she's not interested in the little boys, now that I think about it from the "she's got a hard life, a hard future, and doing the mature thing to help out" angle... Having to grow up that harshly, and that young, does create a barrier between a person and others that had a nicer time. I had a number of very nasty problems to deal with as a child on an everyday basis and while I still laughed at things, I felt disconnected from classmates that complained of having a horrible day simply because they got the wrong snack or (later on as teens) were just angsty for seemingly no reason.
The line ...> "gets no kicks from little boys" could allude to the scandals and lawsuits for sex abuse of boys that continue to ROCK the Church. TULL POWER!
spirituallysmart.com
I don't think she's much to do with Aqualung, apart from maybe identifying with him a little bit, as he's another casualty of society broken and unable to function in the manner expected.
The reference to the mother goose rhyme is the first line (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich Man, Poor Man,
Beggar Man, Thief), nicely ties it to the later song, Mother Goose.