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 THE
OXFORD DICTIONARY
OF

thQirsery Rhymes
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2011

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Page from Walter Crane's Baby's Own Alphabet, 1874, one of Routledge's
'New Sixpenny Toy Books'
 THE
OXFORD DICTIONARY
OF

^N^sery Rhymes
EDITED BY

lONA AND PETER OPIE

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
Oxford University Press, Ely House, London W. i
GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
CAPE TOWN SALISBURY IBADAN NAIROBI LUSAKA ADDIS ABABA
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA
KUALA LUMPUR HONG KONG

C^L

FIRST PUBLISHED 1 95 I
REPRINTED WITH CORRECTIONS 1 952
REPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY IN GREAT BRITAIN
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD
FROM CORRECTED SHEETS OF THE SECOND IMPRESSION
1952, 1955. 1958, 1962, 1966
 ^reface^
A HUNDRED years have passed since the first pubHcation of The
Nursery Rhymes of England, 'collected principally from oral tradi-
tion' by James Orchard HaUiwell. Tliis httle volume, by the
young man of 22 who was later to become world-renov^med as a
Shakespearian scholar, has been reprinted (in various guises) more
times than any of his numerous later, and more ambitious studies.
The collection, interspersed with notes about the age and origins
of the nursery rhymes, was the outcome of much random delving
and is a treasure store of curious information. It was the first work
to draw attention to the antiquity of the rhymes with any con-
viction,and the first collection which attempted to be comprehen-
sive. For a century its authority as the standard work has been

unchallenged. Together with his Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales,

pubhshed in 1849, it is the basis (whether acknowledged or not) of
almost every nursery anthology, and it has been the principal
English source, often the sole source other than the fertile imagina-
tions of the *happy guessers*, of every essay and paragraph on the
origin of nursery rhymes which has been published since.
HaUiwell opened the gate to a fascinating field of research and
it is strange that little attempt has been made to continue his work.

The extent of his reading and his erudition were such that a super-
stition arose, persisting to this day, that there was nothing more
to be learnt about the rhymes. In all these years no attempt has
been made to verify have been
his statements; his inaccuracies

repeated with monotonous and no attempt has been

regularity,
made even to consolidate the new facts which have come to light
in the past three generations. Yet HaUiwell himself knew more
than he ever cared to pubhsh. Although it may be true that he
number of
coUected *principaUy from oral tradition', there were a
contemporary rhyme books available to him, and there were
others which might have been considered antique when he him-
self was a child.
 PREFACE
In the introduction to his first edition he acknowledges having
seen Infant Institutes^ pubhshed in 1797. In subsequent editions he
refers to three other books: Gammer Gurtons Garland or the
Nursery Parnassus (18 10), The Popular Rhymes of Scotland (1824 and
1842), and Bellenden Ker's fanciful Essay on the Archaeology of
Nursery Rhymes (1834). It is also clear that he made use of some
of the juvenile books at the Bodleian, especially Songs for the
Nursery an excellent seventy-six page booklet which first appeared
y

in 1805. Mention of these collections is not meant to beHttle

HaUiwell's work, but it is to be regretted that he did not always
manage to say exactly where he found his material. Also, if one is
to make a study of these rhymes, it is helpful to compare the first
collections which were made, and note which pieces were included
in them. This has been done for the present volume.
In a work of this kind, as the compilers of such dictionaries as
those of Proverbs and of Cliristian Names have already found,
the difficulty is to know where to start and where to draw the
line, and, having decided on the scope, to know how the material

should be presented. The compiler after a number of years* work

is confronted with a table-load of manuscript notes, recording,
if he has been conscientious, every laborious detail and every
speculation however improbable. He must decide how technical
and how selective he should be. In the present work we have
attempted to be detailed, without, we hope, being tedious. We
have not thought it necessary to set dov^oi endless variations of a
rhyme unless these variations, in themselves, have a particular
interest. Not the least of our difficulties has been to know what to
adopt as the standard text. Should it be the version which happens
to be the earliest recorded? Or the version which is the most
euphonious ? Or the one we ourselves remember from our child-
hood? Our answer has been a compromise. We have chosen the
version which seems to us the fullest, while bearing in mind how
the rhyme is commonly knov^ni today.
For the first time nursery rhymes have been arranged alphabeti-
cally to facihtate easy reference. Halliwell*s attempt to classify the
rhymes was to divide them into fourteen (later eighteen) sections
under such headings as 'Natural History', *Love and Matrimony',
vi
 PREFACE
*Historicar, ^Paradoxes', ^Gaffers and Gammers'. This system, on
account of its quaintness, has been imitated by many of the antho-
logists, but, as HaUiwell himself admitted, it was open to criticism.

Nursery rhymes may be gathered but they defy regimentation,

and we cannot claim complete orderliness for our system either.
Arrangement by the most prominent word (where possible a
proper noun) has a number of advantages. Thus, 'This little pig
went to market' will be found under Pig, *A frog he would a-
wooing go' under Frog, 'Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross'
under Banbury Cross. The better-known nonsense jingles, such as
*Hey diddle diddle' and 'Eena, meena, mina, mo', are hsted under
their opening phrases. Where a nursery character has more than
one name the arrangement is by the first name. Jack Homer,
Humpty Dumpty, Cock Robin; and this apphes equally to nick-
names, as Mother Hubbard, and Boy Blue, though the formal titles,
Mr., Dr., General, and so on, are ignored.
Most of the rhymes will, we beheve, be readily located; wliile
reference to the index at the end which lists the first lines of both
the standard text and all variations quoted, should lead the way to
any pieces proving elusive.
In scope this dictionary is intended to embrace those verses
which are traditionally passed on to a child while it is still of
nursery age. As well as the nonsense jingles, humorous songs, and
character rhymes, it includes the more common lullabies, infant

amusements, nursery counting-out formulas, baby puzzles and

riddles, rhyming alphabets, tongue twisters, nursery prayers, and

a few singing games, the words of which have an independent

existence in the nursery.^ The collection does not, however,
include a number of pieces which, though sometimes appearing
in 'Nursery Rhyme' books, belong, strictly speaking, to older
children. For instance, the dialogues of dramatic games (as *We
are three brethren out of Spain'), and the rhymes bandied between
school-children. 2 Nor, with a few exceptions, are there included

^ Whole books could be (indeed have been and still need to be again) devoted to several
of these categories individually. Counting-out formulas, for instance, come only on the
fringe of nursery rhyme lore. This dictionary cannot pretend to be exhaustive under
these sub-headings.
^ See our anthology of school rhymes, / Saw Esau, 1947.

vii
 PREFACE
local, dialect,^ and other folk rhymes,^ rhymes of divination,
magic spells, and fairy tales in verse. Further, it has not been our
object to resurrect pieces long forgotten, and when the contrary
might be supposed we have been careful to supply evidence of
contemporary or recent vitahty.
This brings us to the notes on the rhymes which are, we beheve,
of a comprehensiveness not previously attempted. Our aim has
been to find the earhest recording of each piece no matter in what
kind of literature it appeared; to offer the possible circumstances
of its origin, to illustrate changes in the wording through the
years, and to set it beside its forebears or companion pieces from
other lands. It has been our intention to build up a picture of the
surroundings in which the rhymes have thrived, and of the effect
they have had upon their hearers; to tell of the poets who have
been warmed by them, the children who have dchghted in them,
and the customs, superstitions, and amusements which have
become associated with them. Our beUef is (for this has been our
own experience) that a knowledge of their past adds to the
pleasure of them in the present.
In our references we set out with the ambitious plan of con-
sulting the original sources wherever possible; on important
occasions when tliis has not been possible, the source has been
indicated in a bracket succeeding the quotation. In the case of
undated anonymous and pseudonymous literature the name of the
pubhsher, where of moment, appears in brackets after the
it is

title.3 When the pubhsher has been American, the place of origin

has also been given. It should be noted that we have not, except in
special cases, given references to rhyme appearances where they
have merely been unedited copyings from an earher work. This
accounts for the comparatively small number of references sub-
sequent to HaUiwell, and is why those which ar6 given are drawn
' Except as variations to rhymes in standard English.
* These are often, of course, learnt in childhood, e.g.
A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay,
but are clearly adult in character.
3 This is particularly necessary with such ephemeral Uterature as the juvenile chap-

books. There is much uncertainty about when some of the publishers were working and
our estimation of the dates of many of their productions does not always agree with those
given by the Copyright Libraries.

viii
 PREFACE
mostly from Notes and Queries, publications of Folk-Song and
Folk-Lore Societies, from personal collection, or from our noble
band of helpers.^
We believe that we have assembled here almost everything so
far known about nursery rhymes together with a considerable
amount of material hitherto unpubhshed. We are, nevertheless,

keenly aware how necessary it is for us to add a note of diffidence.

We dare not hope that we have discovered every early reference
to a nursery rhyme, nor that those who follow will find no gaps or
inaccuracies; we can only hope that however patently they have
been caused by our lack of diligence or of erudition, they will be
brought to our notice with gentleness.
I. O. and P. O.
ALTON in HAMPSHIRE
1944-51
^ Correspondents were asked to send rhymes or versions of rhymes which they had
'never seen in print'. This has made their contributions of particular value, for they give a
pictiire of how the rhymes are known today in oral tradition.

IX
 (^Acknowledgements
The present work embodies the personal recollections, knowledge, and
collectings of many friends and friendly correspondents, and it gives us
pleasure to make the following acknowledgements:

To those who have come forward with rhymes and information,

among them: Mrs. E. Louie Acres; Mr. Victor G. Alexander; Mr.
Robert D'O. ApHn; Lady Archibald; Mr. L. G. D. Arland; Sister M.
Ayres; Mrs. C. C. Baines; Lady Balfour; Mr. Richard Bell; Mr.
Howard Biddlestone; The Rev. Peter B. G. Binnall; Mrs. AHcia E.
Bourne; Miss M. Bremner; Mrs. WilHamW. Brockwell, with a gen-
erous gift in aid of Dr. Bamardo's; Miss C. Campbell Thomson; Miss
Cartmell; Miss Emily Chisholm, who has in preparation Nursery Rhymes
for Nursery Reasons', Miss Pat ChaUis; Mrs. R. W. Christy; Miss Ethel
E. Coath; Mrs. M. D. Collingham; Miss C. Crawford; Miss A. F. M.
Cuppage; Mrs. Joan Cutsforth; Mrs. Jane Dawson; Mr. Desmond H.
Dickson; Miss Ruth Duffm; Mr. J. R. S. Duncan; Mr. OHver Edwards;
Mrs. E. Eripper; Mrs. M. E. Evans; Mrs. Awrea Farmer; Miss Joan
Ford; Mr. Donald A. Foster; Mr. John L. Gilbert; Mr. F. Grice, author
oiFolk Tales of the North Country; Miss F. Doreen GuUen, compiler of
Traditional Number Rhymes and Games; Mrs. E. F. Hall; Miss Innes
Hart; Mrs. A. F. Hay, donor of some of Caldecott's hand-coloured
proofs, two of which are reproduced here; Miss Renee Haynes; Major
F. E. Hill; Mrs. Valerie Hills; Mrs. F. W. Chant Hobrow, donor of
Food for the Mind: or, A New Riddle Book, 1787; Mr. Clifford L. B.
Hubbard, compiler of the forthcoming Bibliography of British Dog
Books; Mrs. Hunt-Lewis; The Rev. E. Clafton Illingsworth; Miss
Carrol Jenkins, who has given much time to collecting; Lady Knight;
Mr. N. Lincoln; Miss L. M. Little wood; Nurse Lloyd; Miss K. E.
Lloyd; Mrs. Eleanor M. Macqueen; Mrs. Margaret Miller; Mr. and
Mrs.Wilham Montgomerie, compilers of the deUghtful Scottish Nursery
Rhymes and Sandy Candy; Mrs. B. Monypemiy; Mrs. Vaughan Nash;
The Rev. and Mrs. Colin Opie; Masters James and Bobby Opie, who
dutifully submitted to early training as collectors; Mrs. H. R. Page;
Mrs. Dauncey Pearce; Miss F. P. Plant; Mrs. S. A. Pope; Canon
S.

Prideaux, D.D.; Mr. Hugh Reid; Miss Jean V. Robinson; Mr. R. D.

Rudwick; Miss A. Russell; The Hon. Miss Maud Russell; The Hon.
Miss V. Sackville-West, C.H., who passed on material additional to

XI
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
that used in her Nursery Rhymes (1947); Miss Beatrice Saunders; Mrs.
M. Scaife;Mr. W. K. Scudamore; Mrs. S. Stuart; Mrs. P. Tatlow; N. D.
Alessandra Tinelli di Gorla; Mrs. Jane Toller; Mr. H. Tyson; Miss
Florence C. Urquliart; Mrs. R. St. J.Walker; Mr. L.Warner; Mr. R. C.
Warner, whose entertaining recollections have added a number of light
touches to this work; Miss Maureen Wells; Mrs.W. WeUs; Mrs. Agnes
Whitworth; Miss Flora L. Willoughby; Mrs. D.Woodfine; Mrs. D.
Wormald; Miss Dorothy Wright; Miss M. A. Yorker.
To speciaUsts and others who, when applied to, readily came to our
aid, including: Mr. J. LesHe Abbott, of Messrs. Francis, Day & Hunter,

Ltd., for the original words of the song, 'Jeremiah, blow the fire'; Miss
Dorothy Mary Armitage, great-great niece of and authority on Ann
and Jane Taylor; Dr. A. A. Barb, of the Warburg Institute, who loaned
us his valuable paper 'Animula Vagula Blandula' and directed our
attention to Kohler's Kleinere Schriften; Mrs. H. A. Lake Bamett, the
active Hon. Secretary of the Folk-Lore Society; Colonel Reginald
Bastard, D.S.O., who read and commented upon the article on 'Old
Mother Hubbard', and passed on to us his family's traditions about Sarah
Catherine Martin; The Rev. Dr. Henry Bett, author of Nursery
Rhymes and Tales and The Games of Children; Mr. Ernest Bletcher,
Librarian, County Borough of Derby, for additional information about
'The Derby Ram'; Mrs. John Boon, who generously gave time to
translating; Mr. E. Kenneth Brown; Lt.-Col. A. H. Burne, D.S.O.,
author of The Noble Duke of York, quoted in the article, 'Oh, the brave
old Duke of York'; Mrs. Raymond Burrell, who generously gave time
to translating; Mr. Charles Chilton, of the B.B.C., for information
and guidance about songs popularized by the nigger minstrels; Mr.
Walter de la Mare, C.H., whose letters, reminiscent of the delights in
Come Hither, reminded us that what our notes say is scarcely more
important than the way they say it; Miss Ann Driver, of the Schools
Dept., B.B.C.; Mr. Charles P. Finlayson, Keeper of MSS., the Library
of Edinburgh University; Miss A. G. Gilchrist, O.B.E., with whom we
have been privileged to have an unending correspondence, as enjoyable
as it has been valuable, and whose reading of the manuscript was

unhappily interrupted by a fall in her eighty-sixth year, when she

broke her leg —her remarks warm and illuminate many of our pages;
Mr. Robert Graves, for annotations to his beautiful anthology. Less
Familiar Nursery Rhymes; Mr. Duncan Gray, City Librarian, Notting-
ham, for information about Gotham; Mr. W. Claud Hamilton, County
Librarian, Durham, for additional information about the song 'Elsie
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Marley'; the late Rev. F. P. Harris, authority on the works of Beatrix
Potter; Mr. Reginald Hart; Miss Joan Hassall; Mr. E. Austin Hinton,
City Librarian, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, for verifying facts about the
hfe of Elsie Marley; Dr. R. W. Hunt, Keeper of Western Manuscripts,
Bodleian Library, who directed our attention to several MSS. in his
keeping, and has afforded us other kindnesses; Mr. F. M. C. Johnson,
late Hon. Librarian, The Folk-Lore Mr. Richard Kelly, of the
Society;
B.B.C., Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Mr. Allan M. Laing; Mr. Raymond
Mander and Mr. Joe Mitchenson; Miss Enid Marx, compiler and
illustrator of The Zodiac Book of Nursery Rhymes; The Earl of Oxford

and Asquith, who read and commented upon the article on 'Little
Jack Homer'; Mrs. Margarita Peel for translations from the Spanish;
Dr. Elfriede Rath; Dr. Cecil Roth; Miss Elsie A. Russ, Deputy Director,
Victoria Art Gallery and Municipal Libraries, Bath; the late Lord Sayc
and Sele, an early member of whose family may or may not have
ridden a cock-horse to Banbury; the late Mr. George Bernard Shaw,
by a couple of years the contributor to this work with the longest
memory, for the MS. 'Bernard Shaw's Nursery Rhymes', and other
reminiscences; Mr. L. F. Shenfield; Professor J. Simmons, biographer
of Southey; Professor Archer Taylor; Mr. T. Todd; Mr. Herbert van
Thai, whose advice at an early stage proved invaluable; Dr. Arthur
Waley, for some hteral translations of the Chinese in J. T. Headland's
Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes; Mr. Harold WiUiams; Miss Dora E.
Yates, Hon. Secretary, The Gypsy Lore Society.
To private collectors of children's books who have allowed us to
examine their collections: Mr. Charles W. Traylen; The National
Magazine Co. and the National Book League, who gave special
facihties in respect of the collection formed by the late F. R. Bussell;
Miss Ehsabeth Ball, of Muncie, Indiana, who did not allow distance to
come in the way of our knowing everything we wanted to about her
superb collection; Dr. d'Alte A. Welch, of Ohio, who similarly allowed
us to view the highhghts of his collection by microfilm; and Mr. Roland
Knaster, whose fabulous collection is blessed with a generous and
knowledgeable custodian.
To kindly members of the antiquarian book trade (a part of whose
nature it seems to be to go out of their way to be helpful), especially
Mr. L. W. Bondy; Mr. J. Burke; Dr. Ettinghausen; Mr. Ifan Kyrlc
Fletcher; Mr. David Low; the late Mr. Henry M. Lyon, with whom
we have spent many a pleasant day, not only searching through every
volume and broadsheet in his Dickensian repository of juveniHa and
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
curiosa —
the like of which we shall probably never see again but also
drawing upon liis wide knowledge of the ephemeral printers Mr. Waldo
;

Maas; Mr. C. D. Massey; Mr. P. H. Muir; Mr. Kenneth Mummery;

Mr. Colin Richardson; Mr. Arthur Rogers; Mr. G. P. Romer; and
Mr. T. D.Webster.
To various libraries, whose staffs we have found ever-willing to
do their utmost to help us: The British Museum, where we have done
most of our original research; The Bodleian Library, especially Miss
G. M. Briggs, Assistant Secretary, who has also done copying for us;
The London Library, where Mr. Cox remembers the days when J. O.
Halhwell, 'a tall and always courteous gentleman', used to call for his
books; The Victoria and Albert Museum; The Saint Bride Foundation;
Kensington Public Library, where Mr. Boxall and Mr. Young have
frequently assisted us; Chelsea Public Library.
To Miss E. G. Withycombe, compiler of The Oxford Dictionary of
Christian Names, who patiently read our MS. as it was prepared, and
who by advice and strenuous criticism attempted to indoctrinate us
with her own high standards.
Finally, to W. W. Collett-Mason, for very acceptable assistance;
Mr.
and to Mrs. Margaret Opie, without whose reaHstic aid the commence-
ment of the work would have been impracticable and its completion
impossible.

Acknowledgements of the material loaned for the illustrations, and

of permission granted to reproduce copyright material, will be found in
the List of Illustrations. We would Uke, however, to mention here our
particular gratitude to Messrs. Frederick Wame & Co. Ltd. for per-
mission to reproduce the page from Kate Greenaway's Mo^Aer Goose
(plate XV a) ; the panel from Walter Crane's The Baby's Opera (plate
XXI ^); and the illustration by L. Leslie Brooke (plate XXIII d). And
we think it interesting to record that Messrs. Wame have also long been
the publishers of Randolph Caldecott's 'Picture Books' (plates III/) and
XI) ; they are the pubUshers of Squirrel Nutkin (plate XVI b) ; while
Aunt Louisa's Sing a Song of Sixpence (plate XVII a) must have been
among their first publications.

XIV
 Qontents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XVU

ABBREVIATIONS XXV

INTRODUCTION I

NURSERY RHYMES ARRANGED IN

ALPHABETICAL ORDER ACCORDING
TO THE MOST PROMINENT WORD 47

AN INDEX OF NOTABLE FIGURES

ASSOCIATED WITH THE INVENTION,
DIFFUSION, OR ILLUSTRATION OF
NURSERY RHYMES 445

INDEX OF FIRST LINES 453

 hift of Illustrations
PLATES
I. Page from Walter Crane's Bahys Own Alphabet 1874, one ^

of Routledge*s 'New Sixpenny Toy Books'. The size of the

original illustration is 8J X 6\ in. frontispiece
By courtesy of Captain Anthony Crane.

n. a. Title-page of The Top Book of All, c. 1760.

By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

b. Title-page of The Famous Tommy Thumb's Little Story-

Book, c. 1760. facing page 32

m. A century of children's book illustration.

a. *Brow Bender' and 'Baby Bunting' in Tommy Thumb's
Song Book, printed by Isaiah Thomas of Worcester,
Massachusetts, 1788.
By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

b. 'Bye, Randolph Caldecott's Hey

Baby Bunting!' in
Diddle Diddle and Baby Bunting, 1882. Reproduced from the
artist's hand-coloured proof. Caldecott is perhaps supreme

among illustrators of nursery rhymes. See also plate XI.

facing page 63

IV. a. *Boys and Girls to play', from The Second Book of the
Compleat Country Dancing-Master, a new edition, 171 9.
By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum,
b. One of Mulrcady's Lamb's first
illustrations for Charles
book for children. The King and
Queen of Hearts, 1805, an
ampHficd version of the nursery rhyme. The book was
published as by 'Tho*. Hodgkins', William Godwin's
manager, whose name Godwin used. f^^^ing page 100

V. 'Three cliildren sliding on the ice', as it appeared in the

ballad, The lamentation of a bad Market, when printed on a

broadside, c. 1680. facing page 118
By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

VI. a. 'The timid hare', in William Darton's Death and Burial

of Cock Robin, 1806.
b. 'The cock crows in the mom', from Harris's Little
Rhymes for Little Folks, c. 18 12. /^^"^^ P^g^ I3^
5308
xvu
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VII. Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, c. 1744. The earliest
known book of nursery rhymes. facing page 154
By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

vni. a. The forerunner of *A frog he would a- wooing go'.

'The Marriage of the Frogge and the Movse', in Thomas
Ravenscroft's Melismata, 1611.
By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.
h. The frontispiece of the 1816 edition of Marshall's Mother
Goose s Melody, illustrating 'High Diddle, Diddle' and *The
sow came in with a saddle'. facing page 180

IX. The 1791 edition o£ Mother Goose s Melody, published by

Francis Power, 'Grandson to the late Mr. J. Newbery'.
This is both the earhest copy of Mother Goose s Melody
known, and the only one extant issued by the house of
Newbery. facing page 200
By courtesy of Miss Elisabeth Ball.

X. a. Headpiece for the song 'Lavenders green, Diddle diddle*,

c. 1680.
By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

h. Cover for the song 'Lavender blue dilly, dilly', 1948.

By courtesy of the Sun Music Publishing Co., Ltd. ficing page 266

XI. 'Shall I go with you, my Pretty Maid?' One of Caldecott's

hand-coloured proofs for The Milkmaid, 1882, with his
instructions to the engraver Edmund Evans. Caldecott's
method was first to sketch the barest outlines in ink, and
then, when the engraver sent a proof of this, to fill in the
details in colour. ficing page 282
Whatever was sung for childhood's ear
Caldecott painted for childhood's eye.
ELEANOR FARJEON

xn. a. 'The man in the moon', in Darton's edition of Songs for

the Nursery, 1818. Edward Everett Hale suggested that
whoever it was who was responsible for this illustration 'is

to be ranked among the original artists of the world*.

By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

b. The round 'Three blinde Mice', in Thomas Ravenscroft's

Deuteromelia, 1609. facing page 294
By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
XIII. a. Title-page of the dedication copy of The Cotnic
Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog, 1805,
presented by Sarah Catherine Martin to John Pollexfen
Bastard, M.P., 'at whose House these Notable Sketches
were design'd'.
By courtesy of Colonel Reginald Bastard, D.S.O.

b. Sarah Catherine Martin (i 768-1 826). From a miniature

by Anne Fulsome. fi^^^^g P^g^ 3^0
By courtesy of Miss M. E. A. May.

XIV. Nursery Rhyme Pantomimes.

a. Playbill for Harlequin Horner, 18 17. The earliest notice
found of a pantomime based on a nursery rhyme.
b. Tommy Tucker in Skelt's toy-theatre production,
c. 1850.

c. Pat Kirkwood as Tommy Tucker at the London

Casino, 1949-50.
By courtesy of Miss Kirkwood.
d. Frederick Yokes in Harlequin Humpty Dumpty at the
Lyceum, 1869. facing page 340

XV. a. *Ring-a-ring-a-roses', in Kate Greenaway 's Mother Goose,

As with her contemporaries Caldecott and Crane,
1 88 1.

some of Kate Greenaway's happiest designs were for

nursery rhymes.
b. 'One, Two, Buckle my Shoe*, in Carvalho's Juvenile
Numerator, c. 1825. facing page 364

XVI. a. 'I have four sisters beyond the sea', as it was written in
the first half of the 15th century. Sloane MS 2593.
By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum,
b. The squirrels' nursery rhyme gift on the sixth day, in
BeatrixPotter's first version o£ Squirrel Nutkin. 'They brought
a parting present for Old Brown, consisting of a pie with
4& 20 blackbirds.' From the original MS, Sept. 1901.
By courtesy of the Trustees of the Beatrix Potter Estate. fi^il^g P^g^ 3^8

XVII. a. The happy ending to Aunt Louisa's Sing a Song of Six-

pence, 1866.
They sent for the King's doctor,
who sewed it on again,
He sewed it on so neatly,
the seam was never seen.

The size of the original illustration is 10 X 7 J in. facing page 392

xix
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
XVII. b. John Liniiell's illustration of 'The cat sat asleep by the
side of the fire' in Traditional Nursery Soti^s, 1843. This was
the second volume in Felix Summerly 's Home Treasury, an
attempt, successful in that its influence was far reaching, to
improve the standard of cliildren's book illustration and
production, and to revive children's traditional lore.
By courtesy of the Committee of the London Library. fi<^i^g P^^g^ 392

XVIII. Taffy was a Welshman. A

music title-page by Alfred
Concanen in his earlier style, c. 1865. facing page 400
By courtesy of A. Hyatt King, Esq.

XIX. The rhyme which started Lear making Hmericks. 'There

was a sick man of Tobago', in Marshall's Anecdotes and
Adventures of Fifteen Gentlemen, c. 1822, possibly written by
R. S. Sharpe. The illustration is probably by Robert
Cruikshank. fi^^^i^g P^g^ 407

XX. *A New yeares guift for

Shrews', a satirical print of about
James time depicting a precursor of 'Tom married a wife
I's

on Sunday' and of 'Solomon Grundy'. facing page 410

By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

XXI. a.'Tom, the Piper's Son', a frieze from Walter Crane's

The Baby's Opera, 1877, showing the stolen pig as it is
conventionally pictured today.
By courtesy of Messrs. Frederick Warne & Co., Ltd.

b. 'The Pig Pye Man', a hawker offering for sale the kind
of pig which Tom originally stole. From an engraving
probably of the late i8th century.

c, d,and e. Woodcuts from Kendrew's edition of the chap-

book Tom, the Piper s Son, c. 1820, showing (c) how simple
it was for Tom to carry the pig; [d) the mode of chastise-

ment he received; (e) the quite different Tom (p. 408)

whose musical abiHty was such that 'Even pigs on their hind
legs would after him prance'. fi^li^g P^g^ 4i i

xxn. Choice of Inuentions, a broadside ballad, registered 2

January 1632, which contains lines still remembered in the
nursery (cf plate XXIII). /^^'«^ P^g^ 422
By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

XX
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
XXIII. 'Seuerall sorts of the figure of three' (cf plate XXII).
a. *Three wise men of Gotham', as depicted by L. Leslie
Brooke in Andrew Lang's Nursery Rhyme Book, 1897.
By courtesy of Messrs. Frederick Warne & Co., Ltd.
h. The ThreeJovial Huntsmen, by Randolph Caldecott, 1 880.
c. The Old Woman and her Three Sons, a toy book pub-
Ushed by Harris, 181 5. facing page 423
By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

XXIV. Cover and two panels of The Flight of the Old Woman who
was Tossed up in a Basket, a panorama 'sketched and etched
by AHquis', and pubHshed by D. Bogue in 1844. The
original, which is hand-coloured, is over 7 feet long. A
note at the foot of the cover states: 'The Purchasers of this
work may relyupon receiving the earliest information of
the return of the Old Woman.' f^^if^g P^^g^ 434

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

Page from The History of an Apple Pie, published by Darton and
Clark, c. 1840. page 46

Woodcuts from John Marshall's edition o£ Mother Goose* s Melody,

c. 1795. page 86
a. *I won't be my father's Jack'; b. 'There was an old man in a
velvet coat'; c. 'Jack and Gill'; d. *Hush-a-by baby'; e. 'What
care I how black I be'; /. 'When I was a Httle boy'; g. 'O my
kitten a kitten; h. 'Bah, bah, black sheep'.
By courtesy of the Curators of the Bodleian Library.

Street Cries and 'Ride a cock-horse'. page 106

a. 'Hot Cross Buns' in London Cries for Children, 1806.
b. 'Ride a cock-horse' in Old Nurse* s Book of Rhymes, 1858.
c. 'Young lambs to sell.' Engraving of WiUiam Liston, toy lamb
for which he specially posed in 1^26.
seller,

Cartoons based on nursery rhymes. page 192

a. 'The Genius of France nursing her darling', by James Gillray,
1804.
By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

xxi
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
b. Illustration by G. A. Stevens in Nursery Rhymes for Fight mq
Times, c. by Elphinstone Thorpe:
1914, to the verse
Kaiser, Kaiser-gander, where do your men wander?
Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber.
Burning their cathedrals they couldn't say their prayers.
till

Then there came the British troops who flung them down the stairs.

The master of nonsense depicts a nonsense masterpiece. Edward

Lear's illustrations of 'High diddle diddle' drawn for the mother
of John Addington Symonds. page 204
By courtesy of Angus Davidson, Esq.

Dalziel engravings. page 214

a. 'To show you I'm not proud, you may shake hands with me!'
Tenniel's illustration of Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's
Through the Looking-glass, 1872.
By courtesy of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

b. 'Oranges and Lemons', in Mrs. Valentine's Games for Family

Parties, 1869.

Pages from the chapbook Jack and Jill, and Old Dame Gill,
printed by James Kendrew of York, c. 1820. page 225

'This is the house that Jack built', as pictured in Harris's edition of

the story, originally pubHshed c. 1820; and in Kendrew's chap-
book edition, c. 1825. page 228

Cover of a chapbook History ofJack Horner, printed in Aldermary

Churchyard, c. 1770. page 235
By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

Chapbook illustrations. page 252

a. and b. From Catnach's Nursery Rhymes, c. 1830.

c. and/ From The Waggon Load of Money, c. 1825.
d. From The Top Book of All, c. 1760, depicting 'Six beetles
against a wall, close by an old woman's apple-stall'.

By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

e. From J. E. Evans's Jumping Joan, c. 1820.

g. From Kcndicw's Jack Sprat, c. 1820.
xxii
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Cartoons based on nursery rhymes. page 288
a. 'The Mahgned Matron', by L. G. lUingworth.
Reproduced by permission of the Proprietors of Punch.

b. 'Eeny-meeny-miney-mo', by Osbert Lancaster.

By courtesy of Messrs. John Murray (Publishers) Ltd.

c. 'There was a Httle man, and he felt a Httle glum.*

By courtesy of Messrs. Arthur Guinness, Son & Co., Ltd.

Chapbook illustrations. page 318

a. From the title-page of Old Mother Hubbard and her Dog, printed
by G. Ingram, c. 1840.
b. 'Round about, round about. Maggoty pie', from Davison's

halfpenny Nursery Rhymes for Children, c. 1830.

c. Mrs. Mary's 'cuckolds all on a row', from Nancy Cock*s Pretty
Song Book, c. 1780.
By courtesy of Miss Elisabeth Ball.
d. From Kendrew's Simple Simon, c. 1820.
e. From Kendrew's Cock Robin, c. 1820.

Chapbook illustrations. page 344

a. Title-page of The Little Woman and the Pedlar, printed by
Joseph' Roberts of Leeds, c. 1825.
b-e. From Richardson of Derby's Nursery Rhymes, c. 1830, depict-
ing: (b) 'A carrion crow sat on an oak'; had a Httle pony';
(c) 'I

(d) 'Who comes here? A grenadier'; (e) 'When I was a Httle

boy, I had but Httle wit'.
 ^Abbreviations
advt. advertised illus. illustrated by
biblio. bibliography MS manuscript
c. circa, about n.d. not dated
cf. confer, compare NR Nursery Rhymes (in book titles)

ed. edition, or edited by p.p. ed. privately printed edition

e.g. exempli gratia, for example q.v. qu\od vide, which see

AUTHORS AND BOOKS

American Folk-Lore Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1888-1950.
Babys Bouquet The Babys Bouquet, 'A Fresh Bunch of Old Rhymes and
Tunes', arranged and decoratedby Walter Crane, 1879.
Babys Opera The Babys Opera *A Book of Old Rhymes With New
Dresses.The Music by the Earhest Masters', by Walter
Crane, 1877.
Baring-Gould Sabine Baring-Gould, A Book of Nursery Songs and Rhymes,
1895.
Bett Henry Bett, Nursery Rhymes and Tales, 1924; The Games
of Children, 1929.
Bolton Henry Carrington Bolton, The Counting-out Rhymes of
Children, 1888.

Chambers Robert Chambers, The Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1826.

Revised and enlarged 1842, 1847, and 1870.
Christmas Box Christmas Box (A. Bland and Weller). Tunes by James Hook,
1797. Vols, ii and iii, 1798.
Crofton MS Addison Crofton, 'Children's Rhymes', 2 MS vols., com-
pleted 1901. (Bodleian Library MS Eng. misc. e 39-40.)

DNB Dictionary of National Biography.

Douce MS FrancisDouce and another, MS additions to Gammer
Gurtons Garland (1784), c. i8oo-c. 1820 (Douce R 227).
Douce MS II ? Member of Douce family, MS additions to Gammer

Gurtons Garland (1810), c. 1820 (Douce Adds. 134 (8)).

Eckenstein Lina Eckenstein, Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes,
1906.
Folk-Lore The Folk-Lore Record, 1878-82; The Folk-Lore Journal,
1883-9; Folk-Lore, 1 890-1950.
Folk-Song Journal of the Folk-Song Society, 1899-193 1 ; JoMr/;n/ of the
English Folk Dance and Song Society, 193 2-1950,

Ford Robert Ford, Children's Rhymes, 1903, 1904.

XXV
 ABBREVIATIONS
FT Thumb's LSB The Famous Tommy Thumb's Little Story-Book (S. Crowder
and B. Collins), c. 1760.
GG's Garland Gammer Gurtons Garland or The Nursery Parnassus (R,
Christopher), 1784. Enlarged editions (Christopher and
Jennett), c. 1799; (R. Triphook), 18 10.
Gomme Alice Bertha Gomme, The Traditional Games of England,
Scotland, and Ireland, 2 vols., 1894-8.

Gosset Adelaide L.J. Gosset, Lullabies of the Four Nations, 1915.

Gurauchian Gumuchian et Cie, Les Livres de Venfance du XV' au XIX'
sihle, 2 vols., 1930.

Herd MS David Herd, Scots Songs and Ballads, 2 MS vols., completed

1776, subsequently partially printed same year. (British
Museum MS Adds. 2231 1-2.)
Hindlcy Charles Hiudley, Life offames Catnach, 1878; History of the
Cries of London, 1881; History of the Catnach Press, 1887.

Holme MS PRandle Hohne, MS Riddle Book, c. 1645 (MS Harley,

i960).

Hugo Thomas Hugo, The Bewick Collector, 1866; Supplement,

1868.

Infant Institutes Infant Institutes, part the first: or a Nurserical Essay on the
Poetry, Lyric and Allegorical, of the Earliest Ages, &c., 1797
[AT&Q, 5ths., iii, p. 441].

JOH James Orchard HaUiwell, The Nursery Rhymes of England,

1842. Revised and enlarged, 1843, 1844, 1846, 1853, and
c. i860. Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales, 1849 and c. i860.

Kidson Frank Kidson, 7^ British Nursery Rhymes, 'with the melodies

which have always been associated with them', 1904.

Maclagan Robert Craig Maclagan, The Games and Diversions of

Argyleshire, 1901.

Mason M. H. Mason, Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs, 'Both

tunes and words from tradition', 1877.

MG's Melody Mother Goose's Melody: or. Sonnets for the Cradle (? J. New-
bery), c. 1765 [facsimiles Whitmore and Prideaux]. Fre-
quently reprinted, various pubUshers, including Isaiah
Thomas, 1786.

MG*s Quarto Mother Gooseys Quarto: or Melodies Complete (Munroe and

Francis, Boston, Massachusetts), c. 1825 [Whitmore].

Musical Museum The Scots Musical Museum, 'Consisting of Six hundred Scots
Songs with proper Bases for the Pianoforte, &c.'. Edited
James Johnson, vol. i, 1787; vol. ii, 1788; vol. iii, 1790;
vol. iv, 1792; vol. V, 1797; vol. vi, 1803.

Nancy Cock's PSB Nancy Cock's Pretty Song Book for all Little Misses and Masters
(John Marshall), c. 1780.

XXVI
 ABBREVIATIONS
N& Q Notes and Queries, 1 849-1950.
Newell William Wells Newell, Games and Songs of American Chil-
dren, 1883; revised and enlarged 1903.

Newest Christmas The Newest Christmas Box (Longman and Broderip). Tunes
Box by Reginald SpofForth, c. 1797.
Northall G. F. Northall, English Folk-Rhymes, 1892.
Nurse Lovechild's Nurse Lovechild's Ditties for the Nursery (D. Carvalho), c.

DFN 1830.
OED Oxford English Dictionary.
Only True MG The Only True Mother Goose Melodies (Munroe and Francis,
Melodies Boston, Massachusetts), c. 1843 (reprinted 1905; date of
original incorrectly given as 1833).

Peter Puzzlewell A Choice Collection of Riddles, Charades, Rehusses, &c., by

Peter Puzzlewell, Esq. (E. Newbery), 1792 [1794].
Prideaux W. F. Prideaux, Mother Goose's Melody, 1904.
Rimbault Edward F. Rimbault, Nursery Rhymes with the tunes to which
they are still sung, 1846.

Rosenbach A. S. W. Rosenbach, Early American Children s Books, 1933.

Rymour Club Miscellanea of the Rymour Club, Edinburgh, 1906-28.
Songs for the Songs for the Nursery collected from the Works of the Most
Nursery Renowned Poets (Tabart and Co.), 1805; (Wilham Darton),
i8i8.

Top Book The Top Book of All, for Little Masters and Misses (R. Bald-
win, &c.), c. 1760.
T Thumb's PSB Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (M. Cooper), vol. ii, c.

1744-
T Thumb's SB Tommy Thumb's Song Book for all little Masters and Misses
(Isaiah Thomas, Worcester, Massachusetts), 1788.
T Tit's SB The Tom Tit's Song Book (C. D. Piguenit), c. 1790.
Vocal Harmony Vocal Harmony, or No Song, No Supper (no imprint), c. 1806.

Whitmore WiUiam H. Whitmore, The Original Mother Goose's

Melody, 1892.
Williams Alfred Wilhams, Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames, 1923.

xxvu
 Introduction
In Britain and America, and wherever the EngHsh word is spoken,
the children become joyful and wise hstening to the same tradi-
tional verses. In the New World as in the Old their first poetic
memory is of 'Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie*, 'A
sUpkin, a slopkin, a pipkin, a popkin', 'Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake,
baker's man', and far away'. Almost the only
and 'Over the liills

point of difference is that in England the verses are known as

'nursery rhymes', and in America as 'Mother Goose songs'. The
term 'nursery rhyme' seems to have sprung up in the third decade
of the nineteenth century; no use of the name has been found earUer
than in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for July 1824, when an
anonymous writer, possibly John Wilson, parodied HazHtt with
an essay 'On Nursery Rhymes in General'. Previously the rhymes
had been known as 'songs' or and in the eighteenth cen-
'ditties',

tury usually as 'Tommy Thumb's' songs, or 'Mother Goose's', the

title retained in America.
The problem of where nursery rhymes come from is perhaps
of minor importance to Uterature. Yet these trivial verses have
endured where newer and more ambitious compositions have
become dated and forgotten. They have endured often for nine
or ten generations, sometimes for considerably more, and scarcely
altered in their journey. 'Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man', to
take an everyday example, is shown in D'Urfey's comedy The
Campaigners to have been waiting to greet infant ears two-and-a-
half centuries ago. It was undoubtedly already old in 1698 when
Far dell, the 'affected, tattling, nurse', crooned to her charge,
Ah Doddy blesse dat pitty face of myn Sylds, and his pitty, pitty
hands, and his pitty, pitty foots, and all liis and pat a cake,
pitty things,
pat a cake Bakers man, so I will master as I and prick it, and prick
can,
it, and prick it, and prick it, and prick it, and throw't into the Oven.

QUALITY
What kind of verses are they to have become the best known in
the world? Individual examination shows that not all are the
 INTRODUCTION
doggerel tlicy arc popularly taken to be. 'The best of the older
ones', says Robert Graves, *are nearer to poetry than the greater
partof The Oxford Book of English Verse.' 'They have', says
Walter de la Mare, 'their own complete Httle beauty if looked at
closely.' 'The nursery rhyme', says Professor Cammaerts, 'is

They do not fail

essentially poetical because essentially musical.'
to satisfy the ear. 'G. K. Chesterton', writes Ivor Brown, 'ob-
served that so simple a Hne from the nursery as "Over the hills
and far away" is one of the most beautiful in all Enghsh poetry',
and, as if in confirmation. Gay, Swift, Burns, Tennyson, Steven-
son, and Henley thought well enough of the line to make it
their own.
The themes of the nursery rhymes are so diverse that it does not
seem to matter what they are. In some there are no two words
together which make sense (*. Pin, pan, musky, dan, tweedle-
. .

um, twoddle-um, twenty-wan', which deHghted Scott); in others

there are as hvely incidents and keenly drawn characters as are to
be found in the language, and the tremulous Miss Muffet, the
heroic Priest of Felton, the earnest and subservient Mother
Hubbard may live, as CUfton Fadiman has suggested, as long as
the plays of Shakespeare.
They contain wild extravagances, as 'the cow jumped over the
moon', invitations to irresponsibiHty, as 'Hannah Bantry in the
pantry', and illustrations of violence, like 'cut off their tails with a
carving knife'. Yet alongside these are love ballads, among the
^

most pleasant we possess, 'Lavender's blue, diddle, diddle, laven-

der's green', 'Curly locks. Curly locks, wilt thou be mine?', and
Sir Charles Sedley's 'There was a Httle man and he woo'd a httle
maid'.
Nor should the critic be surprised when verses now preserved
solely for the amusement of the young are discovered to have
come from such an accompHshed hand as Sedley's. Here is not
the place to dwell upon the reaHzation, which folk-lorists in the

' Because of their nonsense, or the sadistic tendencies some of the rhymes are alleged
to arouse in children, there have been several attempts to suppress or alter them, notably
by George Wither (1641), Sarah Trimmer (beginning of nineteenth century), Samuel
Goodrich (first half of nineteenth century), Geoffrey Hall (1948 onwards).
 INTRODUCTION
twentieth century are reluctantly having to admit, that the folk
*had neither part nor lot in the making of folk-lore', that the early
ballads were the concern of the 'upper classes', that the dancers on
the village green were but imitating those who danced at court,

and that the picturesque peasant costumes of today are simply

survivals of the fashionable apparel of yesterday.^ We will remark
merely that our own excursions in nursery rhyme bibliography
appear to support this view. We believe that if all the authors
were known, many more of these 'unconsidered trifles' would be
found to be of distinguished birth, a birth commensurate with
their long and influential Hves.

SOURCES OF THE RHYMES

The nursery rhyme, which by and universal consent may
tacit

be either said or sung, is resorted to by the mother for the sooth-

ing and amusement of her child without thought of its origin,
except in that usually she remembers it from her own childhood.
The beginning of 'Tom, he was a piper's son', whose only tune
was 'Over the hills and far away', may be traced to a song attri-

buted to Motteux, while the magic tune which pleased both girls

and boys figures in a ballad collected by Pepys, which appears to

be alluded to in 1549. Here is an example of a nursery rhyme
which was not in the first place intended for the nursery. Chester-
ton would have been more exact if he had said 'preserved by
the nursery' rather than coming 'from the nursery'. Indeed, the
farther one goes back into the history of the rhymes, the farther
one fmds oneself being led from the cot-side.
It can be safely stated that the overwhelming majority of nursery

rhymes were not in the first place composed for children; in fact
many are survivals of an adult code of joviality, and in their
original wording were, by present standards, strikingly unsuitable
for those of tender years. They are fragments of ballads or of folk
songs ('One misty moisty morning' and 'Old woman, old woman,
shall we go a-shearing?'). They are remnants of ancient custom

and ritual ('Ladybird, ladybird', and 'We'll go to the wood'),

^ See the two admirable Presidential Addresses delivered by Lord Raglan to the Folk-

Lorc Society, 20 Mar. 1946, and 5 Mar. 1947.

 INTRODUCTION
and may hold the last echoes of long-forgotten evil ('Where have
you been all day?' and 'London Bridge'). Some are memories of
street cry and mummers' play ('Young lambs to sell! young
lambs to sell!' and 'On Christmas night I turned the spit'). One
long been proverbial. Others ('If v^ishes
at least ('Jack Sprat') has

were and 'A man of w^ords') are based on proverbs. One

horses',
('Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John') is a prayer of Popish days,
another ('Go to bed, Tom') was a barrack room refrain. They
have come out of taverns and mug houses. ('Nose, nose, jolly
red nose' still flaunts the nature of its early environment.) They
are the legacy of war and rebellion of Belle Isle'
('At the siege
and 'What is the rhyme for porringer?'). They have poked fun at
religious practices ('Good morning. Father Francis') and laughed
at the rulers of the day ('Wilham and Mary, George and Anne').

They were the diversions of the scholarly, the erudite, and the
wits (as Dr. WaUis on a 'Twister', Dr. Johnson on a 'Turnip seller',

and Tom Brown on 'Dr. Fell'). They were first made popular
on the stage (Jack Cussans's 'Robinson Crusoe') or in London
streets 'If I had a donkey'). They were rude jests
(Jacob Beuler's
(Uke Robin Redbreast sat upon a rail'), or romantic lyrics
'Little

of a decidedly free nature (as 'Where are you going to my pretty

maid?'), which were carefully rewritten to suit the new dis-
crimination at the turn of the last century. We can say almost
without hesitation that, of those pieces which date from before
1800, the only true nursery rhymes (i.e. rhymes composed

especially for the nursery) are therhyming alphabets, the infant

amusements (verses which accompany a game), and the lullabies.
Even the riddles were in the first place designed for adult per-
plexity.

THEIR POSSESSION BY THE NURSERY

The circumstances which gave rise to this curious state of
affairsthrow an interesting light on our social history. It is only
when we remember the attitude towards children in Stuart and
early Hanoverian days, that we see how they came to be famiUar
with bawdy jokes and drinking songs. We read that in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries children were treated as
 INTRODUCTION
*grown-ups in miniature'. In paintings we see them wearing
clotheswhich were repHcas of those worn by their elders. The
conduct and the power of understanding we fmd expected ot
them were those of an adult. Many parents saw nothing unusual
in their children hearing strong language or savouring strong
drink. And behaviour was not as abashed as it is today. The
spectacle of their fathers asleep under the table and in other 'even
more lamentable positions' would not be unfamiHar to them.
The Puritans had good cause for some of their objections, as the
popular Uterature of the time is vivid witness. And this very
Hterature often passed into youthful hands, for before 1740 there
were few juvenile publications as we know them today. Steele,
how famiUar his godson is with the
in the Tatler (1709), relates
chapbook histories, and Ben Jonson in Bartholomew Fair (1614)
makes Squire Cokes recall *the ballads over the nursery chimney
at home of my owne pasting up'. Probably only the Jews, whose

ideas about children have always been enUghtened, may be

excepted. The two rhymes towards the end of the Haggadah
which are included for the special entertainment of children
during the long Passover service, 'Ehod Mi Yode'a' and 'Had
Gadyo', are probably the earhest nursery pieces to have received
official approbation.
However, the process of a particular poem or snatch of song
making a place for itself in the nursery's permanent repertoire
may be watched even in recent times. The talc of 'WiUie Winkie'
is an example of a poem being truncated, simplified, and so

severed from its original context by the nursery, that writers are
already telling stories of its fame 150 years before it was written.
Septimus Winner's 'Der Deitcher's Dog', pubhshed in 1864,
though originally intended as an adult song, has similarly had its
tail cut off and been adopted by the nursery. 'Twinkle, twinkle,

little star', 'Mary had a httle lamb', 'There was a little girl, and

she had a httle curl', and 'Ten httle nigger boys', are other pieces
composed in the nineteenth century which are assured of im-
mortality. Some fragments of Edward Lear, particularly the
refrain of 'The Jumblies', arc now fmding their way into oral
tradition. Mary Howitt's 'The Spider and the Fly', Alfred Scott

5208
 INTRODUCTION
Gatty's 'Three Harry Graham's 'Billy in one of his
little pigs',

nice new sashes', and A. A. Milne's 'Isn't it funny how a bear likes
honey?' may confidently be expected to follow. It must be
remembered that rhymes enter the nursery through the pre-
disposition of the adults in charge of it. The mother or nurse does
not employ a jingle because it is a nursery rhyme per se, but
because in the pleasantness (or desperation) of the moment it is

the first tiling which comes to her mind. In a future age scholars
may be delving into the origins of 'Chick, chick, chick, chick,
chicken, lay a egg for me' and 'Horsey, keep your tail up',
little

popular commercial songs of the 1920's which are beginning to

take root in the nursery, but are already near-forgotten by the
rest of the world.

AGE
On the whole, fewer of the nursery rhymes come from anti-
quity than seems to be popularly supposed. Because there is said
to have been a Prince Cole in the third century a.d., 'a gode man

and welbeloved among the Brytonnes', it does not follow that

the song 'Old (or Good) King Cole' dates back to that period,
even in the unlikely event of it referring to this chieftain. A large
number of our rhymes have not been found recorded before the
nineteenth century, while some, as has been pointed out in the
previous section, are actually of recent manufacture. It is, we feel,
from the beginning of the seventeenth century onwards that the
majority of the rhymes must be dated.
However, from the little sample of children's song quoted in
(Matthew
the gospels xi. 17; Luke vii. 32), from the Roman
nurses' lullaby Lalla, lalla, lalla, aut dormi, aut facte, in a scholium
on and from Horace's puerorum nenia recited by children,
Persius,
possibly while playing 'King of the Castle', it is clear that
nursery lore 2,000 years ago was not really different from that
which maintains today. The earliest pieces still surviving are the
unrhymed folk chants with their numerous equivalents through-
out Europe, the counting-out formulas hardly even of onomato-
poeic sense, the simpler infant amusements, and a number of the
riddles. Haphazard references in the Middle Ages confirm the
 INTRODUCTION
existence of some of them. A phrase of 'Infir taris* is recorded
about 1450; 'White bird featherless' appears (in Latin) in the
tenth century; the germ of 'Two legs sat on three legs' may be
seen in theworks of Bede. Agricola (b. 1492) learnt the German
version of 'Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John* from his parents.
The whole of *I have a 5ong suster fer be^ondyn the se' had been
set down by 1450. A French version of 'Thirty days hath Sep-

tember* belongs to the thirteenth century. A game of 'falling

bridges*, on the lines of 'London Bridge*, seems to have been
known to Meister Altswert.
The following table may perhaps help to give an over-all
picture of the age of the rhymes. The first and second rows of
percentages are based exclusively on evidence provided by con-
temporary documentation, and show, in some measure, the
success or otherwise of present research. The third row is based
on internal evidence in the rhymes, and other relevant factors.

i^ggand 1825 and

before 1600-49 1650-99 1700-49 1750-99 1800-24 after

Per cent, definitely

found recorded 1-8 6-8 3-7 9-6 20-4 21-7 36-0

Per cent, probably

identified 5-6 &6 4-6 10-4 I9-I 21-3 32-4

Per cent, believed

to date. 24-2 9-3 15-4 i8-o 20-1 10-7 2-3

From this it will be seen that almost certainly one in nine of the
rhymes, and certainly 8-6 per cent., were known when Charles I
was executed in 1649. At least a quarter, and very likely over half
of the rhymes are more than 200 years old. It will be observed
that more than 40 per cent, have been found recorded before
the close of the eighteenth century, and at least a quarter of these
(about 70 rhymes) have been found set down before the close of
the previous century. It may further be remarked that nearly one
in four of all the rhymes are beUeved to have been known while
Shakespeare was still a young man.
It should be noted, however, with reference to the last state-

ment, that despite much searcliing and many claims little positive

evidence can be brought forward to show that Shakespeare was

 INTRODUCTION
familiar with any one of the nursery rhymes, unless, that is, we
admit the Giant's slogan 'Fie, foh, and fumme, I smell the blood
of a Brittish man', in King Lear, iii. iv). However, while posi-
tive evidence may be wanting, there are reasons for supposing
that he refers to two rhymes known in the present nursery, and
to one other now obsolete; that he knew six others, at least in

embryo, and was famihar with a book which contains several

popular riddles.^

ORAL TRANSMISSION
An oft-doubted fact attested by the study of nursery rhymes is

the vitality of oral tradition. This vitaHty is particularly noticeable

where children are concerned, for, as Jane Austen shows in Emma,
and as V. Sackville-West has put it, children say 'tell it again, tell
it just the same', and will tenaciously correct the teller who varies

in the sUghtest particular from the original recital. It is this trait

in children which makes their lore such a profitable subject for
research.
The infrequency with which the rhymes were recorded before
the nineteenth century estabhshes that the written word can have
had Uttle to do with their survival. The song 'The King of France',
said in 1649 to be one which 'good fellowes often sing', was fami-
har to Victorian nurses, although it does not seem to have been
once written down in 180 years. Similarly, 'If all the world were
paper', found tucked away at the end of an adult anthology of
1641, next makes an appearance in a nursery anthology of 1810.
'As soft as silk' and 'Riddle me ree, a little man in a tree' after
being noted about 1645 disappear altogether, so far as Hterature

is concerned, for the space of nearly two centuries. 'A —Apple

pie' would have been thought to belong to the eighteenth century
were it not for a chance analogy in 1671. 'When I was a little

boy', twice quoted in the seventeenth century, is not seen again

till the end of the eighteenth century. 'The hart he loves the high
wood' and 'Whose httle pigs are these?', both set down in 1632,
were then apparently carried solely in men's minds for six or more
' See under Shakespeare in the index of hterary references, and also the section on
Riddles hereafter.
 INTRODUCTION
generations. *I have four sistersbeyond the sea' played will-o'-
the-wisp for four centuries before it was caught in the printing
press. 'There was a lady loved a swine', first recorded in full

in 1784, found to have been already well known 160 years

is

earher. 'The carrion crow sat on an oak', which was not set down
in full till even later (1798), is also known to have been current in
Charles I's There are many such examples. Nor does a
reign.
rhyme on by word of mouth when
necessarily cease to be passed
it is written down. Very many recordings of 'Brow bender' have
been made since 1788 when it appeared in a toy book, but none
of them have been exactly the same as the first. Then, in 1944, we
heard a nanny reciting to one of our children the whole 1788
version together with five additional lines not previously re-
corded.^

GERMANIC EQUIVALENTS
It was Jamieson (18 14) who first pointed out, and HalUwell
who publicized it, that in Scandinavia there are rhymes which are
equivalent to ours. 'We fmd', says HaUiwell (1849), 'the same
trifles which erewhile lulled or amused the English infant are
current in sHghtly varied forms throughout the North of Europe
we know have been sung in the northern countries for
that they
centuries,and there has been no modern outlet for their dis-
semination across the German Ocean. The most natural inference
is to adopt the theory of a Teutonic origin, and thus give to every
child rhyme foundEngland and Sweden an immense anti-
in
quity.' In this class may
be put 'Humpty Dumpty', 'Handy
dandy', 'Brow bender', 'Four stiff standers', 'Where have you been
today, Billy, my son?', 'Hitty pitty within the wall', 'A girl in
the army', 'There was an old man and he had a calf, 'This pig got
* That there are instances of rhymes being resuscitated by appearing in print cannot be

denied. There is the temptation to the pedant to select verses from old works and speak
of them as if they were still current in the language. Several of the rhymes in Halliwell's
collection are suspect on this count. We
do not believe that he ever heard 'The white
dove sat on a castle wall' in the nineteenth century, but took it direct from The Longer
thou Uvest {c. 1559). Others of his which we have excluded as not being genuinely tradi-
tional include, 'See-saw, sack-a-day' (from Douce MS. 357); 'We make no spare of John
Hunkes' mare' ('Bib. Reg. MS.
A. v.'); 'Hush, hush, hush, hush' {Patient Grissill, 1603).
8
This is not to say, however, that, through Halliwell, these rhymes may not now be read in
nursery books. We
recently saw 'The v^liirc dove sat on a castle wall' in a cheap produc-
tion on sale at the bookstalls.
 INTRODUCTION
in the barn*, 'Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home', and 'Snail,

snail, put out your horns'. Lina Eckenstein, pursuing the theme,
quotes collections of rhymes pubHshed in Germany and France.
'The comparison of these collections with ours', she says, 'yields

surprising results. Often the same thought is expressed in the

same form of verse. Frequently the same proper name reappears
in the same connection.' Calls such as those addressed to the lady-
bird and the snail, and riddle rhymes such as that on 'Humpty
Dumpty', have numerous and close parallels half across Europe.
'In many cases rhymes, that seem senseless taken by themselves,

acquire a definite meaning when taken in conjunction with their

foreign parallels. Judging from what we know of nursery rhymes
and their appearance in print, the thought of a direct transla-
tion of rhyme in the bulk cannot be entertained.' How close the
parallels are may be seen from 'Humpty Dumpty'. In England

children are told,

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses.
And all the king's men.
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

In Saxony,

Hiimpelken-Pumpelken sat op de Bank,

Humpelken-Piimpelken fel von de Bank,
Do is ken Dokter in Engelland
De Hiimpelken-Piimpelken kurare kann.

And in Denmark,
Lille Trille •

Laae paa Hylde;

Lille Trille

Faldtnedaf Hylde.
Ingen Mand
I hele Land
Lille Trille curere kan.

' Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes, 1906.

10
 INTRODUCTION
The rhyme is also known in Sweden, France, Switzerland, and
Finland. In a German version of 'Ladybird, ladybird* the name
Ann is preserved, England is the name of the child
which in
saved from the fire. In the Swedish version of *The girl in the
army' the creature in the cradle is described as having *long legs*,
exactly as in England and Scotland. In 'There was an old man and
he had a calf precisely the same joke is perpetuated both sides of
theNorth Sea. The English 'Four stiff standers' is almost word for
word as it is known in France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Moravia,
and Lithuania; while 'What God never sees*, recorded in Germany
four-and-a-half centuries ago, is also common in the Dutch,
French, Swedish, and Norwegian tongues. Versions of 'London
Bridge* are found in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Denmark,
Hungary, and Slovakia. The nursery prayer seeking the protection
of the four evangehsts Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or similar
figures, is common to almost every European country. Other
rhymes with European equivalents include 'Robert Barnes, fellow
fine*, 'Who killed Cock Robin?*, 'The twelve days of Christmas*,

'Here goes my lord*, 'Good morning, Father Francis*, and 'Round

about there sat a Httle hare*; the riddles 'As black as ink*, 'As soft
as silk*, 'White bird featherless*, 'Twelve pears hanging high*,
'Two legs sat upon three legs*, and 'As I was going to St. Ives*.
The possibihty of direct ^translation, however, in some of these
latter instances, or of the rhyme crossing at a comparatively recent

date, cannot altogether be overlooked.^ 'Good morning, Father

Francis*, for instance, is not likely to be old, and is found only in
French and EngHsh ; as also is the riddle 'Twelve pears hanging
high*. Riddle collections were made at an early date on the
Continent, and some translations from French prose enigmas are
known to have been made at the beginning of Henry Vlirs reign.

' An example of an English rhyme becoming a part of the oral tradition of another
language is supplied by Henry Baerlein in Landfalls and Farewell (1949). In Anholt, the
Danish island in the Kattegat, the children sing what is to them a nonsense rhyme,
Jeck og Jill
Vent op de hill
Og Jell kom tombling efter.

It one of the last discernible reUcs of the British occupation of the

transpires that this is

island during the Napoleonic wars.

II
 INTRODUCTION
SPECIAL CLASSES OF RHYMES
I. Counting-out rhymes

When wish to play a game in which one of their

cliildren
number must take a part different from, and therefore usually,
disliked by, the rest, they employ a formula such as,

Eeena, meena, mona, my,

Barcelona, bona, stry.
Air, ware, frum, dy,
Araca, baraca, wee, wo, wack.

This is repeated by the leader as he points at the players in turn,

one accented syllable to each child, and the child on whom the
last word falls is the one chosen. These formulas, though often
gibberish, have recognizable metrical shapes; versions collected in
widely separated regions have remarkable similarity. The example
above may be compared with,
Eeny, meeny, mony, my,
Barcelona, bona, stry.
from Wisconsin;
Ena, mena, mona, mite,
Basca, lora, hora, bite,
from Cornwall;
Hana, mana, mona, mike,
Barcelona, bona, strike.
Hare, ware, frown, venae,
Harrico, warrico, we, wo, wac,

from New York 130 years ago; and,

Ene, tene, mone, mei.

Pastor, lone, bone, strei,
Ene, fune, herke, berke,
Wer? Wie? Wo? Was?
from Germany.
Great antiquity was attached to these pieces well before 1820.
The tradition in England was that counting-out rhymes were
remnants of formulas used by the Druids for choosing human
sacrifices. Charles Taylor mentions it in The Chatterings of the

12
 INTRODUCTION
Pica, and seventy years later Gomme gave credence to it. How
the idea arose it is impossible to say, though the practice of
selection by counting, e.g. the decimation of enemy armies, is

certainly apposite.
Since the rhymes are concerned with counting, it is natural to
look at the early Celtic numerals:
Cornish
Welsh {Pronounced) {recorded 1542) Irish Breton
un een ouyn aou unan
dau daay dow do daou
tri tree tray tri tri
pedwar pai'dwaar peswar ceathair pevar {fetn. peder)
pump pimp pimp cuig pemp

Little connexion with the rhymes is immediately apparent, though

in relation to the Welsh numerals a 'chappin' out' rhyme, col-
lected in 1 88 1 from north of the Tweed, might be considered:
Eetem, feetem, peeny, pump,
A* the laddies in a lump . .
."

There exist, however, in oral tradition some other sets of

counting words, reaching to twenty, and used by shepherds for
counting sheep, fishermen for reckoning their catch, and old
knitting-women for their stitches. These scores were named by
A. J. ElHs, in 1877, the Anglo-Cymric Score', leaving it open
*

whether Cymric was to mean simply Welsh, or both Welsh and

Cumbrian. It is from the north country and East Angha that they
are mostly obtained.

West North
High Riding, Yar- Northum- Westmor- Riding,
Furness Yorks. mouth berland land Yorks.
aina eina ina een yan yan
peina peina mina tean tyan tean
para paira tethera tether tethera tithcra
peddera puttera niethera mether methera mithera
pimp pith pin pimp pimp mimph
ithy ith sithera citcr sethera hitter
mi thy awith lithera liter lethera litter
owera air-a cothra ova hevera over
lowera dickala hothra dova devera dover
dig dick die die dick dick

It is apparent that thereis a connexion between these scores

(here given to ten) and the Celtic numerals, and similarly a link
may be discerned with the children's rhymes, corrupted though

13
 INTRODUCTION
they are, e.g. between the north Yorks. score and a rhyme from
Edinburgh:
Inty, tinty, tethera, niethery,
Bank for over, dover, ding;

between the Westmorland score and that of a twelve-year-old

reader of the Daily Mirror children's page (1948):

Ya, ta, tethera, pethera, pip,

Slata, lata, covera, dovera, dick;

and between the Northumberland score and an American rhyme

collected by Carl Withers (1946) known as 'Indian counting*
and popularly beheved to be in the language of the Red Indians:
Een, teen, tether, fether, fip,

Sather, lather, gother, dather, dix.

Such assemblages of words (very many examples could be given)

belong mostly to school-children, and as such are not part of the

present inquiry. But the beginning of 'Eena, meena, mina, mo',

on which Kipling was so eloquent, may be seen in the Yarmouth
score; and Marjorie Fleming's *Ziccoty, diccoty, dock' (or
'Hickory, dickory, dock'), another nursery favourite, is reminis-
cent of and 10 of the Westmorland score. It seems certain
8, 9,

that if further setsof early numerals were known, more children's

rhymes could be identified as coming from them.^ The theory is
that, when the Romans and then the Saxons invaded and occupied
Britain, it was in Scotland, in Wales, and in the west country that
the Celts managed to retain their language and customs. The rest,

in the course of years, came more and more completely under the
influence of their conquerors. An exception was those whose
work was lonely and who were left unmolested, particularly by
the Romans, because of their value to the garrisons in supplying
provisions: such were the stock-breeders. This is demonstrated by
the snatches of language preserved through almost two millen-
niums by (i) people Hving in mountainous and outlandish parts,
(ii) shepherds, (iii) children in their games. For children, as has

^ Bibliographies of printed collections appear in Transactions

of the Philological Society,
1877; The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children, H. C. Bolton, 1888; Notes & Queries, vol.
180, 1941. See also, as a corrective to Ellis, Henry Bradley in The Academy, 17 May 1879.

14
 INTRODUCTION
been noted, are conservative and exact, and tend to be in touch
with the non-working (oldest) members of the family, who them-
selves dehght in recounting their earUest memories.

2. Riddles

Rhyming riddles have been out of fashion with adults (other

than newspaper racing tipsters) for three centuries; they owe their
survival almost entirely to their adherents in the nursery. Some of
them found embedded in early ballads, in which a girl wins
are
a husband or a suitor his lady's hand by solving them (as in
^Captain Wedderburn's Courtship') or by successfully evading
them (as in 'The Elphin Knight').^ The hey-day of rhyming
riddles, however, the Ehzabethan age, came when the ancient
prose enigmas were extended and versified, often with most
attractive results. The short prose riddles had been popular since
remote times, and the Renaissance, in conjunction with the
printing press, had hardly become active in England before there
was a collection of them in circulation. Demaundes Joyous was
printed in 15 ii by Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's apprentice and
successor. 'Whiche was fyrst y® henne or y® egge?' is a riddle
famiUar in every household, and the riddle of the bee, *What is it

that is a wryte and is no man, and he dothe that no man can ...?',

is a question of which a poetical version ('Little bird of Paradise')

was collected only recently.
A problem intriguing alike to the riddle collector and to the
Shakespearian student is the identity of the 'Book of Riddles' lent
by Master Slender to Ahce Shortcake {Merry Wives, i. i). It is

almost undoubtedly that Hsted by Laneham in his letter from

Kenilworth (1575) and by The English Courtier (c. 1579) as The
book of Riddels. Whether it was the same as The Booke of Meery
Riddles as is presumed by Fumivall, Brandl, and other scholars is

not proven, though it is probable. The collection is extant in an

edition of 1600, and from internal evidence seems to belong to
one of the previous decades. Among the seventy-seven riddles are
seven rhymes still known to children: 'He went to the wood and
caught it', 'Two legs sat upon three legs', 'What is that as high as
' See under 'I have four sisters beyond the sea' and 'Can you make me a cambric shirt ?*

15
 INTRODUCTION
a hall?', 'What is they which be full all day?', 'I came to a tree*,
'What is it that is higher then a house?', and 'What is that as
white as milke?' Even if Shakespeare was referring to another
book it would not be unreasonable to suppose that he was famihar
with these problems. Further editions of the Meery Riddles were
printed in 1617, 1629, 1660, 1672, and 1685, a collection similarly
styled appeared in 163 1, and A NewBooke of Merry Riddles (in
two parts) was issued in 1665. Many of the riddles of 1600 re-
appear in the 163 1 collection, though they had obtained a more
Uterary flavour; others are noted for the first time, e.g. "Tis
black without and black within', *I am cald by name of man',
and the renowned 'Hitty pitty within the become a
wall', later to
favourite of the impertinent Squirrel Nutkin. Indeed, the riddles
were already termed 'Very meete and dehghtfull for Youth to
try their wits' (163 1) and 'No lesse vsefull then behoouefull for
any yong man or child, to know if he be quick-witted, or no*
(1629). The remaining important collection of the seventeenth-
century underlines what has been said. It is a manuscript collec-
tion (Harley i960), apparently of youthful composition, for the
spelling is vile even for the period (c. 1645). It was made by the
Holme family of Chester, principally ( ?) by the Randle Holme
(1627-99) who later wrote The Academy of Armory. The manu-
script is one of the most valuable of all EngHsh riddle collections.
Its very imperfections are of interest, for they show, in contrast

to the complete forms of the riddle-books, the manner in wliich

the rhymes were orally transmitted three centuries ago. It con-
tains fourteen rhymes still commonly remembered, including,
j
have a Uttle boy in a wliit cote' (Nancy Etticoat), 'What is y*^ that
is rond as a cup?', 'On yonder hill ther stand a Knight' (Gray

Grizzle), 'Four & twenty white Bulls', 'There was a King met a
King', and most of those already mentioned.
A number of the riddles, even metrical ones, may further be
traced to European collections. Some of these were printed earher
than any in EngHsh, and it should be remarked that Demaundes
Joyous (15 11) was itself largely a discreet reprint of a French col-
lection of similar title, pubUshed about 1490. There was, for
example, a collection published at Strasbourg in 1505, and there

16
 INTRODUCTION
was Les Adcuineaux amoureuXy which was pubhshed in Bruges
about 1478. In the former may be seen the old Alsatian rendering
of 'What God never sees'; in the latter a close equivalent to
'Twelve pears hanging high', providing, incidentally, the solu-
tion, which in England had been lost.

3 . Infant Amusements
Often a verseemerged as an accompaniment to certain actions.
Some early ballads and folk-songs are said to have accompanied
dances. Dramatic singing games (e.g. 'How many miles to
Babylon?', 'Here we go round the mulberry bush') used to be,
and still are, a feature of the play of school-children. Words and
phrases of children's sports tend in time to become formaUzed
and versified. (Petronius Arbiter about a.d. 50 tells of a small
boy saying 'Bucca, bucca, quot sunt hie?'; children today demand
*Buck she, buck she, buck. How many fmgers do I hold up?'
or even, as in New York, 'Buck, buck, you lousy muck, How
many fists have I Rhymes which accompany infant
got up?')
amusements are probably among the oldest verses there are. The
game of Handy-dandy, in which a small object is juggled from
hand to hand, is mentioned by Miege (1688), Mabb (1622),
Shakespeare (1608), Florio (1598), Robert Browne (c. 1585), and
Skelton (1529). Langland (1362) wrote, 'Wrong }?enne vppon
Wisdom wepte to helpe Him for his handidandi Redihche he
payede'. On this the OED comments, 'the transferred use . . .

imphes that the cliild's play was known before this date'. When
the rhyme itself started it is impossible to say, but Chapman
quoted it in 1598, 'handy dandy prickly prandy, which hand will
you haue?', and it exists in Germany,

Windle, wandle,
inwelchen Handle,
oben oder unt.

The small game of Bo-peep, peek-bo, or peep-bo, is referred to

by Urquhart (1653), Herrick (1648), Fletcher (c. 1620), Florio
(161 1), Shakespeare (1608), Warner (1606), Jonson (1599), Joye
(1535), Tindale (1528), and in a manuscript of about 1364. Most

17
 INTRODUCTION
of these rhymes, as is only to be expected, have parallels in other

countries, for instance, the face-tapping formula *Brow bender* is

known in Germany as *Kinne Wippchen'; the palm-tickling

'Little Hare* is exactly matched in Italy by 'Una Lepre Pazza'.
Poking and tickling, it may be noted, often play as big a part as
the rhymes in infant distracting. The face is further touched when
reciting 'Here sits the Lord Mayor', the palm again tickled in 'If
you be a gentleman*. The nose is 'chopped* in 'My mother and
your mother*. The foot is slapped in 'Shoe a httle horse' and the
toes tweaked in 'This httle pig went to market', 'This pig got in
the barn', and 'Let's go to the wood, says this pig*. More enter-
prising are the illustrative games such as 'Here 's the church* and
*Here are the lady*s knives and forks*, or the games that mystify,
Hke Goldsmith's 'Two httle dicky birds'. And if all else fails there
are the jog-along knee songs, 'A farmer went trotting upon his
gray mare', 'Here comes my lord with his trusty sword', and, one
which has numerous Continental parallels, 'This is the way the
ladies ride'.

4. Lullabies

Little has been written about the a most

lullaby, though it is

natural form of song and has been declared to be the genesis of all
song. As Sir Edmund Chambers has said: 'It must be remembered
that the dance was not the only primitive activity, the rhythm of
which evoked that of song. The rocking of the cradle was another.*
In England the lullaby has been a recognized hterary form for
six centuries, ever since, in the reign of Edward II, an Anglo-
Irish friar wrote,
Lollai, lollai, litil child,
Whi wepistou so sore?
Nedis mostou wepe,
Hit was iyarkid^ the yore . . .

There was necessarily an estabUshed folk tradition in being when

this was penned, and undoubtedly long before. As John de

Trevisa put it in 1398, 'Nouryces vse lullynges and other cradyl

songes to pleyse the wyttes of the chylde*. The interest of the
* iyarkid, ordained.

18
 INTRODUCTION
Roman lullaby already quoted (p. 6) is that it reveals the exis-
tence of a folk tradition utterly independent of the Hterature of
the time. It has, in fact, more in common with the songs sung by
the ItaUan peasantry of today than it has with the productions of
the contemporary Latin poets of classical times.
Whether any of the lullabies sung to England's present genera-
tion have made their way from long ago is, with one exception,
doubtful. 'Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree top', the best-known
lullaby, is probably not older than the sixteenth century, and
legend associates it with the seventeenth. Indeed, the word
hushaby is not found in use before 1700, though hush, as in 'Hush

thee, my babby, He still with thy daddy', is apparently a back-

formation of husht and belongs to the sixteenth century. Babhy,
incidentally, retains the old pronunciation of baby; Shakespeare
rhymed babe with drab and slab. Rockaby, the alternative reading
in some lullabies, e.g. *Rock-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green',
seems to be a comparatively recent innovation (it is unrecorded
by OED), though rock is ancient, even in association with rocking
the cradle. Bye, meaning sleep, as in 'Bye, baby bunting', 'Bye,
baby bumpkin', and 'Bye, O my baby' dates at least from the
fifteenth century, and is still retained in the nursery word bye-
byes. The earhest quiescence word in cradle songs is the luUa of
hdlaby. Lollai, lollai, will have been noted in the Anglo-Irish
song [c. 13 15); lullay may be seen in John de Grimstone's manu-
script of 1372,
Lullay, lullay, Htel child,
Softe slep and faste.

PARTICULAR SOURCES OF RHYMES

I. Printed Ballads

Some of the rhymes are found to be stanzas from ballads printed

in the seventeenth century. These ballads, issued on broadsides,
usually in black-letter andsurmounted by crude woodcuts, were
sold by the hawkers in street and market place. Sometimes they
treated of heroes long gone by, and their very wording belonged
to tradition. More often they were new writings; they were

19
 INTRODUCTION
humorous, or pornographic, or concerned with the news of the
day. They were churned out by hterary hacks. When bought
they were stuck on cottage and alehouse walls, or folded many
times and carried in the pouch. *I love a ballad in print a-life* says

the shepherdess Mopsa in The Winter's Tale.

It is usually the ballad's first stanza to which the nurses have
given immortahty. Thus a ballad The Wiltshire Wedding (c. 1680)
begins with the hnes,

All in a misty Morning,

So cloudy was the Weather,
I meeting with an old Man,
Who was cloathed all in Leather.

The Old Pudding-Pye Woman set forth in her colours (c. 1670, pos-
sibly by John Lookes) starts *Thcre was an old woman sold pud-
dings and pies'. The Happy Husbandman : Or,
first stanza of The
Country Innocence found to be the favourite verse 'My
{c. 1686) is

maid Mary', and another of Arcadian sentiment. Diddle, Diddle,

Or, The Kind Country Lovers, begins 'Lavenders green, diddle,
diddle. Lavenders blue'. In Choice of Inuentions (1632) the first

stanza and the remembered independently: 'There

refrain are
were three men of Gotam' (now, 'There were three jovial
Welshmen'), and 'There was a man had three sonnes' (now, 'There
was an old woman had three sons'). In The Lamentations of a Bad
Market, however, it is the twelfth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
stanzas which are known to the v/orld; they tell of 'Three
children sHding on the ice'. Occasionally a rhyme is only part
quoted in a ballad, or the ballad merely helps to date a rhyme by
its phraseology. In The Unconstant Maiden {c. 1690) the third
stanza begins.

Bad news is come to Town, bad news is carry'd,

Bad news is come to Town, my Love is Marry' d,
lineswhich bear comparison with the nursery 'Jemmy Dawson*.
In Netv Mad Tom of Bedlam [c. 1673) the nursery 'Man in the
moon' is echoed in the subtitle. The Man in the Moon drinks
Clarret, With Powder-beef Turnep and Carret. In Tom Tell-Truth
[c. 1676) is the curious conjunction of 'Moorfields' and 'Paul's

20
 INTRODUCTION
Steeple running upon wheels' which appears in the rhyme *As
I was walking o'er Httle Moorfields'. A study of the ballad sheets
thus becomes valuable over and above the number of rhyme
origins discovered.

2. Song Books
Sometimes were extended songs, sometimes a song was
ballads
the condensation of a ballad. An example of a ballad later in-
cluded in a song book, and now a nursery epic, is A moste Strange
weddinge of the ffrogge and the mowse (registered 1580). This was
almost certainly a forerunner of 'The Marriage of the Frogge
and the Mouse', ancestor of 'The frog who would a-wooing go',
and one of the 'covntry pastimes' given with music in Melismata
(161 1). An example of the opposite, a song being extended to fill
the requirements of the broadsheet, is that of the eighteenth-
century 'AHce Marley'. The earUest printing known is on a
broadside but it is clear that this was not the original form, nor
the most popular. There are fourteen verses as opposed to eight
and nine in the versions collected not long afterwards by Ritson,
Bell, and Sharp, and the additional six verses are crude and of
general apphcation, they in no wise carry the story forward, and
may indeed have come from another ballad.
The song books of the seventeenth century were finely printed,
their words and music set together, sometimes having the part of
the third voice inverted so that three singers could use the book
at once. Melismata Musicall Phansies, Fitting the Court, Citie, and
Countrey Humours. To 3, 4, and 5 Voyces was one of three collec-
tions produced by Thomas Ravenscroft (b. c. 1590). They were
made up of roundelays, catches, and (in Melismata) short madrigals,
many of them being folk-songs, others probably of Ravenscroft's
own composition. Pammelia (1609) the first volume, and the first
collection of rounds ever pubhshed, contains 'lacke boy, ho boy
newes', alluded to in The Taming of the Shrew and the possible
starting-pointof 'Ding, dong, bell, pussy's in the well'; also
*Birch and greene holly', sometimes found in nursery collections
(e.g. L. E. Walter's, 1924), but strictly speaking a school rhyme
{vide our I saw Esau, No. 172). Deuteromelia or the Seconde part of

6208 21 D
 INTRODUCTION
Musicks melodie (also 1609) contains the renowned 'Three bhnde
Mice', also *Of all the birds that euer I see' with refrain, now
its

known independently, 'Nose, nose, nose, nose, and who gave mee
this jolly red nose'. Thus of 152 songs printed by Ravenscroft in
Shakespeare's hfetime the beginning may be seen of six pieces
prized by children in the present century.
These three collections had to satisfy the needs of singers for
forty years until the pubhcation of The Musical Banquet (i 651). In
the spate of song books which followed (particularly after the
Restoration) to meet the predominantly English love of catch
and round singing, are found further verses which have descended
to the nursery, 'Wilt thou lend me thy mare to ride but a mile',
written by Nelham, appears in Catch that Catch can (1652). 'When
I was young, I then had no wit', described as 'a New Catch', is in

Wit and Mirth (1684). 'Peter White that never goes right', written
and composed by Richard Brown, is included in The Second Book
of the Pleasant Musical Companion (4th ed. 1701), and by the same
hand is 'Tis pitty poor Barnet a Vigilant, Vigilant Curr' (now,
'

'Bamaby Bright he was a sharp cur') in The Jovial Companions

(1709). 'When V and I together meet' and 'Aron thus propos'd to
Moses' included in HaUiwell's nursery rhymes but of pleasure rather
,

to school-children, maybe found in The Pleasant Musical Companion

(1686) and Vinculum Societas (1688) respectively. 'All in a misty
morning' and 'There was an old Man
had three Sons' from the
ballad sheets, appear in Wit and Mirth (1700) and A New Academy
of Compliments (1715). And from the stage 'Buz, quoth the blue
fly' is in Catch that Catch can and 'Jockey was a Piper's Son' ('Tom,

he was a piper's son' in embryo) is in Wit and Mirth (1706).

3 . Stage Productions

In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries come-

dieswere enhvened with songs introduced, as in the present day,
on the mildest pretext. In the part of Shakespeare's The Two
Noble Kinsmen completed by Fletcher, the jailor's daughter enters
singing 'There were three fooles, fell out about an howlet'. In
Ben Jonson's The Masque of Oheron (161 6) the Satyrs, on the
excuse of working a charm, sing 'Buz, quoth the blue fly', lines

22
 INTRODUCTION
which, three centuries later, the bats in The Tailor of Gloucester
murmured in their sleep. Injonson's The Masque of Queens (1609)
the eleventh hag sings 'I went to the toad', a verse which is also
found in nursery books. In Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the
Burning Pestle (1609), Merrythought, in a happy state, enters
singing 'Nose, nose, joUy red nose'. And earher, in The longer
thou livest (written c. 1559) among the ditties sung by Moros are
*Tom and his wife, and his wiues mother', and a fragment of
a lin
'John Cook's mare'. As a source for research the scripts of early
plays are of extreme value. Not only are new songs introduced
but the popularity is shown of others already estabhshed. To the
students who wrote Grohianas Nuptialls (c. 1620) 'There was a
lady loved a swine' seems to have been so well known that there
was no need to write it in full, and it is quoted again in a famihar
manner in Brome's The English Moor (1658), and in Edward
Ravenscroft's London Cuckolds (1682). Other students (those of
St. John's College, Cambridge) were clearly famihar with
'Thirty days hath September', which appears in The Retvrne from
Pernassvs, 'publiquely acted' about 1602. In Penkethman's Love
without Interest (1699) a character quotes 'When I was a httle boy,
I washed my mammy's dishes' which Aubrey twelve years pre-

viously had described as 'an old filthy Rhythme used by base

people'. In Love in a Village (1762) Isaac Bickerstaffe incorporated
'There was a jolly miller' and it became one of the most popular
songs in the country. 'A master I have, and I am his man' by
O'Keefe (the father, incidentally, of Adelaide, part author of
Original Poems for Infant Minds) became well known after being
sung in The Castle of Andalusia (1782). Often the alleged enthusi-
asm with which a song was received is described in the song
sheets. mad man' was sung by Mrs. Massey in The
'There was a
Devil Pay 'with great Applause'. Jack Cussans's rendering of
to

'Poor old Robinson Crusoe!', to a pantomime tune of 1781, was

sung 'with unbounded applause' by RusseU in his revival of The
Mayor of Garret. The titles of pantomimes themselves indicate the
popularity of certain rhymes in the nineteenth century. Harlequin
Horner or the Christmas Pie was performed at Drury Lane in 18 16.
Harlequin and Poor Robin; or The House that Jack Built was at

23
 INTRODUCTION
Covcnt Garden in 1823; Old Mother Huhhard and her Dog was
presented ten years later. Harlequin and Little Tom Tucker was at
Queen's in 1845, The Old Woman Tossed in a Blanket at the City
of London in 1847, and Lady-Bird, Lady-Bird, Fly Aiuay Home at
the PaviUon in 1853. At Drury Lane Hey Diddle Diddle and the
Seven Ages of Man was performed in 1855, and See-saw, Margery
Daw, or, Harlequin Holiday and the Island of UPS and SNAIOQ in
the next year. At which went in for even longer titles,
Astley's,
the Christmas production in 1864 was Harlequin Jack Sprat or
the Three Blind Mice, and Great A, Little A, and Bouncing B, and in

1865 Harlequin Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son, Pope Joan and Little

Bo-Peep. Not to be outdone, the young W. S. Gilbert the suc-

ceeding year called one of his early dramatic attempts Harlequin
Cock Robin and Jenny Wren; or, Fortunatus and the Waters of Life,
the Three Bears, the Three Gifts, the Three Wishes and the Little

Man Who Woo'd a Little Maid.

4. Folk-Songs

The history of folk-song collecting is brief. Bishop Percy in

1765 published his Reliques of English Poetry which, though it
contained few folk-songs, was symptomatic of the growing
interest in all traditional verse. In Scotland and the north country,
David Herd, a Glasgow Thomson, James
sohcitor's clerk, Ritson,
Johnson, the friend of Burns, and, indeed, Burns himself, were
active collectors in the latter half of the century. Buchan, Hogg,
Bell, Cunningham, Chambers, Scott, and Mactaggart, followed
in the early nineteenth century. But so far as southern England
was concerned it was thought that few folk-songs existed, and it
was not until shortly before the formation of the Folk-Song
Society in 1898 that collecting properly commenced. There is thus
little information about the age of the songs. The sUght contribu-

tion which the present work makes to folk-song study is through

the fact that it was for the nursery that some of the best-known
songs were first recorded. Several of the songs discovered in the
twentieth century through the oral collection of Baring-Gould,
Frank Kidson, Cecil Sharp, Vaughan WiUiams, and Alfired Wil-
Uams, were among the 'Pretty Songs for Little Masters and Misses'

24
 INTRODUCTION
printed in the eighteenth century. 'When I was a Uttle boy, I
Hved by myself was recorded about 1744 (170 years before Cecil
Sharp found it in North Carolina). 'We will go to the wood, says
Robin to Bobbin' and 'We're all dry with drinking on't' were
printed at the same time. 'Trip upon trenchers', 'Little Betty
Pringle', and 'There were two birds sat on a stone' appeared in
Mother Goose's Melody (c. 1765). A verse of 'Jackey come give me
your fiddle' is in the first edition of Gammer Gurtoris Garland
(1784), as is a verse of 'I am a pretty wench'; and 'When good
King Arthur ruled this land' appeared in the second edition [c.

I799)» thirty years before Peter Buchan recorded it. The earliest
version of 'The Twelve days of Christmas' is in a minute nursery
book Mirth without Mischief [c. 1780). 'I shall be married on Mon-
day morning' is taken back to 1805 by a verse in Songs for the
Nursery. 'My father he died but I can't tell you how' is yet another
song first known through juvenile literature, and so is 'I love
sixpence' (negativing the claim that was written by Mon-
it

crieff). The song 'The cuckoo is a merry bird' was said in 1796 to

have aheady appeared in a children's book which had been

pubHshed 'for years, if not many generations'. The nurser)% too,
upholds the fact, seldom appreciated outside specialist circles, that
Enghsh folk-songs treat more with maids and courting than with
hounds and the chase. 'It*s once I courted as pretty a lass, as ever
your eyes did see', 'Little maid, pretty maid, whither goest thou?',
'Where are you going to my pretty maid?', and 'Lavender blue
and Rosemary green, when I am king you shall be queen' are
examples in point. To place against them there is only 'There
were three jovial Welshmen as I have heard men say' and 'There
was a Uttle man and he had a little gun', both of which make fun
of hunters. Folk-songs, in and out of the nursery, most often
describe homely and everyday events. For instance 'Old woman,
old woman, shall we go a-shearing?', 'A carrion crow sat on an
oak', 'Whistle, daughter, whistle', 'Oh, what have you got for
dinner, Mrs. Bond?', and 'There was a httle woman as I have
heard tell', all of which are known in the nursery, and for all of
them children's hterature provides either early recordings or
valuable variations.

25
 INTRODUCTION
5. The Mummers' Play
The folk-play lingered into the twentieth century, even less
noticed than the folk-song. "When Sir Edmund Chambers, after
long and diligent search, pubHshed his findings, he had located in
England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, little more than 100 texts
(of very varying merit), mostly of the late nineteenth century.^
This does not mean that the folk-play was infrequently performed;
rather, the scarcity of texts shows that it was so regularly per-
formed (usually each year at Christmas time) that there was no
need for written prompts. It is, perhaps, inevitable that an enter-
tainment so embedded in the hfe of the country should have left

traces of its Even if the mummers had

existence in the nursery.
left no texts one would suspect that some of the rhymes were a

legacy of their fooling. The mummers, in their strange costumes,

calling at one house after another, must often have been the first

actors a young child knew, and the only ones a nurse ever saw.
Indeed, Mrs. Ewing has written of the effect their visit had on
one young family.^
Fragments of the mummers' play, as of folk-song, appeared in
books for children long before they were collected by the folk-
lorists. The mad sequence beginning 'Last Xmas day I turned the

spit' which was a part of the Robin Hood play written down in

Gloucestershire in 1868, had appeared in The Famous Tommy

Thumb's Little Story Book [c. 1760), in a version probably much
closer to the original speech of the mummers than that collected
in the rarefied air of the nineteenth century. Further lines of this
sequence were collected from the nursery by Halliwell in 1844,
who also included the verse *Here comes I, httle David Doubt'
as a nursery rhyme. The introductory Hues to the performance,
as might be expected, and the closing lines, are the best remem-
bered. 'Bounce, buckram, velvet's dear', sometimes opened the
play; 'This poor old man is dead and gone' were the exit lines.

The nursery preserves early or alternative versions of songs which

the mummers incorporated, such as 'Old King Cole', 'My father
died a month ago', and 'When good King Arthur ruled this land',
' The English Folk-Play, E. K. Chambers, 1933.
^ Juliana Horatia Ewing, 'The Peace Egg', in Aunt Judy's Magazine, Dec. 1871.

26
 INTRODUCTION
and an array of lines, names, and allusions, as *ekee-okee, adama
pokee', *mince pies hot, mince pies cold', 'black puddings enough
to choke our dog', and 'my poor father, Abram Brown', which
will have a famiUar ring to those who know their nursery lore.
It is very probable that if earher texts of the mummers' play

existed we would find in them yet more nursery nonsense jingles,

such as 'Here am I, httle Jumping Joan', 'Rowsty dowt, my fire
is out', and 'I'll sing you a song, the days are long', rhymes which
are much in the idiom of the mummers.

6. Political Squibs

Much ingenuity has been exercised to show that certain nursery

rhymes have had greater significance than is now apparent. They
have been vested with mystic symbohsm, linked with social and
poHtical events, and numerous attempts have been made to
identify the nursery characters with real persons. It should be
stated straightway that the bulk of these speculations are worth-
less. Fortunately the theories are so numerous they tend to cancel

each other out. The story of 'Sing a song of sixpence', for instance,
has been described as alluding to the choirs of Tudor monasteries,
the printing of the EngHsh Bible, the malpractices of the Romish
clergy, and the infmite workings of the solar system. The baby
rocked on a tree top has been recognized as the Egyptian child
Horus, the Old Pretender, and a New England Red Indian. Even
when, by chance, the same conclusions are reached by two writers
the reasons given are, as Hkely as not, antithetical. This game of
'interpreting' the nursery rhymes has not been confined to the
twentieth century, though it is curious that it has never been so
overplayed as in the age which claims to beheve in reaHsm. Dr.
William King was probably reflecting the talk of his day when,
nearly two and a half centuries ago, he speculated on the identity
of 'Good King Cole'. Sixty years later the jesting editor of
Mother Goose's Melody gave birth to a new set of propositions,
still sometimes taken seriously, and subsequent eighteenth-cen-

tury writers added to the confusion. The most remarkable attempt,

however, to read significance into nursery verses was made by
John Bellenden Ker (formerly Gawler) who in 1834 published
27
 INTRODUCTION
An Essay on the Archaeology of Popular English Phrases and Nursery
Rhymes. Tliis volume is probably the most extraordinary example

of misdirected labour in the history of English letters. With

infmite patience and elaboration the author set out to show that
English phrases and nursery rhymes were transmogrified from
an early form of Dutch (the invention of Mr. Ker) and that the
rhymes had originally been 'popular Pasquinades, iUicited by the
soreness felt by the population of a foreign and
at the intrusion

onerous church-sway'. One example will suffice. 'Ding dong

bell', he says, derives from,
Ding d'hoiiig-beld.
Die kaetst in de weld.
Hwa put heer in?
Lyt 'el Je haen, Je Grijn.
Wat! er nauwt je boei wo aes dat?
Te draa! hone puur boose guit.
Wo nijver dijdt ene arme
Bat ghild hem eys in 'es vaders baen.

Meaning:
*It is the honey-bearing image that brings this revenue, it is this that

affords all this wealth. Who is it takes it out? That curse to us all, the
sneering bully (the monk). What
you always a pair of hand-
hav'nt
cuffs ready for such a carrion-rogue as that ? At once make an example !

of this thorough-paced villain. While industry and hard work can

alone avail the vassal-peasant, the idle pick-pocket-career of the monk
affords him abundance.'
This is followed by a detailed glossary justifying the interpreta-
tion, and thirty-four rhymes are treated in this way. Nor did the
1834 volume suffice. By 1837 he had extended the work to two
volumes, and after a further three years' labour he produced a
third. Ker has given deHght to students of mania ever since.

HaUiwell struck a saner note (1842) but greedily copied down

any theories related to him, and, though he lambasted Ker,
as facts

he was not above speculation himself. Lucy Locket and Kitty

Fisher are baldly stated to be 'two celebrated courtezans of the
time of Charles 11'; 1 had a little nut tree' . . . 'perhaps refers to
Joanna of Castile'; 'I had a Httle husband' . . . 'may probably
28
 INTRODUCTION
commemorate a part of Tom Thumb's history, extant in a Httle
Danish work . . /. And he emulates Ker when he gives 'Hey
diddle diddle' as a corruption of MS' a^T^Aa, brjAa 8' aSe.
Another ingenious essay on the rhymes, probably a leg-pull,
appeared in 1872,when a gentleman who signed himself A. M.
Nitramof, of Warsaw, claimed that he had heard peasants in the
neighbourhood of the Bocage repeating the French originals of
most of the better-known EngHsh rhymes: 'Jack Sprat', for
example,
Jaques Spras
N'aimoit pas le gras,

Sa femme maigre detestoit:

le

Ainsi,que ses deux

Rien au monde n'alloit mieux,
Et rien sur la table ne restait.
Fortunately this pamphlet does not seem to have come the way
of the popular folk-lorists. The same cannot be said of The Real
Personages of Mother Goose. This lavishly produced book written
by Katherine Elwes Thomas and pubhshed in Boston in 1930, is
a curious mixture of fact and fable, and a cheerful determination
to prove that the nursery characters were real persons regardless
of what the sources quoted say. Thus 'Bo-peep' becomes Mary,
Queen of Scots; *Jack Sprat', Charles I; 'Curlylocks', Charles II;
'Simple Simon', James I; 'Old Mother Hubbard', Cardinal
Wolsey; 'Tommy Tucker', also Cardinal Wolsey; the lady who
rode to Banbury, Queen Ehzabeth; the cat in 'Hey diddle
diddle', also Queen Ehzabeth; the pussy in 'I love httle pussy',
Queen Ehzabeth again; and so on. As Scott said, 'Nothing so easy
as to make a tradition'. The Real Personages has received both

circulation and credence, and has even had a film based on it.
The foregoing remarks, however, should not be read as a
complete rejection of the idea that some of the rhymes originally
referred to actual people. The present century seems to be the
first in which it is a rarity for popular songs to be written about
the heroes of the day.^ There is, for instance, fair evidence for
* Popular songs reflecting the conditions of the times, especially in war time, are abun-
dant ('The last time I saw Paris', "Forty milUon Churchills', and 'We're going to hang out
the washing on the Siegfried Line'), but the writers can only think of two songs about

29
 INTRODUCTION
identifying the cast of five northern ditties of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, 'Elsie Marley' (a Picktree alewife), 'J^cky,
the fiddler' (Rattlin' Roarin' Wilhe), 'What is the rhyme for
porringer' of Orange), 'Charley over the water'
(the Prince
(Bonnie Prince Charlie), and 'Bessy Bell and Mary Grey' (two
ladies of Perth). It is well known, too, from the numerous
examples which have been preserved, that pohtical lampoons
have been common in every previous period of history. 'Little
General Monk', 'Hector Protector', and 'Little Jack Horner' are
possible examples of such doggerel now
on nursery pen-
retired
sion; 'There was a monkey chmbed a tree', 'The ParHament
soldiers', and 'William and Mary, George and Anne' certainly

are. 'Old Sir Simon the King' is generally supposed to have been

Simon Wadloe of the 'Devil' Tavern in Fleet Street (c. 1621).

'Jack Sprat' appears (at latest in 1659) to have ridiculed an Arch-
deacon Pratt. 'As I walked by myself was placed on record about
1720 as referring to Wilham IIL 'The brave old Duke of York'
was probably Frederick, George Ill's son. And we have the
evidence of a future Historiographer Royal, James Howell,
writing only a few years after the event, that the 340-year-old
song 'The King of France and forty thousand men' refers to
Henri IV and liis last dubious enterprise.

EMERGENCE OF NURSERY RHYME LITERATURE

References in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to verses
now known in the nursery have been shown to exist in some
number. But there are few descriptions of the rhymes actually
being in the possession of children. John Aubrey (1687) is almost
the only early writer to have gone out of his way to quote a song
sung by young girls ('The Tailor of Bisiter'). This, as we know,
does not mean that children had not acquired their own peculiar
lore; it means that nobody, other than Aubrey, had thought it
interesting enough to perpetuate. The glimpses we get of its
existence are by the way; a clergyman (1671), wishing to illus-
trate a theological point, quotes 'A apple pie'; an ageing lexico-

specific persons in recent years, 'Amy, wonderful Amy* (Amy Johnson) and 'Oh, Mr.
Gable* (Clark Gable).

30
 INTRODUCTION
grapher (1611), attempting to define the Italian word ahomha,
recalls part of a rhyme from his childhood, *as we use to say-

Home againe home againe market is .done'; a pamphleteer (1606),

reporting a murder trial, reveals that children regularly repeated a
'Cock a doodle doo' couplet; and a playwright (c. 1559) intro-
ducing a clown singing old songs ('Tom a lin' amongst them)
makes him admit they were learnt from his fond mother 'As I
war wont in her lappe to sit'.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, in the reign of
Queen Anne, appeared the first book expressly designed for the
young which had traditional rhymes in it. Whoever was its
modest author, 'T. W.', was thirty or forty years before his time.^
A Little Book for Little Children (like several other primers printed
in Little Britain) was produced, as its sub-title says, in a 'plain

and pleasant way'. It contains two rhymes still rightly celebrated,

*A was an Archer' and *I saw a Peacock with a fiery tail', and three
well-known riddle verses.
The next events of note took place in 1709, 1725, and c. 1728.
In 1709 Dr. WiUiam King produced his Useful Transactions in
Philosophy in 1725 the poet
y Henry Carey wrote Namby Pamby
or A Panegyric on the New
and about 1728 the
Versification,
still unidentified author of 'The Nurse's Song' was reaUstically

regretting some characteristics of the very young. All these works

were satires, and as happened several times during the century, it
is satirical writing which gives us the first intimation that a
children's rhyme is current. The satirists profess to find great
depths in the rhymes of children, or compare each other's verse
WiUiam King quotes 'Boys
with the familiar jingles. In so doing
and Girls come out to play', 'Good King Cole', and 'The Lion
and the Unicorn'; Carey refers to no less than eleven jingles
including 'J^cky Horner' and 'See-and-Saw and Sacch'ry-down';
and 'The Nurse's Song', opening with 'Hey! my kitten', mentions
'Shoe, shoe, shoe the wild colt' and 'This pig went to market'.

—
The study of nursery rhyme books is not made easier nor any the less interesting
^

by work mentioned in the next few pages was printed anonymously

the fact that every
or pseudonymously. 'T. W.' was probably not the Thomas White who wrote a book of
the same title (i2th ed. 1703), though apparently attributed to him in the British Museum
catalogue.

31
 INTRODUCTION
Just over 200 years ago, probably iii 1744, was printed the first

considerable (though it measures but 3 X

if in.) nursery rhyme
book. Tliis was Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book in two volumes,
'Sold by M. Cooper, According to Act of ParUam[ent]\ It

probably cost its original purchaser 4J.; but the value of the one
surviving copy (in the British Museum) must be many pieces of
gold. Even so, it is only 'Voll. If, a crudely printed Uttle relic from
a Georgian toy cupboard, but with contents (with three excep-
tions) as happy and familiar for the child of today as they
undoubtedly were for the young Boswells and Cowpers and Gib-
bons, its readers at the time. 'There was a Uttle Man, And he had
a Uttle Gun', 'Who did kiU Cock Robbin?', 'Bah, Bah, a black
sheep*, and thirty-six other songs crowd the pages, most of them
iUustrated with pleasant and appropriate Uttle woodcuts. How
these rhymes came to be coUected, what were the rhymes in the
first volume, and who was the editor who chose to be styled
'N. Lovecliild', are tilings which, it seems, we are never likely to
know. Perhaps the pubUsher herself compiled it, the enterprising
Mary Cooper whose imprint also appears on works by Gray,
Fielding, and pope. And perhaps she may be pictured asking her
distinguished authors, after the more serious affairs of the day had
been settled, if they knew any songs appropriate for Tommy
Thumb's collection.
Not very much, either, is known about the next book con-
taining nursery rhymes. The Famous Tommy Thumb's Little Story-

Book. On the title-page it says it was 'Printed for S. Crowder in

Pater-Noster-Row; and sold by B. ColUns, at the Prin ting-Office,
SaUsbury.' Stanley Crowder was at the Golden Ball in Pater-
noster-row by 1754, and for two decades was concerned with
Benjamin Collins (printer of The Vicar of Wakefield) in a number
of ventures. The Little Story-Book is not dated, but must have
been printed some time between 1754 and 1768 when it had
reached America.^ The booklet, opening with the 'Life and Sur-

* It was advertised 'price two coppers' by Jolin Mein in Tke Boston Chronicle for 29
Aug. 1768. John Boyle, also of Boston, printed another edition (1771) which is in the
Boston Public Library. A comparison of this with the EngUsh edition, which is in the
writers' collection, shows nearly complete identity except for rearrangement necessitated
by the move of one illustration.

32
 PLATE II

THE
Top Book of All,
FOR
Little Majlers and Mijfes;
CONTAINING
The choiceft Stories, preltieft
Fcems and moft aJ
diverting Riddles ;

wrote by Nurfe LcvecbiM, Mother Coofe,

Jacky Nory, Tommy Thumb, 3nd Other
eminent Authors.
To wljkh is added,
ANtw Play of the
Wide Mouth waddling Frog,
And a P R 1 z E P o E M, to be learnt I
y
Heart, with a Shilling at the End for
every one that fhall fay it prettily
without Book, and not mifs a Word,
This Book is alfo enriched with curious
lively Pidures, donev by the top
Hands j and is fpldonly at R. Bald-
win's, and S. Crowder's, Bookfelkrs
in Pater-nofter-Row, London j aj.J
at Benj. Collins's, in Salifbury.
[Price Two-pence,]

/,*
a. Title-page, actual size, of
The Top Book ofAll, c. 1760.
British Museum

TFIE FAMOUS
TOMMY THUMB'S
Little STORY-BOOK:
CONTAINING
His Life and furprifing Adventures.
To which r.re added, '

Tommy Thumb's Fables, Moralswith

and at theEnd, p.^uy Stories, that may
be either fung or told.

Adorned with many curious Pictures.

Title-page, actual size, of

/;.
LONDON: Printed for S. CrcwDER,
The Famous Toiiiiuy Thumb's in Patfr-Nof^e'-Row} and fold by B.

Story-Book, c. 1760. Collins, the Prjniinjr- Office, in Si-

at
Little
lifbury, and by moft eminent Bookfcilcf«.
Opie collection
 INTRODUCTION
prising Adventures of Tom Thumb*, and following with fables,
concludes with Tommy Thumb's 'pretty stories that may be
sung or told'. These are nine in number, and include the first

recordings of 'This pig went to market' and 'Little Boy Blue'.

Probably contemporary with The Little Story-Book, and pro-
duced by the same printers, with the addition of R. Baldwin, is
The Top Book of All, for Little Masters and Misses. Its price was 2d.
Its date, 1760, is again a conjecture, the clue being a cut of a
George II shilling of that date, which is described as a 'new
shilling'. who learnt by
This was the prize offered to any child
heart a longish poem
end of the book, and many of the
at the

sixty-four pages are taken up with this and the questions and
answers game of 'The Wide Mouth waddling Frog'. Nevertheless,
there are eight well-known rhymes: amongst them 'Jack Nory',
'The three jovial Welshmen', and 'The Man of Thistleworth'.
1760 has also been given as the date o£ Mother Goose's Melody
or Sonnets for the Cradle, though it is more likely to have been

compiled in 1765 or 1766.' If either of these dates is correct, and

it was printed then, its pubhsher was John Newbery (since in

1780 it was entered for copyright by his stepson and successor,

Thomas Carnan). No edition bearing the 'J.
Newbery' imprint
is known. The earhest dated copies extant were printed after his
death, in 1791, 1794, and 1796; and of these the two latter

editions are pirated issues: the 1794 (designated 'The Second

Worcester Edition') by Thomas of Worcester, Massa-
Isaiah
chusetts, and the 1796 by Simmons and Kir by of Canterbury.
The name John Newbery, as all who care for the history of
juvenile hterature must know, some of the most celebrated
recalls

children's books of the eighteenth century. John Newbery was,

in fact, the first man to make the pubhcation of books for children
a special hne of business, and he issued them with some regularity.
He came to London in 1744 and produced a juvenile of merit, A
Little Pretty Pocket Book, the same year. In doggerel verse it de-
scribes a number of children's games (Usting 'Boys and Girls come
out to Play' as one of them) and contains a popular rhyming
^ Oqc of the rhymes in it, 'There was a little Man, and he woo'd a little Maid', was not
published, it is believed, until 1764.

33
 INTRODUCTION
alphabet ('Great A, B, and C). Newbery, however, though a
close associate of Benjamin Collins, one of the sponsors of The
Little Story-Book, does not seem to have appreciated the value of
nursery rhymes as a matter for commerce until the closing years
of his hfe (1765-7). Then, at about the same time as he may have
produced The Melody, he brought out The Fairing : or a Golden
Toy for Children^ and The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes,
both containing items of rhyme still commonly remembered. A
pleasant tradition associates the latter story with the hand of
Newbery 's friend and sometime employee, Ohver Goldsmith,
and there seems to be some historical and hterary basis for the
assertion. Certainly Goldsmith was constantly employed in hack-
work for Newbery between 1762 and 1767. There is also an
attractive amount of evidence, circumstantial though it is, to
suggest that the other two works, particularly The Melody, are
from the same pen. That Goldsmith loved children and was
familiar with nursery rhymes is shown in a childhood reminiscence
of Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins, where she says 'I httle thought
what I should have to boast, when Goldsmith taught me to play
Jack and Jill, by two bits of paper on his fingers.*' The rhyme

There were two blackbirds

Sat upon a hill,
The one nam'd Jack,
The other nam'd Gill.

—which accompanies this amusement, is to be found in The

Melody, More curious, as will be seen, is the inclusion of 'There
was an old woman toss'd in a blanket*. Mother Gooseys Melody is

a ninety-six-page toy-book divided into two parts: the first part

contains 'the most celebrated Songs and Lullabies of the old
British Nurses*, fifty-one pieces in all; the second is made up of
the lullabies of that 'Nurse of Art and Humours, Master WiUiam
Shakespeare*. The songs are often titled, have facetious footnotes,
and are preceded by a scholastically improbable preface 'By a
very Great Writer of very Little Books*. This could have been
Newbery himself, or Giles Jones, another of the hirelings. It is
' Anecdotes, Biographical Sketches and Memoirs, L.-M. Hawkins, 1 822.

34
 INTRODUCTION
more likely to have been Goldsmith. On 29 January 1768 Gold-
smithes play The Good Natur'd Man was produced. It was a failure
and its best scene was hissed off the stage. Nevertheless, Gold-
smith, at the Literary Club that night, pretended to his friends
that nothing was amiss, and, as Johnson told Mrs. Thrale, 'to
impress them still more forcibly with an idea of his magnanimity,
he even sung his favourite song about An old Woman tossed in a

Blanket seventeen times as high as the Moon.^ This song, with

identical wording (though many versions existed) is dragged into
the preface of The Melody without any excuse, but evidently
because was famiUar to the writer. It is elaborately made out
it

to be a song dating from the Hundred Years War, composed in

derision of Henry V when he conceived new designs against the
French. It has been suggested that the editing of The Melody was
intended to parody one of the pretentious volumes of the period.
Indeed, it looks as if it is aimed at Bishop Percy's ReliqueSy
pubhshed in 1765, and this was a work, it may be remarked,
the appearance of which pained the author of The Vicar of Wake-
field.
From the point of view of the nursery. Mother Goose's Melody
is important not only for the number of rhymes it contains, but
because of the number of times it has been reprinted. Its influence
may be noted in almost aU subsequent collections. Editions of it
were particularly popular in of Isaiah Thomas (2nd
America ; that
ed. 1794: but first printed before 1787) has already been noted.
Further important editions, with a greatly increased number of
rhymes, were pubHshed in Boston and New York about 1825 and
in 1833; and no doubt it is a sign of the influence of these collec-
tions that in America the rhymes continue to be thought of as
belonging to ^Mother Goose'.
The furst collector to be inspired by Tlte Melody was Joseph
Ritson. Ritson was a hterary antiquary of some repute, a collector
of old songs who did not feel that he had to 'improve* upon
them, and therefore another critic of the Reliques. He had bought a
copy of The Melody in 1781, and soon afterwards was urging his
nephew to collect verses. Altogether there are seventy-nine pieces
* Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, Hester Lynch Piozzi, 1786.

35
 INTRODUCTION
in liis Gammer Gurtons Garlandy or, the Nursery ParnassuSy 1784.^
This collection was reprinted, with some small alterations, per-
haps in 1799, and then lay unnoticed until seven years after liis

death when, in 18 10, one of Ritson's publishers produced a much

enlarged edition, arranged in four parts; parts I and II being
identical with the first edition (not the second), while parts III

and IV formed valuable supplements.

A contributor to this third edition, and probably the moving
spirit in its production was the ex-Keeper of Manuscripts in the
British Francis Douce, though it may have been Joseph
Museum,
Haslewood, Ritson's biographer. Douce seems to have bought
(for 6s. 6d.) a parcel of juvenile books at the sale of Ritson's
effects in 1803, and during the next few years he added to the
collection extensively.^ A pamphlet he also drew upon in 18 10
was Infant Institutes (1797), another satire, this time on the
Shakespearian commentators. In a small way tliis book is valuable
because the Rev. B. N. Turner, close friend of Dr. Johnson and
itsundoubted author, does not seem to have possessed a source-
book for his rhymes, but to have rehed on his memory. His
wording of many of them is not found in any earUer collection.
In the meantime John Marshall of Aldermary Church Yard
had produced Nancy Cock's Pretty Song Book {ante 178 1), and
CD. Piguenit had pubUshed The Tom Tit's Song Book being a
Collection of Old Songs, with which most Young Wits have been
delighted (c. 1790). The music collections of Bland and Weller,
and Longman and Broderip, had been issued (1797-8). Also
Songs for the Nursery collected from the Works of the Most Renowned
Poets had appeared (1805); succeeded by Vocal Harmony, or No
Song, No Supper, a story interlarded with rhymes (c. 1806),^
Pretty Tales, pubhshed by T. Hughes (1808), and Nursery Songs,
pubhshed by G. Ross (c. 18 12). Of these the most important is
Songs for the Nursery. This was originally issued by Tabart, a good-
class publisher and one of the cliief trade rivals of John Harris,

* The date of this collection seems to be certain. Ritson himself, in another work,
refers to it as being 1784.
^ Douce Adds., Bodleian Library, Oxford.
' It would seem to have been printed earlier were it not for the inclusion of 'Old
Mother Hubbard'.

36
 INTRODUCTION
successor to the Newbery firm. The collection, as well as being
one of the comer-stones of HalliwelFs work, was the chief addi-
tional source of the American Mother Goose's Quarto (c. 1825),
and it was reprinted a number of times, notably in a fmely illus-
trated edition by Darton in 181 8.
Harris, however, who had been Ehzabeth Ncwbery*s general
manager, was not lacking in perception of the financial signifi-
cance of verse in the nursery tradition. His beautiful hand-coloured
decorations to nursery verses were equalled in the first decades of
the nineteenth century only by those ofJohn Marshall, who him-
self brought out an edition of The Melody about 1795 (and, in
new format, about 1803 and in 18 16). It is true that Harris pub-
lished no extensive collection of the established favourites, but a
number of the titles he brought out included them, as Original
Ditties for the Nursery (1805),^ or were based on single rhymes, as
Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation
and Cock Robin (both 18 19), and he will always be remembered
—whether or not the verses were already known—for his pro-
duction of The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard in 1805.

MOTHER GOOSE IN AMERICA

The bibhographical history of nursery rhyme books in America
is complicated by a legend which arose in Boston in the middle of
the nineteenth century to the effect th.2it Mother Goose's Melody ^

or a book very lil^e it, was first printed there in 1719, that many
of the rhymes contained in it were of American origin, and that,
in fact.Mother Goose herself was an American lady.
According to this story the fountain-head of the rhymes was
a Mistress Ehzabeth Goose {nee Foster) widow of Isaac Goose
(Vergoose or Vertigoose) of Boston, Massachusetts. Born in
1665, she had married when twenty-seven, had become in so
doing the stepmother of ten children, and subsequently had a
further six of her own. One of the latter, a daughter Ehzabeth,
married Thomas Fleet, a printer in Pudding Lane of the same
town. Here in Pudding Lane a book called Songs for the Nursery
* Reprinted with introductory note by lona Opie (1954). It was possibly intended to
rival Ckiginal Poems for Infant Minds.

6208 37
 INTRODUCTION
or Mother Gooses Melodies for Children is alleged to have been
printed. Its contents are said to have been collected by Fleet, for

the most part from the Hps of his wonderful mother-in-law, as

she crooned the immortal verses —
until Fleet was almost driven
distracted by them —
over first one, and then another (there were
eventually six) of her grandchildren. It was to stem this babbling,
and in derision of Mistress Goose, that Fleet is said to have styled
the rhymes 'Mother Goose's Melodies*, and to have arranged a
goose-like creature with long neck and mouth wide open on the
title-page. The date of tliis publication, which has been described
as *the most elusive "ghost" volume in the history of American

letters', is given as 1719.

This story, possibly because with its attendant details it is such

an entertaining story, continues to have wide circulation. It has
found its waymost works of reference, and so much study
into
has been devoted to it that it has been made to seem consequential.'
Only the genealogical details, however, are verifiable. The story
of the printing and existence of the book owes its warranty, if not
its origin, entirely to one man, John Fleet Ehot, a great-grandson

of Thomas Fleet. He launched the tale under the pseudonym

'Requiescat' in The Boston Transcript for 14 January i860. Accord-
ing to him it was well known to antiquarians that there was a
small book in circulation in London before 1633 with the title
Rhymes for the Nursery or Lulla-Byes for Children which contained
:

many pieces identical with those in Mother Goose s Melody. Further,

he stated, there was a book Songs for the Nursery; or Mother
Goose s Melodies for Children, as already described, which had
been printed by his great-grandfather. It later transpired that his

authority for the first statement was one in the introduction to the
1833 New York and Boston Mother Goose
s Melodies, for which

no confirmation will ever be found his authority for the second

;

statement was one he said was made to him by Edward A.

Crowninshield, a hterary gentleman (then 24 years old), who said
he had seen a copy of Fleet's book in the Library of the American
Antiquarian Society at Worcester. The contents of the Munroe
* See especially All about Mother Goose, Vincent Starrett, 1930 ; Colophon, Oct. 1935 and
Sept. 1938.

38
 INTRODUCTION
and Francis Mother Goose's Quarto of c. 1825 was supposed to
derivefrom this. Unhappily (or perhaps happily for the fable)
Crowninshield died eleven months before EHot brought himself
to refer to the discovery, though he said he had known of it for
seventeen years. And, since repeated searches in the Library of
the American Antiquarian Society failed to locate the book, it was
generously accepted by the ardent pubUcist WilHam Wheeler
that it must have been 'mislaid, or overlooked, or lost, or de-
stroyed*. Such a slender tale is largely kept aUve by attack. The
supporters demand, if Ehzabeth Goose (or Vergoose or Verti-
goose) was not Mother Goose, who was? They argue that it
cannot be shown that Perrault*s Histoires ou contes du temps passi

or, as was styled on a plaque in the frontispiece, 'contes de ma

it

MERE loye\ had any comiexion with the American Mother

Goose. This, nevertheless, appears to be the case. Perrault's Contes

were first printed in 1696-7. The term conte de la Mhe Oye was
already old. In Loret's La Mvze historique (Lettre Cinqvieme, du
douze luin, 1650) occur the hnes,
Pauvres, riches, males, femelles,
Gueuzes, Bourgeoizes, Demoizelles,
Petits & Grands, jeunes & vieux
Paroissoient tout-a-fait joyeux:
Mais le cher motif de leur joye,
Comme vn conte de la Mer-oye
Sc trouvant fabuleux & faux,
lis deviiidrent tous bien penauts.

La Mere Oie may well be a lineal descendant o(La Reine Pedauque,

otherwise Berthe au grand pied, and there may also be a relation-
ship to Fru Gode or Fru Gosen of German folk-lore. The earliest

notice of an English edition, despite a much credited claim to the

contrary, is of that issued by J. Pote of Charing Cross, 31 March
1729, 'Translated by Mr. Samber*.^ It is very probable that this

* For the past quarter of a century a translation of Perrault's tales has been thought to
exist printed in 1719, but this can now
be shown to be a second ghost volume of that
year. In 1925 the Nonesuch Press published Histories of Tales of Past Times told by Mother
Goose, edited by J. Saxon Childers. This purported to be a reprint of an imperfect, but
unique copy of Perrault's tales, Englished by G. M., an 'eleventh edition' dated 1719. It
—
was said to have lately turned up at Oxford a city, as it happens, not without a previous
Mother Goose legend. The present writers have discovered, however, in Mr. Roland

39
 INTRODUCTION
notice is of his first edition; and it is also, despite another claim of
long standing, the earliest-known use in the EngUsh language of
the term 'Mother Goose'. ^ So far as has been ascertained, her
name did not become a household word either in England or
America until the second half of the eighteenth century, when,
for instance, it is found bracketed with Nurse Lovechild, Jacky
Nory, Tommy Thumb, 'and other eminent Authors,' on the
title-page of The Top Book of All {c. 1760). The earliness of
undated chapbooks containing Perrault's tales has been greatly
exaggerated. It seems fairly certain that it was the genius of John
Newbery and his associates that spread Mother Goose's fame
throughout Britain.
In 1777 John Newbery's son and stepson issued, in conjunction
with Collins of Sahsbury, a seventh edition of Mother Goose*
Tales. ^ This excellent SaHsbury Mother Goose was unlike the pro-
ductions of earher pubhshers in that there was no French text
alongside the English. It was a pubhcation wholly designed for

childish dehght, had a sale which continued past the turn of

and it

the century. If we may judge by the seventh edition, which was

of 3 ,000 copies and took some three years to sell, the first printing
was not later than 1765, and probably earlier. It will therefore be
clear from where John Newbery had the title Mother Goose's
Melody ; if there were 'Mother Goose' tales, there could also be

Knastcr's great collection of juveniles at South Kensington, a second and complete copy
of this volume in its original Dutch-paper binding. Like the other copy it is an 'eleventh
edition', and it carries on the title by B. C. Collins, M, DCC,
the imprint 'Printed and sold
XIX*. On the last page appears an advertisement by B. C. CoUins, E. Newbery, and others,
dated 1799. The style, binding, &c., of the book belong to the end rather than the begin-
ning of the eighteenth century, and it is clear that the date on the title page is a misprint
for M, DCC, XCIX. Indeed, the volume is nothing more than the eleventh edition of the
Salisbury Mother Goose, of which the twelfth edition dated 1 802 is well known. The identity
of 'G. M.', formerly conjectured to be Guy Miege, is uncertain and not now of much
consequence. The honour of giving 'Puss in Boots* and 'Cinderella' to the EngUsh-
speaking world must be returned to Robert Samber whose initials appear on most early
editions. The earUest of these in the British Museum is the sixth edition 'Printed for S. van
den Berg, Bookseller in Exeter change in the strand. M. DCC. LXIV*, of which there is
also a copy in the Opie collection.
^
John Payne CoUier in Punch and Judy, 1828, p. 41, Robert Chambers in The Book of
Days, vol. ii, 1864, p. 168, and other authorities following them, state that in A Second
Tale of a Tub: or. The History of Robert Powel the Puppet-Show-Man pubhshed in 171 5, a
play of Mother Goose is bracketed with the traditional stories of Whittington and his Cat,
The Children in the Wood, Dr. Faustus, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Robin Hood and Little
John, and Mother Shipton. In fact the play is of Mother Lowse.
* A Bookseller of the Last Century, Charles Welsh, 1885.

40
 INTRODUCTION
'Mother Goose' songs. It is also clear that Isaiah Thomas of
Massachusetts got the text for liis Mother Goose's Melody from
Newbery. His 'Worcester' editions are almost exact facsimiles of
the London issues. The pagination is exactly the same, and the
arrangement of matter very nearly is from this book, and
so. It

from Tabart's Songs for the Nursery (1805), that the Mother Goose
Quarto is derived. Thomas, as it happened, was a young friend
of Fleet's. If Fleet had in reahty printed a book of rhymes, one
feels certain that Thomas, v^ho had antiquarian inclinations,

w^ould have reprinted it rather than the new collection from

London. In fact, although he printed many such books, including
the valuable Tommy Thumb's Song Book for all little Masters and
Misses in 1788 (possibly a selection from the two volumes of
Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, c. 1744), he never seems to have
been aware of Fleet's supposed Songs for the Nursery.
This is not to say that nursery rhymes both of English and
American origin did not exist in puritan New England of the
early eighteenth century. In the Boston News Letter, 12 April
1739, for instance, in a reviewof Tate and Brady's version of the
Psalms, the critic complains of the phrase *a wretch forlorn',
chiefly because 'twill be apt to make our Children think of the
*

Line in their vulgar Play Song, so much like it. This is the Man
all forlorn, etc' This looks Hke a reference to *The House that Jack
built'. Nor need Thomas Fleet himself be entirely dissociated

with the propagation of children's rhymes. His edition of The

New-England Primer (1737) was the first to contain the renowned
evening prayer *Now I lay me down to sleep'. It is not known
to have been printed in England for another forty-four years.
Colonial printers were not so slow in adapting the minor litera-
ture of London to their profit. In 1761 A. Barclay of Boston
issued Tom Thumb's Play Book wliich contained *
A was an Archer'
and 'A Apple Pye'.JohnMein, another Boston printer, reproduced
Benjamin CoUins's The Famous Tommy Tlmmb's Little Story Book,
already referred to, in 1768. Later, Isaiah Thomas of Worcester
and E. Battelle of Boston, in 1787, were not only advertising
Mother Goose's Melody, but Nurse Truelove's New Year's Gift (con-
taining *The House that Jack built') and The Fairing (with 'There
41
 INTRODUCTION
was of which were Newbery titles. The follow-
a little man*), all
ing year Thomas pubhshed Tommy Thumb's Song Book, containing
thirty-three rhymes, and advertised numerous books for children
including Jack Dandy's Delight, The tragic Death of A, Apple Pye,

and The big Puzzling Cap; or, a Collection of Riddles, reprints of

John Marshall's books.
Of rhymes wliich are essentially American, the War of Inde-
pendence saw the popularizing of 'Yankee Doodle*, a song now
firmly ensconced in the nurseries of both countries; and a century
later Longfellow's ?) 'There was a Httlc girl and she had a Httle
(

curl* was making permanent niche for itself in Tradition's great

a
memory. Tliis last rhyme, and Sarah Hale*s 'Mary had a Httle
lamb' (concerning which there has been almost as much contro-
versy as about Mother Goose herself), arc America's two out-
standing contributions to children's lore. Most Englishmen would
probably be as ready to swear that they were English rhymes, as
would many Americans that 'Mother Hubbard' and 'Twinkle,
twinkle, Httle star* were genuinely American. Indeed, most
EngHsh nursery rhymes are better knov^oi in the States, and in the
case of the older ones, often known in versions nearer the original,
than they are in their home country. The publication of 'Mother
Goose* rhyme books of every shape and price is so extensive that
a recent observer in a Chicago store counted thirty-five different
editions on sale. How much a part of American home Hfe are the
rhymes may be gauged from the fact that WiUiam Wrigley
thought it worth while distributing, over a two-year period,
14,000,000 'Mother Goose' books rewritten to tie chewing-gum
into nursery jingles.

PRESENT-DAY UNIVERSALITY
'There is no surer sign of the oral knowledge of a people being
on the wane than the attempt to secure it from obHvion by
collecting its fragments and printing them in books.' This may,
unfortunately, be applied to ballads and folk-songs, to folk-plays
and dialect, and already in 1832 to the proverbs which WiUiam
Motherwell introduced with these words. It cannot apply to
nursery rhymes.

42
 INTRODUCTION
Most of the old rhymes seem to be better known today than
they have ever been. References to them in Hterature are more
common now than at any period in the past, and we seldom go a
train journey without hearing some small child being kept quiet
with a recitation of them. Indeed, the very railway stations are
frequently placarded with parodies, and to be parodied is a
measure of fame.
Solomon Grundy
Rich on a Monday
Spent some on Tuesday
More on Wednesday
Poor on Thursday
Worse on Friday
Broke on Saturday
Where will he end
Old Solomon Grundy?
carries the legend Issued by the National Savings Committee*.
Jack Sprat
Would eat no fat

BUT . . .

appears under the auspices of the Ministry of Food, while *His

Majesty's Government' displayed in the newspapers a 'Report to
the Nation' (28 Mar. 1948),

who'll kill inflation ?

I John Bull,
says
I speak for the nation
We'll work with a will
And we'll thus kill inflation.

Private advertisers, too, are aw^are of the attraction of nursery

rhymes. During 1947 a huge sum must have been expended in
telling the public,

There was a little man,

And he felt a little glum.
He thought that a Guinness was due, due, due.
So he went to 'The Plough' . . .

And he's feeling better now.

For a Guinness is good for you, you, you.

43
 INTRODUCTION
And,
Mary, Mary, quite contrary.
How does your romance go ?
A boy, a girl, a Bravington ring,
And bridesmaids all in a row.

These two are but examples of many. Rewritten nursery rhymes

are to be found everywhere. Now
and then they form the basis
of the unwritten jokes which go the rounds of saloon bars and the
Stock Exchange. For instance, this commentary on the times

The Queen was in the parlour,

Polishing the grate;
The King was in the kitchen
Washing up a plate;
The maid was in the garden.
Eating bread and honey.
Listening to the neighbours
Offering her more money.

— ^was heard in London (1947), and picked up again some months

later in Palestine.
In translation the EngUsh nursery rhyme has probably been
carried into every country in the world. IIpHKJiioqeHHe b Kapio^HOM
ji,0MnKe (The Queen of Llearts) and aom, KOToptm nocTpoiiJi

H^KCK (House that Jack built) are provided for the child of Russia
(1936). In Hindustan the entertainment is Humti Dumti char gia
jhat (Humpty Dumpty) and Mafti Mai (Little Miss Muffet). In
Malaya the child is bidden to read Hadji's Book of Malayan Nur-
sery Rhymes (with the Enghsh originals beside the translations).
In Iraq the British Council reports (1947) that it has taught chil-
dren to give nursery rhyme performances on percussion instru-
ments.
It is probably a fact that every one of us could recite a string of
nursery rhymes before we knew the meaning of the words which
form them. And they stay with us throughout our lives, remem-
bered even in the heat of parHamcntary debate, so that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer fmds himself compared with 'Little

Jack Horner*, the Minister of Supply is likened to Xittle Bo-

44
 INTRODUCTION
peep*,and Mr. Churchill's fall is unkindly placed with Humpty
Dumpty's.i
All of which is in the right tradition. For in the stress of battle
three centuries earlier, when the Roundheads demanded the sur-
render of Hume Castle, Thomas Cockburn, the governor, re-
torted with a version of 'I'm the king of the castle', whereupon
Fenwick, in command of the Parhamentarians, immediately
placed a battery against the castle, and as the chronicler assures us,

'returns him Heroick Verse for his resolute Rhymes'.

* Respectively bythe Member for Famham,

22 Apr. 1947; by the Member for Alder-
shot, 29 May 1946; by the Attorney-General, 2 Apr. 1946.

45
 iJ<^

M M mourned
N
for it.

N nodded for it.

Page from The History of an Apple Pie published by Darton and

Clark, c. 1840. Opie collection
 V^'Qursery Rhymes

A was an apple-pie;
B bit it,

C cut it,

D dealt it,

E eat it,

F fought for it,

G got it,

H had it,

I inspected it,

J jumped for it,

K kept it,

L longed for it,

M mourned for it,

N nodded at it,

O opened it,

P peeped in it,

Q quartered it,

R ran for it,

S stole it,

T took it,

U upset it,

V viewed it,

W wanted it,

X, Y, Z and ampersand
All wished for a piece in hand.

It would appear that this rhyme was well known in the reign of Charles II.

In 1 67 1 John Eachard, an outspoken divine, quoted it in Some Observations

upon the Answer to an Enquiry into the Grounds &
Occasions of the Contempt of the'
Clergy, 'And why not, Repent rarely, evenly, prettily, elegandy, neady,
tighdy? And also why not A Apple-pasty, B bak'd it, C cut it, D divided it,
F fought for it, G got it, &c. I had not time. Sir, to look any further into
E eat it,
their way of Preaching.' In 1743 it figured in Mary Cooper's cnhghtened

47
spelling book The Child's New Play-thing, and it was common in the latter half
of the centur)' in the chapbook series, the usual title being The Tragical Death
of A, APPLE PYE Who was Cut in Pieces and Eat by Twenty-Five Gentlemen
with whom All Little People Ought to he Very well acquainted. The rhyme was a
favourite for ABC instruction in the nineteenth centur)', Kate Greenaway
made a book of it, A Apple Pie, which is still reprinted.

Some John Eachard, 1671 / Child's New Play-thing (M. Cooper), 2nd ed.
Observations,
1743 / Tom Thumb's
Play Book (A. Barclay, Boston), 1761 [Rosenbach] / Tragical Death of
A Apple Pye (R. Marshall), c. 1770; (John Evans), c. 1791 / With Cock Robin, editions:
R. Christopher, c. 1782; Isaiah Thomas, Worcester, Mass. 1787 [Worcester biblio.];
Samuel Hali, Boston, Mass. i79i;John Adams, Philadelphia, 1805 [Rosenbach] ;J. Catnach,
c. 1805 [Hugo]; T. Batchelar, c. 1810; E. and E. Horsford, Albany, 1813 [Rosenbach] /
History of the Apple Pie, 'Written by Z' (J. Harris), 1808, *e Eyed it, f Fiddled for it,
g Gobbled it, h Hid it, i Inspected it, j Jumped over it, k Kicked it, 1 Laughed at it' / Royal
Primer (William Jones), 1S18 / History of Master IVatkins, to which is added The Tragical
Death of an Apple Pie (I. Marsden), c. 1820 (T. Batchelar), c. 1820 (J. Paul and Co.),
c. 1835 / Life and History of A, Apple-Pie (Dean and Munday), c. 1822 [Gumuchian] /

Sugar Plum (J. Roberts), c. 1825 / Picture Alphabet (T. Richardson), c. 1830 / History of an
Apple Pie (Darton and Clark), c. 1840, partially rewritten, e.g. 'Q quaked for it, R rode
for it, S skipped for it' / JOH, 1844 A Apple Pie (Darton's Indestructible Toy Books),
/

c. 1S60 '
A Apple Pie, Kate Greenaway, 1886, 'Jjumpedfor K knelt for
it, it . S sang for
. . it,

T took it, U V W X Y Z all had a large sHce and went off to bed' A Apple Pie, Gordon
/
Browne, 1890 / Baby's A.B.C., illus. Mary Tourtel, 1910, miniature book i|x ij ins.
Parody: Political A Apple-Pie, WilHam Hone, illus. George Cruikshank, 1820.
***In the earher recordings the letters I and J, U and V, in common with other
alphabets, are not differentiated.

A was an archer, who shot at a frog,

B was and had a great dog.
a butcher,
C was a captain, all covered with lace,
D was a drunkard, and had a red face.
E was an esquire, with pride on his brow,
F was a farmer, and followed the plough.
G was a gamester, who had but ill-luck,
H was a hunter and hunted a buck.
I an innkeeper, who loved to carouse,
J was a joiner, and built up a house.
K was King Wilham, once governed this land,
L was a lady, who had a white hand.
M was a miser, and hoarded up gold,
N was a nobleman, gallant and bold.
O was an oyster girl, and went about town,
P was a parson, and wore a black gown.
48
 Q was a queen, who wore a silk slip,
R was and wanted a whip.
a robber,
S was a and spent all he got,
sailor,
T was a tinker, and mended a pot.
U was a usurer, a miserable elf,
V was a vintner, who drank all himself.
W was a watchman, and guarded the door,
X was expensive, and so became poor.
Y was a youth, that did not love school,
Z was a zany, a poor harmless fool.
This version of the noted rhyming alphabet, sometimes called 'Tom Thumb's
Alphabet', is the one usually heard today but does not seem to be much more
than a hundred years old. A second version is given in Little Book for A
Little Children, by T. W. (sold at the Ring in Little Britain) which was pubhshed
during the reign of Queen Armc :

A was an Archer, and shot at a Frog

B was a Blind-man, and led by a Dog
C was a Cutpurse, and hv'd in disgrace
D was a Drunkard, and had a red Face
E was an Eater, a Glutton was he ;

F was a fighter, and fought with a Flea

G was a Gyant, and pul'd dowoi a House
H was a Hunter, and hunted a Mouse :

I was an ill Man, and hated by all

K was a Knave, and he rob'd great and small

L was a Liar, and told many Lies
M was a Madman, and beat out his Eyes
N was a Nobleman, nobly bom ;

O was an Ostler, and stole Horses' Com :

P was a Pedlar, and sold many Pins

Q was a Quarreller, and broke both his Shins
R was a Rogue, and ran about Town
S was a Sailor, a Man of Renown
T was a Taylor, and Knavishly bent
U was a Usurer took Ten per Cent :

W was a Writer, and Money he earn'd

X was one Xenophon, prudent and leam'd :

Y was a Yeoman, and work'd for his Bread

Z was one Zeno the Great, but he's dead.
In America the rhyme was printed at Boston as early as 1761. In the first half
of the nineteenth century several alphabets begin *A was an archer', but have
a couplet for each letter, e.g. in Camach's Easter Gift (c. 1820)

A was an Archer and shot at a frog,

But missing his mark shot into a bog

49
 B was a Butcher and had a great dog.
Who always went round the streets with a clog
C was a Captain so brave and so grand,
He headed in buff the stately trained band
D was a Drunkard and lov'd a full pot.
His face and his belly shew'd him a great sot . . .

In 824 Harris was

1 advertising The Hohhy-Horse, 'being a revival of the favour-
iteAlphabet, A
was an Archer and shot at a frog* and he reproduced it, with
clever hand-coloured illustrations, in its traditional form again. The alphabet
was a dramatic feature of Blanchard's pantomime Little Jack Horner ; or. Harle-
quin A.B.C. and the Enchanted Region of Nursery Rhymes, performed at Drury
Lane in 1857, and, today, it may be seen in the Ladbrooke Grove Children*s
Clinic, London, where it is the subject of a decorative frieze.

LittleBook for Little Children, T. W. c. 171 2, as quote / Child's New Play-thing (M. Cooper),
2nd cd. 1743, 'I Was a Joiner, and built up a House. K Was a King, and he govern'd a
Mouse. L Was a Lady, and had a white Hand. M
Was a Merchant, to each foreign Land,
N Was a Nobleman, gallant and bold. O Was an Oyster-wench, and a sad Scold. P Was
a Parson, and wore a black Gown. Q Was a Quaker, and would not bow down. R Was a
Robber, and wanted a Whip. S Was a Sailor, and Hv'd in a Ship. T Was a Tinker, and
mended a Pot. V Was a Vintner, a very great Sot .'
/ Tom Thumb's Play Book (A.
. .

Barclay, Boston, Mass.), 1761 [Roscnbach] / Tom Thumb's Play-Thing (J. Marshall),
advt, 1781 ;
(Howard and Evans), c. 1800; (John Evans), c. 1805 / Royal Primer (William
Jones), 1 8 18, 'An Enticing Alphabet', 'I was a Join-er, a wor-ker in wood, was a King, K
by his subjects stil'd good. . , . M
was a Man that had store of land. was a No- N
bleman gallant and gay, O was an Owl that could not see day. R was a Rob-ber . . .

that died by the rope, S was a Sul-tan as great as the pope. Y was a Young-ster that
. . .

drove a ho-gee, Z was a Za-ny that climb'd up a tree' / Hobby Horse (J. Harris), c. 1824 /
A was an Archer (Henry Mozley and Sons), c. 1825 (London: sold by the booksellers),
;

c. 1840 / Poetic Alphabet (T. Richardson), c. 1830 / Amusing Ditties (D. Carvalho), c.

1830 / Good Little Child's First A.B.C. (Bishop and Co.), c. 1830 [Gumuchian] / Good
Child's Illustrated Alphabet (Ryle and Paul), c. 1843 [Hindley, 1887] / JOH, 1844 / Prince
Arthur's Alphabet (Dean), c. i860, moveable book / Tom Thumb's Alphabet, illus. W.
McConnell, c. 1876.

Here's A, B, and C,
D, E, F, and G,
H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q,
R, S, T, and U,
W, X, Y, and Z;
And here 's the child's Dad,
Who is sagacious and discerning,
And knows diis is the Fount of Learning.

Appears in Mother Goose* s Melody (c. 1765) with the note: 'This is the most
World for indeed there is no Song can be made without
learned Ditty in the ;

50
the Aid of this, it being the Gamut and Ground Work of them all.' Rhyming
alphabets of this kind were common in the eighteenth century, for instance
one beginning
Here's A, B, and C,
D, E, F, and G,
And great H and I,
And pretty Magpye,
in Nurse Trueloues New Year's Gift pubhshed by John Newbery in 1755.
MG's Melody^ c. 1765 / Rhymes for the Fireside (Thomas Richardson), c. 1828 / Mother
Goose's NR, L. E. Walter, 1924.

4
Great A, little a,

Bouncing B,
The cat's in the cupboard
And she can't see.

The sign AaB, 'Great A, httle a, and a big bouncing B*, was displayed by some
of the early printers of juveniles. Thomas Bailey of Bishopsgate was one, and
another was probably Jolin Marshall, for his shop became known as the'Great
A, and bouncing B Toy Factory'. Canning in the Microcosm (a weekly produced
by Etonians), 11 June 1787, refers to the 'Bouncing B, Shoe Lane' as a place
where histories of Tom Thumb could be bought. The rhyme appears in several
early children's books and the sign was probably derived from it. Newbery's
Little Pretty Pocket-Book (1744) has a rather different version, beginning

Great A, B, and C,
and tumble down D,
The cat's a blind Buff,
And she cannot see.

In ten verses it runs through the alphabet. But this type of tuition does not seem

to have found favour in the nineteenth century. Sir Francis Palgrave in 18 19

was already regretting that nurses had become strangely fastidious in their
literary taste as compared with the days when they 'took such desperate pains
in leading us onwards from great A and httle a, and bouncing B, even down
to Empersand and Izzard'.

T Thumb's PSB, 1744 / Pocket-Book, 1744 [1767] / Top Book, c. 1760, as Pocket-Book f
c.

MGs Melody, c.1765 / GG's Garland, 1784 / T Tit's SB, c. 1790 / Letter to Bernard
Barton from Charles Lamb, 30 Apr. 1831, 'FeHs in abaco est, et zegvh videt* [1905] /
Poetic Trifles (J. G. Rusher), c. 1840 /JOH, 1842, 'A, B, C, tumble down dee, The cat's
in the cupboard, and can't see me' / Bolton, 1888, two counting-out versions / Folk-Lore,
1889.

51
 5

Great A was alarmed at B's bad behaviour,

Because C, D, E, F, denied G a favour,
H had a husband with I, J, K, and L,
M married Mary and taught her scholars how to spell
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I,
J,
K, L, M, N,
O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.
Recorded by a correspondent to Notes & Queries, in 1856, as 'known forty
years ago'; it appeared again, in 1870, together with five other verses.

Old Abram Brown is dead and gone,

him more;
You'll never see
He used to wear a long brown coat
That buttoned down before.
In the combats traditionally enacted by the mummers, one of the champions is

usually slain ;then either magically cured, or sometimes, as on the Eliza-

he is

bethan stage, his body is disposed of by being carried out. In the play performed
at Camborne, near Redruth in Cornwall, Father Christinas and two Merrymen
carry the Turk out, singing :

This poor old man is dead and gone,

We shall never see him more.
He used to wear an old gray coat
All buttoned dov^oi before.

In the version performed at Overton in Hampshire the nursery-preserved name

of the poor old man is recovered when King George says
Oh dear, oh dear, see what I've been and done.
Killed my poor old Father Abraham Brov^oi.
It seems clear that the nursery rhyme is a relic of the folk-plays.

JOH, 1853 / The Mummers' Play, R. J. E. Tiddy, 1923, as quotes / Mother Goose's NR,
L. E. Walter, 1924, 'Old Grimes' / Big Book of Mother Goose (James and Jonathan Co.,
Wisconsin), 1946.

7
There was a man
lived in the moon, lived in the moon, lived
moon.
in the
There was a man hved in the moon,
And his name was Aiken Drum
52
 AIKEN DRUM
And he played upon a ladle, a ladle, a ladle,
And he played upon a ladle,
And his name was Aiken Drum.
And his hat was made of good cream cheese, good cream
cheese, good cream cheese.
And his hat was made of good cream cheese,
And his name was Aiken Drum.
And his coat was made of good roast beef, good roast beef,
good roast beef.
And his coat was made of good roast beef,
And his name was Aiken Drum.
And his buttons were made of penny loaves, penny loaves,
penny loaves.
And his buttons were made of penny loaves.
And his name was Aiken Drum.
His waistcoat was made of crust of pies, crust of pies, crust
of pies.
His waistcoat was made of crust of pies.
And his name was Aiken Drum.
His breeches were made of haggis bags, haggis bags, haggis
bags.
His breeches were made of haggis bags.
And his name was Aiken Drum.
There was a man in another town, another town, another town,
There was a man in another town,
And his name was Willy Wood
And he played upon a razor, a razor, a razor,
And he played upon a razor.
And his name was Willy Wood.
And he up all the good cream cheese, good cream
ate cheese,
good cream cheese,
And he ate up all the good cream cheese,
And his name was Willy Wood.
5208 53
 AIKEN DRUM
Aiid he ate up all the good roast beef, good roast beef, good
roast beef,
And he ate up all the good roast beef.
And his name was Willy Wood.

And he ate up all the penny loaves, penny loaves, penny

loaves.
And he ate up penny loaves,
all the
And his name was Willy Wood.

And he ate up all the good pie crust, good pie crust, good pie
crust.
And he ate up all the good pie crust,
And his name was Willy Wood.

But he choked upon the haggis bags, haggis bags, haggis

bags.
But he choked upon the haggis bags,
And that ended Willy Wood.
Nothing is known about this song except that it was current in Scotland in
1 821, and that the name Aikendrum appears in a ballad about the opposing

armies before the battle of Sheriffmuir (1715):

Ken you how a Whig can fight,

Aikendrum, Aikendrum?
Ken you how a Whig can fight,
Aikendrum?

Aikendrum also appears in a poem in The Dumfries Magazine (Oct. 1825) as the
name of a strange httle Brownie.
Jacobite Relics,James Hogg, 1821, 'There was a man cam frae the moon. Cam frae the
moon, cam frae the moon. There was a man cam frae the moon. An* they ca'cd him
Aikendrum' / JOH, 1 842, 'There was a man in our toone, in our toone, in our toonc.
There was a man in our toone, and his name was Billy Pod And he played upon an old
;

razor, an old razor, an old razor. And he played upon an old razor, with my fiddle, fiddle
fe fum fo. And his hat it was made of the good roast beef, etc. And his coat it was made of
the good fat tripe, etc. And his breeks they were made of the bawbie baps, etc. And there
was a man in tither toone, in tither toone, in tither toone. And there was a man in tither
toone, and his name was Edrin Drum And he played upon an old laadle, an old laadle,
;

an old laadle. And he played upon an old laadle, with my fiddle, fiddle fe fum fo. And he
eat up all the good fat tripe etc. And he eat up all the bawbie baps, etc' / Chambers, 1870 /
Baby's Bouquet, 1879, as text, with tune / Baring-Gould, 1895 / Tailor of Gloucester,
Beatrix Potter (p.p. cd.), 1902 / Oral collection, 1945.

54
 AMERICAN JUMP
8
'
American jump, American jump,
One —two— three.
Under the water, under the sea.
Catching fishes for my tea,
— Dead or aUve?
In this nursery game the grown-up holds the child*s hands and jumps him up
and down until the word 'three*, when she gives him an extra big jump up so
that he can twist his legs around her waist. While she says 'Under the water,
under the sea, catching fishes for my tea', she lets the child slowly fall backwards
until he is hanging head downwards. The gro^^^l-up asks, 'Dead or alive?* If
the child answers 'AUve* he is pulled upright again, if 'Dead' he is allowed to
fall on the floor. This game, preserved in the family of one of the editors, is also

known in France. In another version, also orally collected, the child is offered a
third choice of 'round the world', often a favourite choice, for the child is then
whirled round and round.
Family traditional, from c. 1900 / Correspondent, 1949, 'Down at the bottom of the deep
blue sea. Catching fishes for my tea. How many fishes
does he bring me?* for skipping /
Oral collection several occasions, 1950, 'Down at the bottom of the deep blue sea. Catch-
ing tiddlers one, two, three'. Sometimes played with child astride knee.
Cf Oral collection, 1948, 'Bateau va sur I'eau ; La riviere est au bord de I'eau. Voulcz-
vous payer, Monsieur? Non. A I'eau, \ I'eau!'

Anna EKse, she jumped with surprise;

The surprise was so quick, it played her a trick
The trick was so rare, she jumped in a chair
The chair was so frail, she jumped in a pail
The pail was so wet, she jumped in a net
The net was so small, she jumped on the ball
The ball was so round, she jumped on the ground
And ever since then she's been turning around.
A rhyme with structure and story much like *I went down the garden* and
'There was a man, he went mad' (qq.v.). Boyd Smith in his Mother Goose (1920)
writes 'This jingle is said to have pleased the children of Edward III', but he
fails to add where he heard the suggestion.

10
As round as an apple,
As deep as a cup,
55
 APPLE
And all the king's horses
Cannot pull it up.
Rtodle. Solution: a well. An early style of Memande' having many variants,
and equivalents in French and German. It was first noted by Randle Holme in
the seventeenth century, 'What is y*^ that is rond as a cup yet all my lord oxen
canot draw it up?*

Holme MS, c. 1645 / Sir Gregory Guesses Present (T. Batchelar), c. 181 5, 'As round as a
hoop' / JOH, 1842 / N& Q, 1865 / Rymour Club, 191 1, 'As deep as a house' / Folk-Lore,
1923.
Cf. JOH, 1849, *As high as a castle, As weak as a wastle ; And all the king's horses Can-
not pull it down' (smoke)
/ Also Kinderreime aus Schwaben, E. Meir, 1851, 'Es ist etwas in
meinem Haus, Es Ziehen es hundert tausend Gaule nicht naus' / Devinettes ou e'nigmes
populaires, E. Holland, 1877, *Qu'est-ce qui est rond comme un de, Et que des chevaux
nc peuvent porter?'

II

When good King Arthur ruled this land,

He was a goodly king
He stole three pecks of barley-meal
To make a bag-pudding.

A bag-pudding the king did make,

And stuffed it well with plums
And in it put great lumps of fat.
As big as my two thumbs.
The king and queen did eat thereof,
And noblemen beside
And what they could not eat that night.
The queen next morning fried.

This seems to have been an old song or part of a ballad, though exactly what was
itsoriginal form is difficult to say. The first two verses are part of Buchan's
version of the Scottish song 'Johnny Lad', a version which he described as
Very old* and 'the original of all other songs of this name'. The verses in ques-
tion, however, appear to have b,een incorporated from another song. 'There
was a man of Ninevah* (q.v.) is similarly embodied. The earHest version may
well be the one which HaUiwell says is introduced in an old play and instead
of King Arthur features King Stephen; while another version which may have
a history has been preserved in dialect

Our good Quane Bess she maayde a pudden.

An' stuffed 'un vull o' plums.
An* in she put gurt dabs o* vat,
As big as my two thumbs.

56
 ARTHUR
GG's Garland, c. 1799 / Ancient Ballads and Songs, Peter Buchan, 1828, 'When auld Prince
Arthur ruled this land, He was a thievish king He stole three bolls o' barley meal, To
;

make a white pudding, (chorus) The pudding it was sweet and good, And stored well
wi' plums ; The lumps o' suet into it. Were big as baith my
thumbs' / Nurse Lovechild's
DFN, c. 1830 / NRfrom the Royal Collections (J. G. Rusher), c. 1840 / JOH, 1842 / Only
True MG Melodies, c. 1843 / Rimbault, 1846, 'King Stephen was a worthy king. As
ancient bards do sing ; He bought three pecks of barley-meal. To make a bag-pudding* /
Baby's Opera, 1877 / Berkshire Words, B. Lowsley, 1888, as quote / Kidson, 1904 / Arthur
of Britain, Sir Edmund Chambers, 1927, 'garnered from the mouth of an innkeeper at
Tarn Wadling' in Cumbria, 'When as King Arthur ruled this land, He ruled it hke a
swine He bought three pecks of barley meal To make a pudding fine. His pudding it was
;

nodden well. And stuffed right full of plums And lumps of suet he put in As big as
; my
two thumbs* / The English Folk-Play, Sir Edmund Chambers, 1933, psalm sung by the
clown in the sword dance at Ampleforth collected by Cecil Sharp, 'When first King
Henry ruled this land, He was a right generous King*, Sec, three verses / Lark Rise, Flora
Thompson, 1939, described as 'a favourite for singing in chorus*.
Parody. The Christening Cake (John Lea), 1842, ballad on the reception after the
christening of the Prince of Wales, begins 'When great Victoria ruled the land, She ruled
:

it Ukc a Queen She had a Princess and a Prince Not very far between.'
;

12

Arthur O'Bower has broken his band

And he comes roaring up the land
The King of Scots with all his power
Cannot stop Arthur of the Bower.
Lines *to be sung in a high wind*. A
conjecture made by Lewis Spence {Myth
and Ritual, 1947) is that Arthur O'Bower preserves the name of the old Brirish
hero Arthur. This mythological figure has been thought of as a god of the sun
and the firmament, and possibly is the Wild Huntsman described in The
Complaynt of Scotlande (1549):
Arthour knycht he raid on nycht,
vitht gyltin spur and candil lycht.

The word Bower may well be a corruption of the Scottish bowder, a blast or
squall of wind. Further to this there are two curious parallels to the nursery
rhyme offering evidence of its antiquity. One is from among Scott's materials
for the Border Minstrelsy, a verse (MS. 877) collected about 1815 :

The great Bull of Bendy-law

Has broken his band and run awa.
And the king and a* his court
Caima turn that bull about.

The other is the opening of the ballad Robin Hood and the Tanner (Pepys, IL
III), printed about 1650:

In Nottingham there Hves a jolly Tanner,

His nameArthur a Bland:
is

There is ne're a 'Squire in Nottinghamshire

Dare bid bold Arthur stand.

57
 ARTHUR O'BOWER
The earliest recording of the rhyme appears to be in a now lost letter from
Dorothy Wordsworth, which Lamb acknowledged 2 June 1804.
Songs for the Nursery, 1805 / MG's Quarto, c. 1825 / Chambers, 1842 / JOH, 1846 / Squirrel
Nutkin, Beatrix Potter, 1903 / Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas, 1905,
the rhyme Dorothy Wordsworth sent Lamb is said to be, 'Arthur's bower has broke his
band, He comes riding up the land. The King of Scots with all his power Cannot build
up Arthur's bower.'

Hush-a-bye a baa-lamb,
Hush-a-bye a niilk cow,
You shall have a little stick
To beat the naughty bow-wow.
Poetic Trifles (J. G. Rusher), c. 1840 /JOH, 1842 / NR Tales and Jingles, 1844, 'We'll find
a little stick. To beat the barking bow-wow.'

14
Hush my babby,
thee,
Lie still with thy daddy,
Thy mammy has gone to the mill,
To grind thee some wheat
To make thee some meat,
Oh, my dear babby, Ke still.

Songs for the Nursery, 805 / Douce MS II, c. 1 820, 'Rock a bye baby puss is a lady. Mousey
1
—
is gone to the mill And if you don't cry She'll come by and by So hush a bye baby lie
;

still' / MG*s Quarto, c. 1825 / NRfor Children

(J. Fairbum), c. 1825, 'To get some meal to
bake a cake' / JOH, 1842 / Chambers, 1847, 'Hush a ba, babie, lie still, lie still; Your
mammie's awa to the mill, the mill Baby is greeting for want of good keeping Hush a
; —
ba, baby, lie still, lie still' (with which cf. 'Bye, O my baby') / Mason, 1877, similar to
c. 1820 / Scottish NR, R. J. MacLennan, 1909, 'Hush-a-bye baby, lie still an sleep soun'.
Your Mammie's awa tae the mill, An' she'll no' be hame, till the licht o' the mune, Sac
hush-a-bye baby, lie still.'

Baby and I

Were baked in a pie.

The gravy was wonderful hot.
We had nothing to pay
To the baker that day
And so we crept out of the pot.
JOH, 1843. Whence often reprinted.

58
 BABY
l6

Baby, baby, naughty baby,

Hush, you squalling thing, I say.
Peace this moment, peace, or maybe
Bonaparte will pass this way.

Baby, baby, he's a giant,

Tall and black as Rouen steeple.
And he breakfasts, dines, rely on*t,
Every day on naughty people.
Baby, baby, if he hears you,
As he gallops past the house,
Limb from Umb at once he'll tear you.
Just as pussy tears a mouse.

And he'll beat you, beat you, beat you,

And he'll beat you all to pap.
And he'll eat you, eat" you, eat you,
Every morsel snap, snap, snap.
A type of lullaby which hopes to obtain peace by intimidation. The bogeys
who have beefi named in this song at one time or another would probably
cover several chapters of British history. As well as Bonaparte in the above
(sent by a correspondent who knew it from her grandmother), recorded
versions include Menshikov, Russian Commander in the Crimean War, and
*Black Old Knoll' (Ohver Cromwell). A
writer in Notes & Queries remembered
hearing some of the verses in 1836.

N & Q, 1877, Cromwell 'tall as Lincoln steeple* / County Folk-Lore, Lincolnshire, Mabel
Peacock, 1908 / Gosset, 191 5 / Correspondent, 1946.

17
Bye, O my baby.
When I was a lady,
O then my baby didn't cry;
But my baby is weeping
For want of good keeping,
O I fear my poor baby will die.
GG*s Garland, 1784 / JOH, 1842 / Traditional Nursery Songs, Felix Summerly, 1843,
illustration by R. Redgrave, R.A.

59
 BABY
l8

Dance a baby, diddy,

What can mammy do wid 'e,
But sit in her lap,
And give 'un some pap.
And dance a baby diddy ?
This was included in the performance of an 'old Itahan way-faring puppet-
showman of the name of Piccini' who began giving Punch and Judy shows in
England about 1780. In 1828, when his script was transcribed, it was called 'the
common nursery ditty'.

Douce MS, c. 1805, 'Danty baby diddy' / GG's Garland, 1810 / Punch and Judy, J. P.
Collier, 1828, as text, also 'Dancy, baby, dancy, How it shall gallop and prancy! Sit on

my knee; Now kissy me; Dancy, baby, dancy' / JOH, 1843 / Flimbault, 1846, three
additional verses, probably apocryphal / Crofton MS, 1901.

19
Dance, little baby, dance up high

Never mind, baby, mother is by

Crow and caper, caper and crow,
There, Uttle baby, there you go
Up to the ceiling, down to the ground.
Backwards and forwards, round and round
Dance, Uttle baby, and mother shall sing.
With the merry gay coral, ding, ding-a-ding, ding.
This isone of the pieces in Rhymes for the Nursery, 'by the authors o{ Original
Poems' (chiefly) Ann and Jane Taylor, first pubHshed in 1806. JOH included
i.e.

it as a traditional rhyme of unknown origin in 1842. 'Twinkle, twinkle, httle

star' (q.v.) is a rhyme from the same book which has similarly entered oral

tradition. The baby's bell-bedecked rattle from which juts a sprig of coral,
referred to in the last line, is not so common today as it was in the nineteenth
century.

20
How many days has my baby to play ?
Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

60
 BABY
Hop away, skip away,
My baby wants to play.
My baby wants to play every day.
Songs for the Nursery, 1805, first four lines only, as also MG's Quarto, c. 1825 ; Traditional
Nursery Songs, Felix Summerly, 1843 JOH, 1844 / Oral collection, 1945.
;

21

Hush-a-bye, baby,
Daddy is near.
Mammy's a lady.
And that's very clear.

A lullaby, probably only a fragment, given by 'Felix Summerly' (Sir Henry

Cole) in Traditional Nursery Songs (1843). It seems to have been parodied by
the old Itahan puppet-showman, whose script was transcribed in 1828 by

J.
P. CoUier
Oh, rest thee, my baby,
Thy daddy is here:
Thy mammy's a gaby,
And that is quite clear.
Oh rest thee, my darling.
Thy mother will come.
With voice like a starling :

I wish she was dumb.

22
Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby, cradle, and all.
The best-known luUaby both in England and America, it is regularly crooned
in hundreds of thousands of homes at nightfall. The age of both the rhyme and
the melody, which is a variant of 'Lilliburlero', is uncertain. The words are
first found in Mother Goose's Melody (c. 1765) with the foomote, 'This may
serve as a Warning to the Proud and Ambitious, who climb so high that they
generally fall at last*. Imaginations have been stretched to give the rhyme
significance. Gerald Massey in Ancient Egypt suggests that the babe is the child
Horus. Joseph Ritson states that the opening phrase of his version, 'Bee baw
babby lou, on a tree top*, is a corruption of the French nurse's threat in the
fable, He has! la le hup! Gosset says, 'On a tree-top —
or green boh (bough).
Note that boh rhymes with rock, and top fails to do so.' (Boh is a Saxon word.)

61
 BABY
The authorship has been attributed to a Pilgrim youth who went over in the
Mayflower and who was influenced by the way the Red Indian hung his birch-
bark cradle on the branch of a tree. It has been said to be 'the first poem pro-
duced on American soil' (Book Lover, 1904). Other American authorities,
including Metro Goldwyn Mayer (1944) have seen it as a lampoon on the
British royal line in James II's time. In The Scots Musical Museum (1797)
appears a nursery song 'O can ye sew cushions?*, which Bums submitted.
Nearly half a century later (1839) WilUam Stenhouse said that he, had heard a
second verse of this ditty
I've placed my cradle on yon holly top.
And aye as the wind blew, my cradle did rock;
O hush a ba, baby, O
ba lilly loo.
And hee and ba, birdie, my bonnie wee dow.
HeeO! weeO!
What will I do wi* you, &c.
This seems to be another hint that long ago, in Britain, as in other countries,
cradles were rocked by wind power. (Cf. also the 19 15 quote of *Bye, baby
bunting'.)
MG's Melody, c, 1765 / GCs Garland, 1784, 'When the wind ceases the cradle will fall' /

T Thumb's SB^ 1788 Hushaby Baby upon the Tree Top, 'A Favourite Duet or Trio* (J.
/

Dale), c. 1797, sheet music / Songs for the Nursery, 1805 / Vocal Harmony, c. 1806 / Black-
wood's, ?John Wilson, July 1824 / NRfor Children (J. Fairburn), c. 1825 / JOH, 184a /
Gossec 191 5, 'Hush a bee i)o on a tree-top.*

23
Rock-a-bye, baby,
Thy cradle is green,
Father's a nobleman,
Mother's a queen;
And Betty's a lady,
And wears a gold ring;
And Johnny 's a drummer.
And drums for the king.
Songs for the Nursery, 1805 / MG's Quarto, c. 1825 /JOH, 1842 / NR, Tales and Jingles,
1844 f Mother Goose, Kate Greenaway, 1881.
Cf. Scott's 'Lullaby of an Infant Chief, 1816, 'O, hush thee, my babie, thy sire was a
knight. Thy mother a lady both lovely a;id bright.'
Cf also, oral collection, 1949, 'Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf, Dein Vater ist ein Graf, Deine
Mutter ist ein Trampeltier, Was kann das kleine Kind dafiir.'

24
Bye, baby bumpkin,
Where's Tony Lumpkin?
62
PLAIE 111

20 TOMMY THUMB'S SONG ROOK. 31

B A V> Y B i; NT I N G.
To flicw tlio r !•: A T U R E S.

\^^

\ our Father's wonc a hunting,

To catch a Rabit for a Skin,

Brow BendvT, To wrap the Baby Bunting in.

Eye Peeper,
AJduofi.
Nofe Dropper,
Mouth Eater, Encore 'till the Child's afxtp.

Chin Chopper. BABY

BABY

A CENTURY OF CHILDREN'S BOOK ILLUSTRATION

a. 'Brow Bender' and 'Baby Bunting' in Tonuwy Tliuiiins Soii^i Book,
ijHH. British Mttseimi. 'Bye, Baby Bunting!' in Caldecott's Hey
/;.

Diddle Diddle and Bahy BwititHJ, 1S82. Reproduced from the artist's
hand-coloured proof. Opie collection
 BABY BUMPKIN
My lady's on her death-bed,
With eating half a pumpkin.
Blackwood's, ?John Wilson, July 1824 /JOH, 1844.
•••Tony Lumpkin is first heard of in Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, 1773.

25
Bye, baby bunting,
Daddy's gone a-hunting.
Gone to get a rabbit skin
To wrap the baby bunting in.

A favourite song with nurses. 'Bunting*, an old form of endearment, if it

means anything probably means 'short and thick ... as a plump child', for
which the only dated quotation in OED is 1665. As well as a rabbit skin. Daddy

(or Mammie) has also set out to wrap the baby in *a hare's skin', *a buUie's
skin*, *a sturdy Hon's skin* (c. 1790), and *a lammie*s skin', as in the notable
Scottish variation
Hushie ba, burdie beeton,
Your Mammie *s gane to Seaton,
For to buy a lammie's skin
To wrap your bonnie boukie in.
CG's Garland, 1784 / T Thumb's SB, 1788, 'LuUiby Baby Bunting' / T Tit's SB, c. 1790/
Songs for the Nursery, 1805, 'Bye, baby bunting. Father's gone a hunting, Mother's gone a
milking. Sister's gone a silking, Brother's gone to buy a skin To wrap the baby bunting
in* / Douce MS, c. 1805 / Mother's Gift (N. Coverly, Jun., Boston, Mass.), 1812, 'Rock
a-by baby bunting. My father's gone a hunting. My
mother's at home making a skin.
To wrap up Uttle baby bunting in' /JOH, 1842 / Chambers, 1842, as quote / Changing
Panoramic Toy Book (Dean and Son), 1 880/ Hey, Diddle, Diddle, and Baby Bunting, Randolph
Caldecott, 1882 / Maclagan, 1901, 'Ba lamb, ba lamb, beattie O, Your mamy's away to
the city O, To buy a wee bit croby's skin. To row about your feety O' / Folk-Lore, 1902,
'By, by. Baby Bunting, Your Daddy gone a-hunting. Your Mammy
gone the other way
To beg a jug of sour whey For Uttle Baby Bunting', collected near Dean Forest / Rymour
Club, 191 1 / Cosset, 191 5, 'Baloo, lilUe beetic, Mammie's at the creetie. For tae pUck an'
tae pu*. For tae gather lammie's woo'. For tae buy a buUie's skin, Tae rock wir bonnie
baimic in', from Orkney, probably referring to the old custom of swinging the baby in
a hammock of 'buUie' or calf skin.
Cf Cosset, 1915, 'Father's gone a-flailing. Brother's gone a-nailing. Mother's gone
a-leasing, Granny 's come a-pleasing, Sister 's gone to Llantwit fair, Baby, baby will go
there.' Still heard in the Vale of Clamorgan.
Cf. also Pesenki Baiki, L. Diakonov (Moskow), 1942, 'Baiu-baiu, Otez ushel za riboiu.
Mat — —
ushla korov doit, Dedushka uhu varit Nianechka pelenki mit. LuU, luli, lulenki'
(Hush, hush, Father has gone fishing. Mother went to milk the cows, Grandfather —to
—
cook some soup. Nurse to wash your clothes).

26
How many miles to Babylon?
Three score miles and ten.
63
 BABYLON
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again.
If your heels are nimble and hght,
You may get there by candle-Ught.
In past times the words for a singing game (described by Gomme), now com-
monly a straightforward nursery rhyme. The inherent mystery of the Hnes has
appealed to many, as Stevenson

Our phantom voices haunt the air

As we were still at play.
And I can hear them call and say
How far is it to Babylon ?

Babylon, it has been suggested, is a corruption of Bahyland. More probably it

is the far-away luxurious city of early seventeenth-century usage. *Can I get
there by candle-light' was a saying common in Ehzabethan times. Kipling, too,
seems to have felt that the words belonged to the long ago. Sir Huon of
Bordeaux, Puck explains to Dan, succeeded King Oberon, but he was lost on
the road to Babylon.

'Have you ever heard, "How many miles to Babylon" ?*

*Of course,* says Dan flushing.
'Well, Sir Huon was young when that song was new.*

In Scotland they know an attractive longer version

King and Queen of Cantelon,

How many miles to Babylon?
Eight and eight, and other eight.
Will I get there by candle-Hght?
If your horse be good and your spurs be bright.
How mony men have ye?
Mae nor ye daur come and see.

Mactaggart thought tliis likely to be 'a pantomime on some scenes played oflf

in the time of the Crusades', Cantelon being a corruption of Caledon.

Introduction toThe Complaynt of Scotland, John Leyden, 1801, 'a nursery tale of which I
only recollect the following ridiculous verses, Chick my naggie, chick my naggie! How
mony miles to Aberdeagie? 'Tis eight, and eight, and other eight. We'll no win there
wi' candle hght* / Songs for the Nursery, 1805 / Gallovidian Encyclopedia, J. Mactaggart,
1824, similar to quote [1876] / MG's Quarto, c. 1825 / Chambers, 1826, similar to 1801 /
JOH, 1842 / Chambers, 1847, as quote / Newell, 1883, 'Marlow, marlow, marlow bright,
How many miles to Babylon?', words perhaps related to the Tudor game Barley Break /
Arbroath: Past and Present, J. M. M^Bain, 1887, 'How many miles is it to Glasca-Lea?' /
Gomme, 1894, collected nineteen versions j 100 Singing Games, F. Kidson, 1916 / As well
as Babylon places named include Bethlehem, Burslem, Banbury, Barney Bridge, Barley-
bridge, Curriglass, Gandigo, Hebron, and Wimbledon.
Cf. JOH, 1853, 'Fox a fox, a brummalary. How many miles to Lummaflary? Lumma-
bary. Eight and eight, and a hundred and eight. How shall I get home to night ? Spin your
legs and run fast'; described as 'A game of the fox'.

64
 BANBURY
27
As was going to Banbury,
I

Upon a summer's day,

My dame had butter, eggs, and fruit,
And I had corn and hay;
Joe drove the ox, and Tom the swine,
Dick took the foal and mare,
I sold them all —
then home to dine.
From famous Banbury fair.
This comes in The Cries of Banbury and London. The fact that so many nursery
pieces mention Banbury may, in part, be due to the energy of the printer,
Rusher. Working at Banbury he often altered the wording to suit local patron-
age, but his influence was more than local. His juvenile publications are among
the commonest chapbooks surviving today.

Cries of Banbury and London (J. G. Rusher), c, 1843 / Land of NR, Ernest Rhys, 1932 /
Puffin Rhymes, illus. John Harwood, 1944, 'As I was going to Banbury All on a summer
day, My wife had butter, eggs and cheese. And I had com and hay. Bob drove the kine,
and Tom the swine, Dick led the foal and mare ; I sold them all, then home again We
went from Banbury Fair.'

28
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To buy little Johnny a galloping horse
It trots behind and it ambles before.
And Johnny shall ride till he can ride no more.

Sung while 'galloping' a baby on the knee.

Nancy Cock's PSB, c. 1780, 'Ride a cock-horse To Banbury Cross [To buy little Nancy]
An ambling horse, It gallops before. And trots behind, So Nancy may ride it 'Till it is
blind'— first song in the book and obviously rewritten for the occasion / Songs for the
Nursery,' 180S / MG's Quarto, c. 1825 / JOH, 1842 / Only True MG Melodies, c. 1843, 'to
Shrewsbury-cross' Northamptonshire Glossary, A. E. Baker, 1854, 'Hight
/ O cock-horse,
to Banbury Cross, To buy a new nag, and nimble horse.*
Cf, succeeding rhymes.

29
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fme lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes.
And she shall have music wherever she goes.
65
 BANBURY CROSS
Tl:c above wording is tliat commonly known today but early versions do not
agree in their descriptions of the lady. She is *an old woman* (1784), and has
later (c. 1790) 'a ring on her finger, A bonnet of straw, The strangest old woman
that ever you saw'. In Infant Institutes the rhyme commences:
Hight-a-cock horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a fme horse.
But in Songs for the Nursery she is again 'old',and the horse 'black', facts re-
peated in Mother Goose' s Quarto (c. 1825), and Mother Goose's Melodies (1833),
though in the latter edition she 'jumps' on to the horse. In some nineteenth-
century books the destination is said to be Coventry Cross. The problem of
determining the likely age of the rhyme and the identity of the lady is most
difficult. The rhyme is possibly referred to by Carey (1725), 'Now on Cock-

horse does he ride', though this may equally be referring to the shopper, Tommy
(in the next rhyme). It has been suggested that the 'bells on her toes' points to
the fifteenth century, when a bell was worn on the long tapering toe of each
shoe. The 'goodly Crosse' at Banbury was destroyed at the turn of the six-
teenth century. A Jesuit priest wrote in January 1601 'The inhabitants of
:

Banbury being far gone in Puritanism, in a furious zeal tumultuously assailed

the Cross that stood in the market place, and so defaced it that they scarcely
left one stone upon another.' The inhabitants were much satirized by con-

temporary dramatists for their bigotry. Again, although it would seem unlikely
that the rhyme originated very long after the cross was destroyed, there were,
in fact, other, inferior crosses at Banbury, and the memory of the big cross
always lingered. A modem cross now stands in its place. The term 'cock-horse*
has been used to describe a proud, high-spirited horse, and also the additional
coach-horse attached when going up a hill. A writer in the Sunday Times
(2 Nov. 1930) said 'It was a customary sight during the latter half of the i8th
:

century for travellers to Banbury and Birmingham to observe a group of

children clustered at the foot qf Stanmore Hill to witness the be-ribboned and
rosetted fifth horse attached to the coach. As the gaUy caparisoned jockey
flourished his gilt-staff the boys and girls would chant "Ride a cock-horse to
Banbury Cross".' On what authority this statement is made is not known. 'To
ride a cock-horse' is usually taken to refer to straddling a toy horse (or grown-
up's knee) and is found used in this sense since 1540. Katherine Thomas in
The Real Personages of Mother Goose describes 'a never to be forgotten incident
. .when, standing beside my motlier as she sang "Ride a cock horse to Ban-
.

bury Cross" she smilingly remarked "The Old Woman on the white horse
was Queen Elizabeth". This comment [was] made with the certainty of one
who repeats a wellknown fact.' Another story, however, equally prevalent in
popular tradition and enhanced by the (? comparatively recent) 'Coventry
Cross* version, is that the rider referred to is the famous wdfe of the Earl of
Mercia, Lady Godiva while a third sporting lady who merits attention is
;

Ceha Fiennes. Daughter of a Parliamentarian officer and sister of the third

Viscount Saye and Sele of Broughton Castle, Banbury, she made many rides
on horseback throughout England from about 1697. The story has got about
that the original wording of the rhyme was 'Ride a cock-horse to Banbury
Cross, To see a Fiennes lady*. However, the nineteenth Baron Saye and Sele,

66
 BANBURY CROSS
whose family seat is still Broughton Castle, suspected that his father, a noted
wit (author of an autobiography Hear Saye) himself invented the 'Fiennes lady*
version.

GG's Garland, 1784 / T

Tliumb's 5B, 1788 / T
Tit's SB, c. 1790 j Infant Institutes, 1797 / MS
addition to Bussell copy of MG's Melody, c. 1803 / Songs for the Nursery, 1805 /
Blackwood's, ?John Wilson, July 1824, 'To Bamborough Cross' / MG's Quarto, c. 1825 /
Mother Goose's Melodies, 1833 / JOH, 1842 / Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross, Randolph
Caldecott, 1884.
Pantomime, The Witch and the White Horse, or the Old Woman of Banbury Cross, by
Andrew Ducrow, performed at Astley's Royal Amphitheatre, 1833.

30
Ride a cock-horse
To Banbury Cross,
To see what Tommy can buy;
A penny white loaf,
A penny white cake,
And a two-penny apple-pie.

The pastry cake of Banbury has been renowned for several centuries. *Ban-
berrie cakes* are referred to in 1586. Their ingredients are mixed peel, biscuit
crumbs, currants, allspice, eggs, and butter, folded into a circle of puff pastry.
And very good they arc too. When in Banbury it is well worth a visit to
12 Parson's Street, 'the original Banbury Cake shop*, to try one.

T Thumb's PSB, c. 1744, last line, 'And a Hugegy penny pye' / MG's Melody, c. 1765 /
Nancy Cock's PSB, c. 1780 / GG's Garland, 1784 / Vocal Harmony, c. 1806 / NR (T.
Richardson), c. 1830 /JOH, 1842, 'Ride a cock-horse to Coventry cross; To see what
Emma can buy A penny white cake I'll buy for her sake. And a twopenny tart or a pic* /
;

Only True MG
Melodies, c. 1843.
*** For remarks on 'Cock horse' and 'Banbury Cross* see previous article.

31

Barber, barber, shave a pig,

How many hairs will make a wig ?
Four and twenty, that's enough.
Give the barber a pinch of snufF.
Possibly tliis jingle was known about 1805 to the author o£Jerry Diddle and his
Fiddle (J.
P., Great St. Andrew Street)

He next met a barber,

With powder and wig,
He play'd him a tune
And he shav'd an old pig.

67
 BARBER
The profitableness of shaving a pig appears to have been an old joke, perhaps
similar to that of shaving an egg. In his Table Book Hone wrote (19 Mar. 1827),
'Carrying on the [toy] lamb business is scarcely better than pig shaving.'

OH, 1842 / Maclagan, 1901 / Correspondent, 1946.

32
The barber shaved the mason,
As I suppose,
Cut off his nose,
And popped it in a basin.

This is given by JOH (1844), and seems to have a common origin with the
following collected by M. A. Denham in Folk-Lore in the North of England
(1858):
As I suppose, and as I suppose.
The barber shaved the Quaker,
And as I suppose, he cut off his nose,
And lap't it up in a paper.
A song 'The barber and his bason' is mentioned by Ritson in a letter to George
Paton, 19 May 1795.

33

Barnaby Bright he was a sharp cur,

He always would bark if a mouse did but stir.
But now he 's grown old, and can no longer bark.
He's condemned by the parson to be hanged by the clerk.
Described in Walsh's The Jovial Companions (1709), as 'A 3 Voc. Catch on a
Parson's decriped old Dog call'd Barnet', by Mr. R. Brown, it appears as
follows:

'Tis pittypoor Barnet a Vigilant, Vigilant Curr,

mouse, if a mouse did but stirr,
that us'd for to bark, if a
should being grown old, and unable, unable to bark,
be doom'd by a Priest, be doom'd by a Priest, to be hang'd by his dark,
I pray good S^ therefore, weigh right well, right well his Case,

and save us poor Barnet, Hang cleric, hang cleric, hang cleric in's place.
This was reprinted in The Catch Club (1733) and in The Pleasant Musical
Companion (c. 1740). The version known today is from Gammer Gurtons
Garland (18 10).

68
 BARNEY BODKIN
34
Barney Bodkin broke his nose,
Without feet we can't have toes;
Crazy folks are always mad,
Want of money makes us sad.
These are the opening Unes of a sUp song called *A Bundle of Truths' preserved
in the Douce collection, the remainder of the first stanza being :

A farthing rush-light's very small,

Doctors wear large bushy wigs.
One that's dumb can never bawl.
Prickled pork is made of pigs.

The refrain of this song is also remembered in the nursery ('Hyder iddle diddle
dell') (q.v.). Douce made a note on the sheet, 'i 812 June', and it was probably
only recently printed when he obtained it.

A Bundle of Truths (Jennings), c. 1812 / Uniuersal Songster, 1825, part-quoted in a comic

medley / Oliver's Comic Songs (Oliver and Boyd), c. 1830 / JOH, 1846 / Mother Goose's
NR ,L. E. Walter. 1924.

35
Go to bed first,

A golden purse
Go bed second,
to
A golden pheasant
Go to bed third,
A golden bird.
JOH, 1844 / Favourite Rhymes for the Nursery, 1892 / Land ofNR, Ernest Rhys, 1932.

36
Bell horses, bell horses,
What time of day ?
One o'clock, two o'clock.
Time to away.

A rhyme common in the nineteenth century for starting children's races.

Exactly what bell horses are in this context is undetermined. Bells used to be
hung on the leading pack-horse, called the 'bell horse', and on festive occasions,
particularly May Day, the wagoners' horses were, and still are, decked with

6208 69 G
 BELL HORSES
bells. Denham tells how bells were used on coach horses up to the beginning of
the nineteenth century. A New Zealand correspondent, stating that the rhyme
was in use for race-starting in his childhood, explained 'bell horses' as meaning
race horses, the term deriving from Stuart times when, instead of having cups
as trophies, races were sometimes run for silver bells.

Douce MS. c. 1805 / GG's Garland, 1810 / New Year's Gift (J.
Catnach), c. 1830 [Hindley,
1878] / JOH, 'Good horses, bad horses. What is the time of day ? Three o'clock, four
1842,
o'clock, Now fare you away' / Folk-Lore in N. En^laud, M. A. Dciiham, 1858, 'Bellasy,
Bellasy [and 'Coach horses, Coach horses'], what time o' day? One o'clock, two o'clock,
three and away* / Gomnie, 1894 I N&
Q, 1907, 'Bell horses, bell horses, all in a row. How
many fme bells I want to know?' / N&
Q, 1922, additional couplet, 'The master is coming
and what will he say? He'll whip them, and drive them, and send them away' / Cor-
respondent, 1946 and 1949, repeated when blowing dandeUon seed, 'Field Horses, Field
;

Horses, What time of day ? One o'clock (puff), two o'clock (puff), three (a tremendous
puff), and away.*

37
At the siege of Belle Isle
I was there all the while

All the while,

All the while,
At the siege of Belle Isle.

'How often in my youth', writes a correspondent, 'was I annoyed, when asKmg

tell me a story, to be fobbed off with the insufferable:
an elder to

At the siege of Belleisle I was there all the while,

I was there all the while at the siege of Belleisle,

At the siege of Belleisle I was there all the while,

and so on, and so on, repeated until my infant temper could brook no more.'
Probably these lines were the refrain of a song. Belle Isle (Belle-ile-en-Mer),
dominating the west coast of France, was one of the British objectives in the
Seven Years War. The siege, which lasted from April to June 1761, caught the
popular imagination. Three years after the action, Mrs. Sneak, in Foote's
Mayor of Garret, flatters the militia major, 'he is the very Brogho and Belleisle
of the army'. In a song book printed at Stirling (1817) there is a song called
'The Siege of Behsle' but bearing no resemblance to the above. From Con-
necticut Bolton in 1888 reported:

At the battle of the Nile

I was there all the while,

I was there all the while

So you hop over that stile.

JOH, 1844 / Look! the Sun, Edith Sitwell, 1941 / Correspondent, 1949,

70
 BELLS
38

Ring the bells, ring!

Hip, hurrah for the King!
The dunce fell into the pool, oh
The dunce was going to school, oh!
The groom and the cook
Fished him out with a hook.
And he piped his eye like a fool, oh
Children's Encyclopedia, 1908 / Oral collection, 1945.
••• «To pipe one's eye', to weep. Originally nautical slang.

39
Bessy Bell and Mary Gray,
They were two bonny lasses
They built their house upon the lea.

And covered it with rushes.

Bessy kept the garden gate,

And Mary kept the pantry;
Bessy always had to wait.
While Mary Hved in plenty.

This is an adaptation of a pathetic little Scottish ballad :

O Bessie Bell and Mary Gray,

They war twa boiinie lasses
They bigget a bower on yon bum-brac
And theekit it o'er wi' rashes.

They theekit it o'er wi* rashes green,

They theekit it o'er wi' heather
But the pest cam' frae the burrows-town,
And slew them baith thegither.

They thocht to lye in Methven kirk-yard,

Amang their noble kin ;

But they maun he on Lynedoch-brac,

To biek forenent the sin.

The local tradition (first written down c. 1773) about these two girls is that
Mary Gray was the daughter of the Laird of Lednock and Bessy Bell of the
Laird of Kinvaid, a place near by. They were both very handsome and an
intimate friendship subsisted between them. While Bessy was on a visit to

71
 BESSY BELL
Mary the plague broke out at Perth (seven miles distant), and in order to escape it
they built themselves a bower about three-quarters of a mile west from Lednock
House, in a retired and romantic place called Bum-braes, Here they hved for
some time but, the plague raging with great fury, they caught the infection
;

from a young man who was in love with them both and used to bring them
their provisions. They died in this bower, and since, according to the rule in
cases of plague, they could not be buried churchyard (verse 3), they were
in a
interred in the Dranoch-haugh, at the foot of a brae of the same name, near the
bank of the river Almond, The burial-place (which may still be seen) hes about
half a mile west from the present house of Lednock. The date of this episode
would be about 1645. In that year, and the year or two following, Perth and its
neighbourhood was ravaged by plague; 3,000 people are believed to have
perished. In spite of the tenor of the ballad it is likely that the girls had already
caught the infection when they removed to their bower. It is written in an
account of the plague, made soon afterwards, that 'it was thought proper to
put those out of the town at some distance who were sick. Accordingly, they
went out and builded huts for themselves in different places around the town,
particularly in ... the grounds near the river Almond.' The ballad was known
in the late seventeenth century since there was a squib on the birth of the Old
Pretender (1688), beginning:

Bessy Bell and Mary Grey,

Those famous bonny lasses.

The was later (171 9) converted into

ballad a drawing-room song by Allan
Ramsay, who, nevertheless, retained the first verse.

Ramsay's version, first printed in a pamphlet (Edinburgh, 1719), appears frequently in

the 1 8th century, e.g. Orpheus Caledonius, 1725, 'set to music by W. Thomson'; The
Musical Miscellany (John Watts), 1729 ; O Bessy Bell &
Mary Gray, c. 1730, 'A Scotch song,
Sung by Mrs. Robinson at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket'; Muses Threnodie, Jinncs
Cart, 1774; The Pirate, Walter Scott, 1821 (two verses). The tune is also in The Beggar's
Opera, 'A curse attends the woman's love*. The ballad is given in A
Ballad Book, C.
Kirkpatrick Sharpe, 1824; The Songs of Scotland, A. Cunningham, 1825, as recited by Sir
Walter Scott; Ancient Ballads and Songs, Thomas Lyle, 1827, two verses. As a nursery
rhyme it appears in The Cheerful Warbler (J. Kendrew), c. 1820, first verse only, 'They
built their house with walls of clay*; JOH, 1842 Rymour Club, 191 1.
;

*** 'Bessy Bell' is possibly a traditional name. Martin Parker wrote a ballad 'Four-
pence-halfe-penney Farthing* registered 9 Nov. 1629, which was to the tune 'Bessy Bell
or, A Health to Betty', and there is a poem on 'Bessy Bell' attached to Bamabee' s Journal.
Ritson wrote as if there were already more than one song about 'Bessy Bell and Mary
Gray' in 1795.

40
Little Betty Blue
Lost her holiday shoe,
What can little Betty do?
Give her another
72
 BETTY BLUE
To match the other,
And then she may walk out in two.
Douce MS, 1815, 'Old Betty Blue
c. . . . and then she may swagger in two' / JOH, 1844 /
Mother Goose, Kate Greenaway, 1881.

Betty Better bought some butter,

But, she said, the butter's bitter;
If I put it in my batter
It will make my batter bitter,
But a bit of better butter
Will make my batter better.
So she bought a bit of butter
Better than her bitter butter,
And she put it in her batter
And was not bitter.
the batter
So t'was better Betty Botter bought a bit
of better butter.
Tongue twister.

N & Q, 1934 / Reader* s Digest, 1944.

42
Litde Betty Pringle she had a pig.
was not very little and not very big
It

When he was ahve he lived in clover.

But now he's dead and that's all over.
Johnny Pringle he sat down and cried,
Betty Pringle she lay down and died
So there was an end of one, two, three,
Johnny Pringle he,
Betty Pringle she,
And Piggy Wiggy.
'Betty Pringle' is perhaps a traditional name, for it appears independently in a
song Tve lost my heart composed by John Moulds and sung
to Betty Pringle*
by him in The Phisiognomist, c. 1795. Southey relates that at two years old the
sadness of 'Billy Pringle's Pig' was more than he could bear.

73
 BETTY PRINGLE
MG's Melody, c. 1765, 'Betty Winkle' / GG*s Garland, 1784, 'Did you hear of Betty
Pringle's Pig? It was not very little, nor yet very big The pig sat down upon a dunghill,
;

And then poor piggy he made his will. Betty Pringle came to see this pretty pig. That
was not very little, nor yet very big This htde piggy it lay down and died, And Betty
;

Pringle sat down and cried. Then Johnny Pringle buried this very pretty pig, That was
not very little, nor yet very big So here's an end of the song of all three, Johnny Pringle,
;

Betty Pringle, and the little Piggie' / Companion for the Nursery, Goody Prattle (J. Hodson),
c. 1795, as 1784 / Infant Institutes, 1797, 'It was ahve and lay upon the muck-hill; And in
half an hour's time it was as dead as a scuttle* / Songs for the Nursery, 1805, 'Johnny Pringle
had a little pig' / Vocal Harmony, c. 1806 / Oliver's Comic Songs (Oliver and Boyd), c. 1830,
'Billy Pringle had von very pig' as part of the entertainment 'The Nightingale Club* /
Nursery Poems (J. G. Rusher), c. 1840, 'Billy Pringle' / JOH, 1842 / Mason, 1877 / Baby's
Bouquet, 1879 / The rhyme is also incorporated in chapbook Iiistories of The Life ofJack
Sprat (q.v.).
Cf. Nursery Songs from the Appalachian Mountains, Cecil Sharp, 1921, song beginning
'There was an old woman who had a little pig, It didn't cost much for it wasn't very big.'

43
When shall we be married,
Billy, my pretty lad ?
We'll be married tomorrow.
If you think it good.
Shall we be married no sooner,
Billy, my pretty lad ?
Would you be married tonight?
I think the girl is mad.

The earliest rendering of this is in Herd's MS. of Scottish songs

Whan'll we
be marry'd,
My ain dear Nicol o'Cod?
We'll be marry'd o' Monday,
An* is na the reason gude?
Will we be marry'd nae sooner,
My own dear Nicol o'Cod?
Wad ye be marry'd o* Sunday ?
I think the auld runt be gane mad.

Whae'll we hae at the wadding,

My own dear Nicol o'Cod ?

We'll hae father and mother.

An' is na the reason gude?
Will we na hae nae mae,
My ain dear Nicol o'Cod?
Wad ye hae a' the hail warld ?
I think the auld runt be gane mad.

74
 BILLY
What'll we hae to the wadding,
My ain dear Nicol o'Cod?
We'll hae cheese and bread,
An' is na the reason gude ?
Will we na hae nac mae.
My ain dear Nicol o'Cod?
Wad ye hae sack and canarv^ ?
I think the auld runt be gane mad.

Vyhan'U we gang to our bed,

My ain dear Nicol o'Cod ?
We'll gang whan other folk gang,
An' is nae the reason gude ?
Will we na gang nae sooner,
My ain dear Nicol o'Cod?
Wad ye gang at the sunsetting?
I think the auld runt be gane mad.

What will we do i' our bed.

My ain dear Nicol o'Cod?
We will kiss and clap.
An' is nae the reason gude ?
Will we na do nae mae,
My ain dear Nicol o'Cod?
Wad ye do 't a' the night o'er?
I think the auld runt be gane mad.

This song dates from the previous century, for the hzUzd Joan s Victory Over her
Fellow Servants, as printed on a broadside about 1683, is given to the tune of
*My own sweet Nichol a Cod'.
Herd MS, 1776 / Vocal Harmony, c. 1806 / The Comedy of Billy &
Betty (T. Batchelar),
c. 1820, four verses / JOH, 1846, 'When shall we be married, My
dear Nicholas Wood?'
&c., three verses / Williams, 1923 / Word Lore, 1926, Somerset song, seventeen verses long,
beginning, 'When shall w^e be married, dear John, Johnny me own true luve ? We'll be
marred nex Zundy vortnight, Wats ont bcttur then that? Cant we be married sooner,
dear John, Johnny me own true luve? Wats waant — tu be marred termorrer? Whoy
zhurely ther wench be mad!' / Folk-Song, 1931.

44
Where have you been today, Billy, my son?
Where have you been today my only man?
iVe been a w^ooing, mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick at heart, and fain would lay down.
What have you ate today, Billy, my son ?
What have you ate today, my only man ?
I've ate eel-pie, mother, make my bed soon.
For I'm sick at heart, and shall die before noon.
75
 BILLY
The nursery here preserves in short and simple form what is perhaps the last
hving (i.e. still orally transmitted) link with a tale possibly terrible in origin
and certainly mysterious in its subsequent history. It is indubitable that the lines
are descended from the ballad 'Lord Randal', which has been found as far east
as Czechoslovakia and Hungary, as far north as Sweden and Iceland, and as
far south as Calabria. In Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1803), the ballad
begins

O where hae ye been. Lord Randal, my son ?

where hae ye been, my handsome young man ?
1 hae been to the wild wood mother make my bed soon.
;

For I'm weary wi hunting, and fain wald He down.

Where your dinner. Lord Randal, my son?

gat ye
Where my handsome young man?
gat ye your dinner,
I din'd wi my true-love mother, make my bed soon,
;

For I'm weary wi hunting, and fain wald lie down.

What gat ye to your dinner. Lord Randal, my son ?

What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man?
Igat eels boild in broo mother, make my bed soon.
;

For I'm weary wi hunting, and fain wald lie down.

'More than three hundred years ago', writes Professor Gerould in The Ballad oj

Tradition (1932), 'an Itahan professional singer, advertising his wares in easy
verse on a broadside printed in Verona, quoted three lines which unmistakably
belong to VAvvelenato, as that ballad has been found in circulation up and
down the peninsula within the last half-century; and Avvelenato is so close V
in form and content to "Lord Randal" that certain versions might be taken as
paraphrases of one another.

Where supped you yestereve,

Dear son mine, noble and wise ?
Oh, I am dying,
Ohime!
Where supped you yestereve.
My noble knight ?
I was at my lady's,
I am sick at the heart.
How sick am I!
I wasat my lady's.
My hfe 's at an end.

What supper did she give you.

Dear son mine, noble and wise ?
Oh, I am dying,
Ohime!
What supper did she give you,
My gentle knight ?
An eel that was roasted,

76
 BILLY
Mother, dear mother;
I am sick at the heart,
How sick am I
An eel that was roasted,
My hfe's at an end.

'The hnes roughly translated above were taken down by D'Ancona {Poesia
popolare italiana) in the country near Pisa some
ago and the opening
sixty years ;

is almost identical with that quoted in the Veronese broadside of 1629. It is not

a question of different songs with the same theme, but of the same ballad in
circulation over wide areas.' *It need occasion no surprise', continues Professor
Gerould, '. . that the migrations of "Lord Randal" cannot be traced as it has
.

passed from land to land.' Only, perhaps, is its preservation accountable. *It
has had the good fortune', wrote Dr. Jamieson 135 years ago, 'in every country
to get possession of the nursery, a circumstance wliich, from the enthusiasm and
curiosity of young imaginations, and the communicative volubihty of httle
tongues, has insured its preservation.' Certainly it was a well-known nursery
song in his day. Burns knew two verses. Scott knew six, and his daughter used
to sing them to him at Abbotsford

Where hae ye been a' the day.

My bonny wee croodin doo ?
I hae been to my stepmother's house
Make my bed, mammie, now!
Make my bed, mammie, now

Where did you get your dinner.

My bonny wee croodin doo ?
1 got it. in my stepmother's
Make my bed, mammie, now, now, now!
Make my bed, mammie, now

What did she gie ye to your dinner,

My bonny wee croodin doo?
She ga'e me a four-footed fish ;

Make my bed, mammie, now, now, now!

Make my bed, mammie, now!

Where got she the four-footed fish.

My bonny wee croodin doo ?
She got it down in yon well strand
O make my bed, mammie, now, now, now!
Make my bed, mammie, now

What did she do wi* the banes o 't.

My bonny wee croodin doo ?

She ga'e them to the httle dog
Make my bed, mammie, now, now, now !

Make my bed, mammie, now!

77
 BILLY
O what became o' the httle dog,
My bonny wee croodin doo?
O it shot out its feet and died!
O make my bed, mammie, now, now, now!
O make my bed, mammie, now
Of this version Scott remarked that apparently 'to excite greater interest in the
nursery, the handsome young hunter exchanged for a httle child, poisoned
is

by were known to Peter Buchan,

his false stepmother'. Similar juvenile verses
Motherwell, Chambers, and Kirkpatrick Sharpc. Sharpe said 'The nurse, or
nursery-maid, who sung these verses (to a very plaintive air), always informed
her juvenile audience that the stepmother was a rank witch, and that the fish
was an ask (i.e. newt) whicli was in Scotland formerly deemed a most poisonous
reptile.' Scott's theory was that the ballad originally regarded the death of
Thomas Randolph or Randal, Earl of Murray, nephew to Robert Bruce, and
governor of Scotland, a great warrior who died at Musselburgh in 1332. Another
theory is that it is a reminiscence either of Randal, sixth Earl of Chester (d.
1232), about whom there are laiown to have been songs as early as 1377, or ot
his nephew and successor, John the Scot, whose wife 'was infamous for plotting
to take away the life of her husband by poison'. The ballad may well, however,
be much older, and, as has been seen, it is not exclusive to Scotland, The father
and mother ofjolm Clare, the Northamptonshire poet (b. 1793), used to sing it
to him to while away the long winter evenings. Baring-Gould tells of a west-
country nurse who sang it in 1835. In America Professor Child (c. 1880) knew
of several Massachusetts ladies who had learnt it in childhood.
F. J. Child in his monumental and tedious English and Scottish Ballads, 1883-98, gives
fifteen recordings of 'Lord Randal' and references to continental versions. The following
are appearances of the juvenile song Musical Museum, 1792, contributed by Bums /
:

Illustrations of the Northern Antiquities, R. Jamieson, &c., 1814 / Motherwell's MS, c. 1825 /
Chambers, 1826 / Kinloch MS, c. 1826 / Buchan MS, c. 1828 / Scottish Ballads, R. Chambers,
1829, version differs from 1826 / Lyric Poetry of Scotland, William Stenhouse, 1839
[1853I / JOH, 1846 / Chambers, 1847 / Mason, 1877 I N
& Q, 1894, 'What will you
have for supper, King Henry my son?' (The name 'King Henry* may conceivably have
been inserted after Henry I's death from eating a dish of lampreys) / Baring-Gould, 1895 /
Folk-Song, 1905, five versions with tunes, including 'O where have you been, Randal my
son?' and 'Henery, my son'; also 1908, 'King Henry', and 191 5 'Oh, where have you
been this Uve-long day, My httle wee croodin' doo', and from Ireland 'Where were you
all day, my own purtee boy?' / Folk Songs from S. Appalachians, Cecil Sharp, 1917 /
Shetland Traditional Lore, J. M. E. Saxby, 1932, 'Whaur has du been a' the day, Bonnie
Tammy'.
Cf. 'Where have you been all the day. My boy Billy*, and Carl Loewe's ballad 'Edward*.
There are references to continental versions additional to Child in Folk-Song (191 5).

45
Where have you been all the day,
My boy Billy?
Where have you been all the day,
My boy Billy ?
78
 BILLY
Ihave been all the day
Courting of a lady gay
Although she is a young thing,
And just come from her mammy.
Is she fit to be thy love,
My boy Billy ?
Is she fit to be thy love.
My boy Billy ?
She *s as fit to be my love
As my hand is for my glove,
Although she is a young thing,
And just come from her mammy.
Is she fit to be thy wife.
By boy Billy?
Is she fit to be thy wife.
My boy Billy ?
She 's as fit to be my wife.
As my blade is for my knife
Although she is a young thing.
And just come from her mammy.
How old may she be.
My boy Billy ?
How old may she be,
My boy Billy ?
Twice six, twice seven.
Twice twenty and eleven,
Although she is a young thing.
And just come from her mammy.
Halliwell collected two versions of this song in mid-nineteenth century, one
from Suffolk, above, from Yorkshire. Stenhouse (b. 1773?) said
and one, as
that as aboy in Scotland he often heard it sung by old people. He considered
the words to be 'quite puerile' but described the melody as Very ancient and
uncommonly pretty'. The melody is printed in The Scots Musical Museum
(1797) where the words have been rewritten by the Scottish poet Hector
Macneill. His version was first printed in 1791 in an Edinburgh periodical The
Bee. It begins
Whar hae ye been a' day,
my boy, Tammy ?
79
 BILLY
Whar hae ye been a' day,
my boy, Tammy ?
I've been by bum and flow'ry brae,
Meadow green and mountain grey,
Courting o' this young thing
Just come frae her mammy.
These lines were highly esteemed at the time. Stenhouse says 'Miss Duncan, the
celebrated actress, used frequently to sing this ballad on the stage with great
applause'. Baring-Gould collected the traditional words as sung about 1835 by
a west-country nurse. He considered that it was the first part of the old ballad
'Lord Randal* and printed it like this in A Garland of Country Songs. Although
the song bears comparison with 'Where have you been today, Billy, my son?'
(q.v.) which stems from 'Lord Randal', it is not found connected elsewhere.
The longest version, and perhaps the earhest, although it has partially been
Americanized, may
be that which was collected by Cecil Sharp among the
unlettered hill folk of North Carolina.

Herd MS, 1776, 'I am to court a wife, And I'll love her as my life, But she is a young thing
And new come frae her minnie. She's twice six, twice seven, twice twenty and eleven.
Alack, she's but a young thing, And new come frae her minnie!' / Lyric Poetry of Scotland,
Wilham Stenhouse, 1839, 'Is she fit to soop the house, My
boy. Tammy? (bis) She's
just as fit to soop the house As the cat to tak' a mouse; And yet she's but a young
thing New come frae her mammy. How
auld's the bonnie young thing?' &c. [1853] /
JOH, 1844, 'Where have you been all the day. My
boy Willy? I've been all the day.
Courting of a lady gay: But oh! she's too young To be taken from her mammy. What
can she do. Can she bake and can she brew ? She can brew and she can bake. And she can
make our wedding cake. What age may she be?' &cc. / A
Garland of Country Songs, S.
Baring-Gould, 1894; also Nursery Songs, 1895 / Folk Songs from S. Appalachians, Cecil
Sharp, 1917, two versions: (a) 'O where have you been Billy boy, Billy boy, where O
have you been charming Billy ? I have been to seek a wife For the pleasures of my life
She's a young girl and cannot leave her mammy', five verses (b) verse i. 'Where have you
;

been, &c. 2. She asked me to come in; she had a dimple in her chin. 3. She set me in a
chair she had wrinkles in her ear. 4. She asked me for to eat, She had plenty bread and
;

meat. 5. She can card and she can spin, And she can do most anything. 6. She can sew and
she can fell. She can use her needle well. 7. She can make a cherry pie, Quick as a cat can
wink his eye. 8, She's twice six, twice seven, Twenty-eight and eleven' / Four Old Nursery
Songs, tunes arranged by Adam Carse, 1928 / Oral collection, 1945, the song still has adult
life as a folk-song and sea-shanty, 'BiUy boy, Billy boy*.
Cf With the Herd MS
copy above, Burns's 'I am my mammy's ae bairn', the chorus
of which he acknowledged was old.

46
Once I saw a little bird
Come hop, hop, hop,
And I cried, Little bird.
Will you stop, stop, stop?

80
 BIRD
I was going to the window
To say, How do you do ?
But he shook his httle tail

And away he flew.

Little Rhymes for Little Folks (J. Harris), c. i8i2 / First Lessons for Children (Henry Mozley
and Sons), 1825 /
c. NR Tales and Jingles, 1844 / JOH, Cries of London and Banbury
1844 /

(J. G. Rusher), c. 1843 / Tailor of Gloucester, Beatrix Potter (p.p. ed.), 1902.

47
White bird featherless
Flew from Paradise,
Pitched on the castle wall;
Along came Lord Landless,
Took it up handless,
And rode away horseless to the King's white hall.

This riddle of the snow and the sun was well known to readers of Notes &
Queries in 1855, when one of them said his little girl had been taught it by an old
servant. They, likewise, had leamt it in childhood. Some years later (1872) it
was pointed out that Lydius in his Sermones Conviviales (1643) had recorded
versions in Greek and Latin; while Kircher in 1653 had repeated a German
rendering. Miillenhoff, the German folk-lorist, collected the riddle in Schleswig-
Holstein in the middle of the nineteenth century:

Da koem en Vagel fedderlos,

Un op'n Boem blattlos.
sett sik

Da koem de Jungfru mundelos

Un freet den Vagel fedderlos,
Van den Boem blattlos.
It is also known in Sweden. Miillenhoff stated that the riddle must have origi-
nated in the ninth century, since there was a Latin translation in a Reichenauer
MS of the beginning of the tenth century:
Volavit volucer sine plumis,
sedit in arbore sine foliis,
venit homo absque manibus,
conscendit ilium sine pedibus,
assavit ilium sine igne,
comedit ilium sine ore.

N& Q, 1855 and 1872 / Folk-Lore of N.E. Scotland, W. Gregor, 1881 / Gentleman's
Magazine, 1881 / Rymour Club, 1914, 'White doo featheriess cam' doon frae Paradise,
And lichtit on yon castle wa'; By cam' Laird Landless and took it up handless, Syne rain
cam' and washed it awa* / Land of NR, Ernest Rhys, 1932, '. Poor Lord Landless, . .

Came in a fine dress. And went away without a dress at all' Shetland Traditional Lore,
/

J. M. E. Saxby, 1932, 'Fleein' far but featherless. New come oot o' Paradise; Fleein' ower
de sea and laund Deein' imme haund.'

81
 BIRD
Cf. Serinones Conviviales, Jacobus Lydius, 1643, '"Ainepov cV SeVSpov imjvov ttot d(f>vXXov
iafTTTT], Kavdod^ €(f>iL,avov Kar* dp^ darofiov avTO 7T€TTajK€,''AaTOfxos t^VTTpoacoTTOS, ipvdpo-
y€i'€Los dvavBos; Non habuit pennas volucris, tamen ipsa volavit Desuper in quercus, exutas
frondibus altis. Ore carens aliquis, de coetu (ut credo) Gigantum, Venit, et banc con-
sumpsit avem, ore carerct.' Q^diptis Aigyptiacus, Athanasius Kirchcr, 1653, 'Es flog
licet
ein vogel federlosz, Baumb blattlosz, Da kam die Fraw mundtlosz, Vnd frasz
Auff einen
den vogel tedcrlosz* / Sagen der Herzogthiimer Schlesxing-holstein, K. Miillenhoff, 1845 /
. . .

Deutsche Kinder-Reime, E. Meier, 1851 / Dcutsches Kitiderlied, F. M. Bohme, 1897 [1924].

Cf. also the traditional riddle 'A wliite bird floats down through the air, And never a
tree but he Ughts there.'

48
Little birdof paradise,
She works her work both neat and nice;
She pleases God, she pleases man.
She does the work that no man can.
The sentiment and main phrasing of this riddle may be traced to the beginning
of Henry VIII's reign. In Demaundes Joyous, printed by Wynk)Ti de Worde in
151 1, the question is posed:

What is it that is a wryte and is no man, and he dothe that no man can, and
yet it serueth both god and man.
Charles Butler, in 1609, speaks of *The Httle smith of Nottingham (whose art
is thought to excel al art of man).' How easily the learned may be led astray in
simple things is demonstrated by Fuller (1662), who, referring to Butler, gives

it as a metrical proverb:
The smith of Nottingham,
little

who doth the work that no man can,

and adopts the absurd rationaUzing explanation that the lines are *a periphrasis
of Nemo, Ovtls, or a person who never was'. This explanation was blindly
followed by Ray in his English Proverbs (1670) and by subsequent proverb-
collectors, despite the subject of Butler's work, which was Bees. Such sen-
tentiousness might have been avoided by consulting a riddle-minded child.
One of the 'divers prettie Riddles* printed 'for Youth to try their wits' in 163
was:
I haue a Smith without a hand,
He workes the worke that no man can:
He serues our God, and doth man ease,
without any fire in his furnace.

'Solution: Bee that makes hony and waxe.' Further,

It is a this was knovsoi to
the young Randle Holme, Ray's contemporary:

There is a Bird of great renown, usefull in citty & in town, none work like
unto him can doe: hes yellow black & green a very pretty Bird j mean, yet he
is both firce & fell, j count hin wise that can this tell.

82
 BIRD OF PARADISE
*A[nswer] the painfull bee' For the past three centuries the riddle has been
retained in the storehouse of popular memory, for the pleasing text version was
collected for a book of folk-lore pubHshed in 1939.
Demaundes Joyous, 1511 } Feminine Monarchic, Or a Treatise concerning hees, C.Butler, 1609 /
Book ofmerrie Riddles, 163 1 / Holme MS, c. 1645 / ^^^ ^clp to Discourse, William Win-
stanley, 1669, as previous / Weardale, J. J. Graham, 1939 / Randle Holme's version was
reprinted by JOH, 1849, and has entered some present-day collections.

49
Away, birds, away.
Take a litde, and leave a little,

And do not come again;

For if you do,
I will shoot you through.

And there is an end of you.

In past centuries village boys and young members of the farmer's family used
to be employed at seed time as bird scarers ('crow-keepers', 'crow-herds', or
'bird boys'). It was proverbially a child's first employment, much as dehvering
newspapers is today, and references to the occupation are common in hterature.
Thomas Wilson (1553), for instance, speaks of 'Plaie as young boyes or scarre
Crowes do, which showte in the open and plaine feldes at all aventures hittie
missie', and Shakespeare (in Romeo and Juliet) of 'Skaring the Ladies hkc a
Crow-keeper'. The bird scarers seem to have sung special songs right to the end
of the nineteenth century. A writer in Folk-Lore (1889) remarked, 'It is the
custom in agricultural districts for boys and men to keep birds off cornfields
until the seeds are up, and the stalks high enough for protection. ... At such
times songs or rhymes in a loud voice are frequently indulged in.* In The
History of Little King Pippin (c. 1786) Peter was sent to keep the crows from
Farmer Giles's com, and sang:
Away, away, John Carrion Crow!
Your master hath enow
Down in his barley mow.
In The Boy's Country Book (1839) WiUiam Howitt tells how in Sherwood one
February he heard 'a faint, shrill cry, as of a child's voice, that alternating with
the sound of a wooden clapper, sung these words:

We've ploughed our land, we've sown our seed.

We've made all neat and gay;
So take a bit, and leave a bit,
Away, birds, away!
He looked over the hedge, and saw a Httle rustic lad; about seven years old, in
a blue carter-frock, with his clapper in his hand. The child was still there,

83
 BIRDS
'with his melancholy song', when Howitt returned in the evening. Harriet
Martineau's description of the little crow-minder in Society in America (1837)
can be appreciated when she says he came in 'hoarse from his late occupation'.

Numerous known. Whether they were considered to be nursery rhymes

scaring songs are
before JOH included some of them in his collection is doubtful, though they would have
been repeated to children at an early age / History of Little King Pippin (E. Newbery),
c. 1786, as quote [J. Lumsdcn, 1814] / Boy's Country Book, WiUiam Howitt, 1839, as
quote /JOH, 1842, as text / Rimbault, 1846, *0 all you little blackey-tops. Pray don't you
cat my father's crops. While I lie down to take a nap, Shu-a-O! Shu-a-O! If father he by
chance should come With his cock'd hat and his long gun, Then you must fly and I must
run, Shu-a-O! Shu-a-O!' /JOH, 1849, 'Awa', birds, awa*. Take a peck And leave a seek,
And come no more today' /JOH, 1853, 'Eat, birds, eat, and make no waste, I lie here and
make no haste; If my master chance to come. You must fly and I must run' / Northampton-
shire Glossary, A. E. Baker, 1854, 'Away, away, away birds; Take a little bit and come
another day birds; Great birds, little birds, pigeons and crows, I'll up with my clackers and
down she goes* I
N& Q, 1859
Baby's Bouquet, 1879, as 1846 / Northall, 1892, 'How dar'
/
you. How dar' you While I'm so near you?' and many other
Steal the master's wheat,
versions / Folk-Song, 1905, with tune 'Shoo all 'er birds you be so black. When I lay down
to have a nap. Shoo arl-o arl-o arl-o arl-o arl-o arl-o arl-o arl-o birds. Hi shoo all 'er birds.
Out of master's ground into Tom
Tucker's ground' / Folk-Song, 1944, 'Away you black
devils away. Away you black devils away.
. . . You eat too much you drink too much
. . .

you carry too much away' / Big Book ofMother Goo^e (James and Jonathan Co., Wisconsin),
1946.
••• The leniency to the birds apparent in some of these rhymes finds collusion in the
sowing-proverb 'One for the pigeon, one for the crow, one to rot, and one to grow.*

50
Of all the gay birds that e'er I did see,
The owl is the fairest by far to me,
For all on a tree,
day long she sits

And when the night comes away flies she.

These lines form the opening of a song in Ravencroft's Deuteromelia or The

Seconde part ofMusicks melodie, pubHshed in 1609. JOH (1842) collected the text
version in Lincolnshire and as he remarks 'it is singular that it should have
come down to us from oral tradition', A writer in Notes & Queries (191 5)
inquired after *an amusing old Yorkshire song, beheved to be called "The
Owl", containing a line "0£ all the gay birds that e'er I did see"'; and
Wilhams found the song still being sung beside the upper reaches of the
Thames. Furthermore, the burden of the song, 'Nose, nose, jolly red nose'
(q.v.), which already by 1632 was sung independently, has also survived to the
present day.

Deuteromelia, 1609, 'Of all the birds that euer I see, The Owle is the fayrest in her
degree: Te whit te whow, For all the day long she sits in a tree, andwhen the night comes
away flies she' / The Finder of Wakefield, 1632, ends 'To whit to whooe. To whom drinke
you' / Antidote against Melancholy, 1661 / Windsor Drollery, 1672 /JOH, 1842 / WiUianis,
1923, whole song / The Little Piggy (Juvenile Productions), c. 1945.

84
 BIRDS

There were two birds sat on a stone,

Fa, la, la, la, lal, de;
One flew away, and then there was one.
Fa, la, la, la, lal, de;
The other flew after, and then there was none,
Fa, la, la, la, lal, de;
And so the poor stone was left all alone,

Fa, la, la, la, lal, de.

In Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies (1863) the last of the Gairfowl 'kept on
crooning an old song to herself, which she learned when she was a httle baby-
bird, long ago:

Two Httle birds, they sat on a stone,

One swam away, and then there was one;
With a fal-lal-la-lady.
The other swam after, and then there was none.
And so the poor stone was left all alone;
With a fal-lal-la-lady.

*It was "flew" away, properly, and not "swam" away; but, as she could not
fly, she had a right to alter it.'

MG's Melody, c. 1765 / Herd MS, 1776, 'There was Two Craws sat on a stane, Fal de ral
&c.Ane flew awa & there remain'd ane, ral, &c. The other seeing his neibour gane,
Fal de
Fal de ral &c. Then he flew awa &
there was nane, Fal de ral &c.' / Nancy Cock's PSB,
c. 1780 / GG's Garland, 1784 / Newest Christmas Box, c. 1797 / Vocal Harmony, c. 1806 /

Nursery Songs (G. Ross), c. 1812 / London Jingles (J. G. Rusher), c. 1840, additional verse,
'One of the birds then back again flew, T'other came after, then there were two: Said one
to t'other —
How do you do? Very well, thank you, and How are you?' /JOH, 1842 /
Only True MG's Melodies, c. 1843, also with the (probably spurious) additional verse of
c. 1840 / Rymour Club, 191 1.

Cf. 'There was a monkey climbed a tree*.

52

The of Bisiter,
tailor
He has but one eye;
He cannot cut a pair of green galligaskins.
If he were to die.

Aubrey, writing in 1687, gives this rhyme, and explains: 'The young Girls in
and about Oxford have a Sport called Leap Candle, for which they set a candle
in the middle of the room in a candlestick, and then draw up their coats into
the form of breeches, and dance over the candle back and forth, with these

6208 85 H
^^^^^^^s

m
^^=s-^j:r^^%ip^^^3^==--

Woodcuts from J.
Marshall's edition of Mother Goose's Melody, c. I795,
depicting {a) I won't be my father's Jack; {b) There was an old man in a
velvet coat; (c) Jack and Gill; {d) Hush-a-by baby; (e) What care I
how black
I be; (/) When I was a htde boy; (g) O my
kitten a kitten; {h) Bah, bah.
black sheep. Bodleian Library.
 BISITER
words.* He added that this game in other parts was called 'Daiiciiig the candle
rush'. GaUigaskins were a type of v/ide breeches worn in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and it is probable that the girls, aping men's costume,

were perpetuating custom they had seen performed on feast days (cf 'Jack
a
be nimble'). Northall, in 1892, knew a similar game in Warwickshire called
'Cock and Breeches'.
Lansdowne MS 231, 1686-7 / JOH, 1842 / Mother Goose NR, L. E. Walter, 1924.

53

Black I am and much admired,

Men may seek me rill they're rired;
I weary horse and weary man,
Tell me this riddle if you can.

Riddle. Solution: coal.

A Collection of Curious and Entertaining Enigmas (J. and C. Evans), c. 181 5 /JOH, 1843 /
N& Q, 1865 / Rymour Club, 1914 / Correspondent, 1949, *I weary horse and comfort

54
What care I how black I be ?
Twenty pounds will marry me;
Iftwenty won't, forty shall.
For Tm my mother's bouncing girl.

The phrasing of the first line date-s back to the begiiming of the seventeenth
century; thus, injonson's Description of Love (c. 161 8):
If she be not so to me.
What care I how black she be?

Although the dark-haired were then often viewed with disfavour, the black
lass's boast was probably no idle one. The masculine singer of a ballad printed

about 1630 describes a most repugnant maiden 'a yard and a halfe in the waste',
and yet she was pretty because 'to her portion, she hath thirty pound'. In 1833
a parody of the rhyme was addressed^ to Zachary Macaulay, then pressing for
the abolition of slavery:

What though now opposed I be ?

Twenty peers will carry me;
Iftwenty won't, thirty wiU,
For I'm His Majesty's bouncing Bill.

MG's Melody, c. 1765 / GCs

Garland, 1784 / Songs for the Nursery, 1805 / Vocal Harmony,
c. 1806 / Rhymes for the Fireside (Thomas Richardson), c. 1828 /JOH, 1842 / Only True
MG Melodies, c. 1843 / Book ofNR, Enid Marx, 1939, 'I am my mother's bouncing gal*.

87
 BLACK SHEEP

55
Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir.

Three bags full;

One for the master.

And one for the dame,
And one for the little boy
Who lives down the lane.
The words of this favourite rhyme have scarcely altered in 200 years:

Bah, Bah, a black Sheep,

Have you any Wool,
Yes merry have I,
Three Bags full,
One for my Master,
One for my Dame,
One for my Little Boy
That Hves in the lane.

In thewool trade the division of the bags is said to refer to the export taxon
wool imposed in 1275. The words are sung to the old French tune *Ah vous
diraije.'

T Thumb's PSB, c. 1744 / MG's Melody, c. 1765, 'But none for the little boy who cries in
the lane' / GG's Garland, 1784, and Christmas Box, vol. iii, 1798, as 1765 / Songs for the
Nursery, 1805 / Mother's Gift (N. Coverly Jun., Boston, Mass.), 1812, 'Bah! Nanny black
sheep' / GG's Garland, illus. T. Bewick, c. 18 14, 'Yes, Mary, have I' / Grandmamma's NR
(J. Fairburn), c. 1825 / NRfor
Children (J. Fairbum), c. 1825 / London Jingles (J. G. Rusher),
c. 1840 /JOH, 1843 / Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour, R. S. Surtees, 1849, 'The child [Gustavus

James] who had been wound up like a musical snufF-box, then went off as follows:
"Bah, bah, back sheep, have 'ou any 'ool? Ess, marry, have I, three bags full; Un for ye
master, un for ye dame, Un for ye 'ittle boy 'ot 'uns about ye *ane" / Rudyard Kipling
'

used the rhyme as framework for his story Baa, Baa, Black-Sheep, 1888.

56
I had a httle dog, and his name was Blue Bell,
I gave him some work, and he did it very well;
I sent him up stairs to pick up a pin.

He stepped in the coal-scuttle up to his chin;

88
 BLUE BELL
I sent him to the garden to pick some sage,
He tumbled down and fell in a rage;
I sent him to the cellar, to draw a pot of beer.
He came up again and said there was none there.
JOH, 1842 / Children's Encyclopaedia, 1908, 'I had a little boy'
Cf. 'I had a httle dog and they called him Buff.'

57
LittleBlue Betty Uved in a den.
She sold good ale to gentlemen;
Gentlemen came every day.
And little Blue Betty hopped away.
She hopped upstairs to make her bed,
And she tumbled down and broke her head.
LittleBlue Betty appears to have been a member of the same profession as
ElsieMarley (q.v.). She worked, according to the earhest record, at the sign
of The Golden Can.
GG's Garland, 1810 / JOH, 1842 /JOH, 1843, 'Little Brown Betty liv'd under a pan, She
brew'd good ale for a gentleman: A gentleman came every day. So httle Brown Betty
hopp'd away' / Mill Hill Magazine, 1877, 'Nancy Pansy hved in a well' j & Q, 1884, N
'Mary Carey, quite contrary. Baked a cake for gentlemen .*
/ Folk-Lore, 1900, 'Cicely
. .

Parsely hved in a den, She brewed good ale for gentlemen, Gentlemen came every day,
Yet Cicely Parsely ran away* / Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes, Beatrix Potter, 1922.
Cf. 'Ilickety, pickety, my black hen.' Also the second line with Burns's 'There was a
wife wonn'd in Cockpen, Scroggam She brew'd guid ale for gentlemen', in the Musical
!

Museum, 1803, which in turn was based on an older song 'There wormed a wife in Whistlc-
—
cockpen Will ye no, can ye no, let me be She brewed guid ale for gentlemen, And ay
!

she waggit it wantonly.*

58

Buzz, quoth the blue fly,

Hum, quoth the bee.

Buzz and hum they cry.
And so do we:
In his ear, in his nose,
Thus do you see,
He ate the dormouse.
Else it was thee.

In Ben Jonson's Masque ofOberon (1616) the Satyrs were trying to wake the two

89
 BLUE FLY
Sylvian guards. Silenus says, 'Strike a charme into their cares', upon which they
sodainely into this catch'. In Jolin Playford's Catch that Catch can : or the
'fell

Musical Companion (1667) with 'niusick by Mr. Edmund NeUiam', the oppor-
tunity was taken to add an inexcusably wicked couplet at the end. In 1805 the
original verse appeared in Songs for the Nursery, and in 1842 described it JOH
as 'a most commonnursery song at the present time'. In Beatrix Potter's story
The Tailor of Gloucester (1903) it is the 'something mysterious' which the bats
said in their sleep.

59
Bob Robin,
Little
Where do you live ?
Up in yonder wood, sir.

On a hazel twig.

JOH, 1853 / Young England's NR, C. Haslewood, c. 1885.

60
Bobby Shafto's gone to sea,
Silver buckles at his knee;
He'll come back and marry me.
Bonny Bobby Shafto

Bobby Shafto 's fat and fair.

Combing down his yellow hair;
He's my love for evermore,
Bonny Bobby Shafto!

The original Shafto of tliis song is said to have Hved at Hollybrook, County
Wicklow, and died in 1737. Most of the stories, however, centre around the
election of 1761, when the song was used by the supporters of Robert Shafto of
Whitworth, candidate for Parhament (whose portrait shows him as young and
handsome, and with yellow hair). An additional verse which seems to have
been composed for this occasion is:

Bobby Shafto 's looking out,

All his ribbons flew about,
All the ladies gave a shout,
Hey for Bobby Shafto

Such was his beauty that Miss Bellasyse, the heiress of Brancepeth, is said to
have died for love of him (1774).
Songs for the Nursery, 1805 / Rhymes of Northern Bards, John Bell, 18 12, additional verse

90
 BOBBY SHAFTO
'Bobby Shafto's gettcn a bairn. For to dandle in his arm; In his arm and on his knee,
Bobby Shafto loves me' / Redgautitlet, Sir Walter Scott, 1824, 'Old Northumbrian ditty',
'Willy Foster 's gone to sea, siller buckles at his knee. He'll come back and marry me

Canny Willie Foster' / Bishoprick Garland, Sir Cuthbert Sharp, 1834 / Archaeology of NR,
J. B. Ker, 1834, 'Bobby Shaft' /JOH, 1842 /
Rimbault, 1846 / Mason, 1877, 'Billy Button'
Kidson, 1904.

61
As a little fat man of Bombay
Was smoking one very hot day,
A bird called a snipe
Flew away with his pipe,
Which vexed the fat man of Bombay.
This stands above in Anecdotes and Adventures of Fifteen Gentlemen, possibly
as
written by R. Sharpe, and published by John Marshall about 1822. Others of
S.

the 'Fifteen Gentlemen' who continue to find a place in nursery collections are
*a Tailor who sail'd from Quebec', *a poor man ofJamaica', and *a sick man of
Tobago' (qq.v.). All are cast in hmerick form and preceded Edward Lear's
verses by a quarter of a century; in fact, 'There was a sick man of Tobago'
(q.v. especially) was Lear's direct inspiration. JOH, in 1846, knew 'There was a
fat man of Bombay' and 'There was an old man of Tobago'. He also printed
the stories of three old women, those of Surrey, Leeds, and Norwich (qq.v.),
which come from Harris's pubhcation, The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old
Women (1821).

62
Oh, what have you got for dinner, Mrs. Bond ?
There 'a beef in the larder, and ducks in the pond;
Dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, come to be killed.
For you must be stuffed and my customers filled

Send us the beef first, good Mrs. Bond,

And get us some ducks dressed out of the pond.
Cry, Dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, come to be lolled,
For you must be stuffed and my customers filled

John Osder, go fetch me a duckling or two.

Ma'am, says John Osder, what I can do.
Til try
Cry, Dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, come to be killed,
For you must be stuffed and my customers filled
91
 BOND
I have been to the ducks that swim in the pond,
But I found they won't come to be killed, Mrs. Bond;

I cried, Dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, come to be killed.

For you must be stuffed and my customers filled

Mrs. Bond she flew down to the pond in a rage.

With plenty of onions and plenty of sage;
She cried, Dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, come to be killed,
For you must be stuffed and my customers fdled

She cried. Little wag-tails, come and be killed.

For you must be stuffed and my customers filled
Dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, come to be killed.
For you must be stuffed and my customers filled
The Nightingale, 1831, with tune / Sam Cowell's 120 Comic Songs, c. 1850, stated to be
from a version of The Mayor of Garret [Folk-Song, 1929] / Baby^s Opera, 1877 / Berkshire
Words, B. Lowsley, 1888, 'Pray what have you for supper, Mrs. Bond ? Ge-us in the larder
an* ducks in the pond. Dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, come an' be killed, Passengers around us
an' thaaymust be villed' / Baring-Gould, 1895 / Kidson, 1904, to the air 'Will you come
to the bower I have shaded for you.*

63

Old Boniface he loved good cheer.

And took his glass of Burton,
And when the nights grew sultry hot
He slept without a shirt on.
Boniface was the name of the jovial innkeeper in Farquhar's Beaux' Stratagem
(1707) whence it became a generic name for pubhcans.

J OH, 1844/ Correspondent, 1949.

64
As I went to Bonner,
Imet a pig
Without a wig.
Upon my word and honour.
New Year's Gift (J. Catnach), c. 1830 [Hindley, 1878] / JOH, 1844 / Folk-Lore, 1889,
*
'Pon my life an* honner! As I was gowine to Toller, I met a pig a' thout a wig, 'Pon my
life an* Rymour Club, 1911
hormer!* / / Mother Goose, Arthur Rackham, 1913, 'Upon my
word and honour, As I was going to Stonor.'

92
 BO-PEEP

Bo-peep, Little Bo-peep,

Now 's the time for hide and seek.

JOH (1849) gives these as the words repeated by children when playing bo-
peep. Whether the game was once a form of hide-and-seek, or never more
than a baby amusement of covering the head and peeping out, as the early
quotations suggest, is Johnson (1755) defined bo-peep as 'The act
uncertain.
of looking out and then drawing back as if frightened, or with the purpose to
fright some other', and Herrick (1648) used it in the same sense:

Her pretty feet

Like snailes did creep
A little out, and then,
As if they started at Bo-Peep,
Did soon draw in agen.
The earUest reference to the game appears to be in 1364 when AHce Causton
had to 'play bo-pepe thorowe a pillory' for giving a short measure of ale.

66
Bo-peep has lost her sheep,
Little
And
can't tell where to find them;
Leave them alone, and they'll come home.
And bring their tails behind them.

Little Bo-peep fell fast asleep.

And dreamt she heard them bleating;

But when she awoke, she found it a joke.
For they were still all fleeting.

Then up she took her little crook.

Determined for to find them;
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed.
For they'd left their tails behind them.

It happened one day, as Bo-peep did stray

Into a meadow hard by.
There she espied their tails side by side.
All hung on a tree to dry.

93
 BO-PEEP
She heaved a sigh, and wiped her eye,
And over die hillocks went rambling,
And tried what she could, as a shepherdess should.
To tack again each to its lambkin.
One of most popular rhymes, appearing in almost all modern nursery
the
collections,and frequently illustrated. Attempts which have been made to
give the rhyme a long history have been attended by a notable lack of success.
Although it is certain that there has been, from early times, a baby-game called
*Bo-Peep' (q.v.), and although bo-peep is to be found rhymed with sheep, e.g.
in a ballad of the time of Queen EUzabeth,

Halfe England ys nowght now but shepe.

In ewcrfc comer thay playe boe-pepe;
no recording or reference to the present verses is known before the 19th cen-
tury. During the past 100 years the rhyme has often given its name to panto-
mime productions, and it is on record that in his early days Irving played the
part of the wolf in Little Bo-peep at Edinburgh.
Douce MS, c. 1805, first verse only / GG's Garland, 18 10, as text, except in last verse
where rhyming words are 'stump-o* and 'rump-o' / JOH, 1842 / History of Little Bo-peep,
John Absolon, 1853 / Baby's Opera, 1877 / Mason, 1877 / Kidson, 1904 / Little Bo-Peep,
L. Leslie Brooke, 1922. Bo-peep is also met with in A. A. Milne's Wlien We Were Very
Young, 1924.

67
boy, Uttle boy, where wast thou bom ?
Little
Far away
in Lancashire under a thorn,
Where they sup sour milk in a ram's horn.
GG's Garland, 1784, 'Little boy, pretty boy, where was you born? In Lincolnsliire,
master: come blow the cow's horn. A
halfpenny pudding, a penny pye, A
shoulder of
mutton, and that love I' / Songs for the Nursery, 1 805, 'Little lad, httle lad' / MG's Quarto,
c. 1825 /JOH, / Only True
1842 MG
Melodies, c. 1843, 'Little lad, httle lad, where were
you bom? Far off in Lancasliire, under a thorn, Where they sup butter-milk With a
ram's horn; And a pumpkin scoop'd. With a yellov/ rim. Is the bonny bowl they break-
fast in' / Mother Goose, Kate Greenaway, 1881 / Folk-Lore of N.E. Scotland, Rev. W.
Gregor, 1881, 'Hielanman, Hielanman, Fahr wiz ye born? Up in the Hielands, Amon the
green corn. Faht got ye there. Bit green kail an leeks? Laugh at a Hielanman Wintin his
breeks' / Fairy Caravan, Beatrix Potter, 1929.

68

There was a httle boy and a httle girl,

Lived in an alley;
Says the httle boy to the little girl,

Shalll, oh, shalll?

94
 BOY
Says the little girl to the little boy,
What shall we do ?
Says the Uttle boy to the little girl,

I will kiss you

GG's Garland, 1810 / JOH, 1842 / Mother Goose, Kate Greenaway, 1881.

69
There was boy went into a bam,
a httle
And lay down on some hay;
An owl came out and flew about,
And the httle boy ran away.
Either an ofF-shoot of this, or a garbled version of a longer original, is Imown in
America:
Jemmy Jed
Went into a shed
And made of a ted
Of straw his bed;
When a mousing owl
That about did prowl
Set up a yowl
And Jemmy Jed
Up stakes and fled.
Wasn't Jemmy Jed a pretty httle fool,
Born in the woods, to be scared of an owl ?
Songs for the Nursery, 1805 / GG's Garland, illus. T, Bewick, c. 1814 / MG's Quarto,
c. 1825, as quote / NRfor Children (J. Fairbum), c. 1S25 / New Riddles (Henry Mozley
and Sons), c. 1830 /JOH, 1846 / N& Q, 1921, as quote, 'familiar in my Connecticut home
in the i850*s'.

70
When I was a httle boy
I had but httle wit;
'Tis along time ago,
And I have no more yet;
Nor ever, ever shall
Until that I die.
For the longer I hve
The more fool am I.

Wit and Mirth, an antidote against Melancholy (Henry Playford), 1684, 'a New Catch*,
'When I was young, I then had no wit: 'Tis a great wliile a-goe, and I have none yet;

95
 BOY
Ithink I shall nc'rc have none till I dye, For the longer I Uve, the more fool am I* / MG*s
Melody, c. 1765 / NR for Children (J. Fairburn), c. 1825 / Sugar Plum (J. Roberts), c. 1825 /
JOH. 1842 / Mother Goose (T. Nelson), c. 1945.
*** Some commentators have thought it worth comparing these hnes with the
Clown's song in Twelfth Night (v) and the Fool's in King Lear (m. ii).

71

When I was boy I lived by myself,

a little

And all the bread and cheese I got I laid upon a shelf;
The rats and the mice they made such a strife,
I had to go to London town and buy me a wife.

The streets were and the lanes were so narrow,

so broad
Iwas forced to bring my
wife home in a wheelbarrow.
The wheelbarrow broke and my wife had a fall.
Farewell wheelbarrow, little wife and all.

Known in England since the eighteenth century, this may come from a Scots
song, sung to the tune 'John Anderson my Jo',
When I was a wee thing
And just hke an elf,

A' the meat that e'er I gat,

I laid upon the shelf
The rottens and the mice
They fell into a strife,
They wadnae let my meat alane,
Till I gat a wife.

And when I gat a wife.

She wadnae bide therein,
Till I gat a hurl-barrow
To hurl her out and in:
The hurl-barrow brake,
My wife she gat a fa',

And the foul fa' the hurl-barrow.

Cripple wife and a*.

She wadnae eat nae bacon,

She wadnae eat nae beef,
She wadnae eat nae lang kale
For fyling o' her teeth,

96
 BOY
But she wad eat the bonie bird,
That sits upon the tree:
Gang down the bum, Davie love,
And I sail follow thee.

T Thumb's PSB, 1744 1 FT

c. c. 1760, The deuce take Wheelbarrow, wife
Thumb's LSB,
and all' / MG's Melody, c. 1765, —
Farewell Wheelbarrow, wife and all' / Herd MS,
'

1776, as quote / Nancy Cock's PSB, c. 1780 / GG's Garland, 1784 / T Thumb's SB, 1788 /
T Tit's SB, c. I7SK), 'When I was a Batchelor' / Songs for the Nursery, 1805 / Douce MS,
c. 1805, 'There was a Httlc pretty lad' who 'went to Ireland to get himself a wife', and
'The wheelbarrow broke. My wife she got a keck. The deuce take the wheelbarrow that
spared my wife's neck' / Vocal Harmony, c. 1806 / JOH, 1842 / Also incorporated in the
chapbook story ofJack Sprat (q.v.), 'But no coach would take her The Lane was so narrow,
Said Jack, Then I'U take her Home in a wheelbarrow'.
Cf. long version with chorus in Cecil Sharp's English Folk-Songs from the Southern
Appalachians, 1917.

72
When I was a little boy,

I washed my mammy's dishes;

I put my fmger in my eye,
And pulled out golden fishes.

John Aubrey quotes 'An old filthy Rhythme used by base people, viz.:

When I was a young Maid, and

wash't my Mothers dishes,
I putt my finger in my and —
pluck' t-out httle Fishes.*

This reappears in the seventeenth-century play Love without Interest, or The Man
too hard for the Master, by Will Penkethman, and in the next century (c. 1780)
in a longer version :

When I was a ^ttle boy,

I washed my mother's dishes

I put my finger in my eye,
And pulled out httle fishes

My mother called me good boy,

And bid me do 't again
I put my finger in my eye.
And got threescore and ten.

Lansdowne MS 231, 1686-7 Love without Interest, 1699, T put my finger in the pail* /
/

Nancy Cock's PSB, c. 1780 / T

Tit's SB, c. 1790, with second verse '. I put my fmger
. .

in my car And pulled out four score' / Christmas Box, vol. ii, 1798 / Vocal Harmony,
c. 1806 / Songs for the Nursery, i8i8 / Nurse Lovechild's DFN, c. 1830 /JOH, 1842 / Only
True MG Melodies, c. 1843, 'When I was a little boy, I washed my mammy's dishes, Now
I am a great big boy I roll in golden riches'.

97
 BOY
73
When I was a little boy
My mammy kept me in,
But now I am a great boy
I'm fit to serve the king
I can hand a musket,

And I can smoke a pipe,

And I can kiss a pretty girl
At twelve o'clock at night.
Probably the fragment of a song. The theme can be adapted to many situations,
Hnes recorded by a Sutherland schoolgirl
as in the

I've a lad in Golspie,

I've a lad at sea,
I've a lad at Golspie
And his number is twenty-three.
I can wash a sailor's shirt.
And I can wash it clean
I can wash a sailor's shirt,

And bleach it on the green.

I can chew tobacco,
I can smoke a pipe,
I can kiss a bonny lad
At ten o'clock at night.

Douce MS, c. 1815, 'My daddy kept me in . . but now I am a stout man . .' / MG's
. .

Quarto, c. 1825 / JOH, 1842 / Bodley MS

Eng. misc. C
58, 1892, as quote / Maclagan,
1901, 'Hullie go lee, go lee, HuUie go lee, go lo. Upon a winter's night, I c^n chew tobacco.
HuUie go lee, go lee, And I can smoke a pipe ; I can kiss a bonnie lad At ten o'clock at
night.' Words for a circling game.

74
Little Boy Blue,
Come blow your horn,
The sheep 's in the meadow,
The cow's in the corn
But where is the boy
Who looks after the sheep?
He 's under a haycock.
Fast asleep.

98
 BOY BLUE
Will you wake him ?
No, not I,
For if I do,
He's sure to cry.
It has been asserted that Little Boy Blue was intended to represent Cardinal

Wolsey. It is pointed out that Wolsey was the son of an Ipswich butcher and,
as a boy, undoubtedly looked after his father's hvestock. As proof, the second
couplet of the rhyme has been quoted as being incorporated in The Tragedy of
Cardinal Wolsey (1587) by Thomas Churchyard a careful search of the original
;

edition, however, has failed to produce anything more resembling the rhyme
than,
O fie on wolves, that march in masking-clothes.
For to devour the lambs, when shepherd sleeps.

A more likely allusion occurs in King Lear (m. vi), when Edgar, talking in his
character of mad Tom, in a confusion of rhyme, cries:

Sleepcst or wakest thou, jolly shepheard?

Thy sheepe bee in the come;
And for one blast of thy minikin mouth
Thy sheepe shall take no harme.
FT Thumb's LSB, c. 1760 / Nancy Cock's PSB, c. 1780 / History of a Little Boy Found under

a Haycock, Richard Johnson, 1786 [c. 1820] / Little Boy Blue (L. Lavenu), c. 1795, 'A
Favourite Glee for three Voices composed by Miss Abrams' / Infant Institutes, 1797, 'Little
boy Bluet, come blow me your horn; the cow's in the meadow, the sheep in the corn,
But where is the Httle boy tenting the sheep ? He 's under the haycock fast asleep* / Christmas
Box, 1798 / Songs for the Nursery, 1805 / Douce MS, c. 1805, and GG's Garland, 1810, as
1797 MG's Melody (Jesse Cochran, Windsor), 18 14 [Rosenbach] / JOH, 1842 / Kidson,
/

1904.Boy Blue is also met with in A. A. Milne's When We Were Very Young, 1924, but
Eugene Field's poem 'Little Boy Blue' has no connexion with the nursery rhyme.

75
Boys andgirls come out to play,
The moon doth shine as bright as day.
Leave your supper and leave your sleep.
And join your playfellows in the street.
Come v^ith a whoop and come with a call,
Come with a good will or not at all.
Up the ladder and down the wall,
A half-penny loaf will serve us all

You find milk, and I'll fmd flour.

And we'll have a pudding in half an hour.
A favourite nursery song of the present time, formally repeated as a general

99
 BOYS
call to players. The American folk-lorist Newell wrote (1883): *In the last
generation children still sang in our towns the ancient summons to the evening
sports,
Boys and girls, come out to play,
The moon it shines as bright as day

and similarly in Provence, the girls who conducted their ring-dances in the
pubhc squares, at the stroke of ten sang,
Ten hours said,
Maids to bed.
But the usage has departed in the quiet cities of Southern France, as in the busy
marts of America.' The only game the song is now occasionally associated with
is skipping, when 'We'll have a pudding in half an hour' is succeeded by 'with

salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper'. Although the earhest references to the song are
in adult hterature, in dance books of 1708, 1719, and 1728, in satires of 1709
and 1725, and in a pohtical broadside of 171 1, the verse seems already, in
Queen Anne's reign, to have belonged to children, and it is probable that it
dates from the middle of the previous century. The verse has figured in juvenile
hterature more regularly perhaps than any other, and is mentioned in the first
of Newbery's books for children, where 'Boys and Girls come out to play' is
the caption to an illustration of children playing by moonhght.

Useful Transactions in Philosophy, William King, 1708-9 / AlVs come out, 171 1 [Chambersl/
Namby Pamby, Henry Carey, 1725 [1726] / Little Pretty Pocket Book (J. Newbery), 1744
[1767] / T Thumb's PSB, c. 1744 / FT Thumb's LSB, c. 1760 / MG's Melody, c. 1765,
additional couplet 'But when the Loaf is gone, what will you do ? Those who would eat
must work 'tis true* / Nancy Cock's PSB, c. 1780 / T Thumb's SB, 1788 / T Tit's SB,
c. 1790 / Infant Institutes, 1797 / GG's Garland, c. 1799 / Songs for the Nursery, 1805 / Vocal
Harmony, c. 1806 / Pretty Tales (T. Hughes), 1808 / GG's Garland, 18 10, sHght varia-
tions from c. 1799 / GG's Garland, illus. T. Bewick, c. 18 14, 'Little boys come out to
play .
.*.
j Juvenile
Pastimes, in Verse (Mahlon Day, New York), c. 1830 [Rosenbach] /
London Jingles (J. G. Rusher), c. 1840 / JOH, 1842 / Rimbault, 1846 / Kidson, 1904 / In
Walsh's Country Dances, 1708 [Kidson] and in The Compleat Country Dancing-Master,
vol. ii, 1719, the tune 'Boys and Girls to Play' is given with directions for the dance. Note :

sometimes the opening line is 'Girls and boys come out to play'.
Cf. Chambers, 1847: 'Lazy deuks, that sit i' the coal-neuks, And winna come out to
play ; Leave your supper, and leave your sleep, Come out and play at hide-and-seek.'

76
What are little boys made of?
What are httle boys made of?
Frogs and snails
And
puppy-dogs' tails,
That's what httle boys are made of.

What are little girls made of?

What are httle girls made of?

100
 PLATE IV

T7?7T ©0©©
JBdyi and Girls to play. Lonpeayi for as mat^ as wiJL

,
Note : The firft Strain is to be play J twice^ end the lafi but once (mr.

The two Cu. becken to each oth^, and then turn fingleJ- Then all four leaS forward
I ft

and back again _1 Then the ift Cu. caft off and turn, R^ias, dien caft up again and turn
Hands, then go the \vhole Figure and caft offJi-

a. 'Boys and Girls to play', from The Second Book of the Coinpleat Country
Dancing-Master, 1719. British Museum

t^alld &r tJwseyTaj-ts

h. O^c of Mulrcady's illustrations for Charles Lamb's first book

for children, The King and Queen of Hearts, 1S05. Opie collection
 BOYS
Sugar and spice
And all that's nice,
That's what little girls are made of.

In Burton Stevenson's Dictionary of Proverbs these verses, under the title 'What
all the world is made of are attributed to Robert Southey, c. 1820, the words

being:
What are httle boys made of, made of?
What are httle boys made of?
Snips and snails and puppy-dog tails,

And such are httle boys made of.

What are young women made of, made of?

What are young women made of?
Sugar and spice and all things nice,
And such are young women made of.

These not found in his poetical works (1829), nor in

lines are the ten-volume
collected editionof his poems (1838-40); they do not figure in his Common-
place Book, nor in his miscellany The Doctor, in which he mentions other
nursery rhymes and they are not associated with him by
; his biographer,
Professor Simmons.
JOH, 1844 / Rimbault, 1846, two additional verses 'What are young men made of?
Sighs and leers and crocodile tears. "What are young women made of? Ribbons and laces,
and sweet pretty faces' / Northall, 1892, 'What are old women made of? Bushes and
thorns and old cow's horns* / Children's Songs of Long Ago, c. 1905, 'What are our sailors
made of, made of? Pitch and tar, pig-tail and scar. What are our soldiers made of, made
of? Pipeclay and drill, the foeman to kill.*
••• 'What are little boys made of is said (in W. S. Kemiedy's biography) to be one
of the poems which Longfellow used to recite.

77
As I went up the Brandy hill,
Imet my father with good will
He had jewels, he had rings,
He had many pretty things
He'd a cat with nine tails.
He'd a hammer wanting nails.
Up Jock!
Down Tom!
Blow the bellows old man.
This is *another old rhyme repeated often for the amusement of children

it is unaccountable how these old sayings are so popular', as Charles Taylor

wrote in 1820. At the same period it was also known across the Atlantic, in

6208 lOI I
 BRANDY HILL
Massachusetts. general use is for counting-out, but Green reports it as going
Its

with 'the great and alluring exercise of "Through the needle-e-e'e, boys" '.
Chatterings of the Pica, Charles Taylor, 1820, additional couplet, 'Haifa pudden half a pie,
Stand ye out by' / Blackwood's Magazine, 1821 / Chambers, 1847 / Newell, 1883, also
subjoined to 'Intery, mintery, cutery corn*: 'Over yonder steep hills. Where my father he
dwells / Bolton, 1888, three American versions, one as tail of the rhyme beginning
.' .
.

'Hinty, minty, cuty, com', given as 'Mass., 1806' / History of NR, P. B. Green, 1899 /
Ford, 1904 / Rymour Club, 191 1, 'Far awa' amang yon hills. That's where my faither
dwells; He has jewels .' &c.
. / Counting Out, Carl Withers, 1946, as Newell.
.

78
At Brill on the hill
The wind blows shrill,
The cook no meat can dress
At Stow-on-the-Wold
The wind blows cold,
I know no more than this.

A local rhyme which has gained a more than local reputation with children,
possibly through inclusion in JOH'S collection (1844). Brill and Stow-on-the-
Wold are both near Oxford, as are Noke, Thame, Stokenchurch (where
'Mother Niddity Nod' was going) and Banbury (qq.v.), all of nursery fame.
JOH, 1844 / N& Q, 1852 / Look! the Sun, Edith Sitwell, 1941.

79
Two brothers we are, great burdens we bear,
On which we are bitterly pressed
The truth is to say, we are full all the day,
And empty when we go to rest.
A problem which has teased its way through three and a half centuries. In The
Booke ofmeery Riddles (1600) it appears simply as, 'What be they which be full
all day, and empty at night ? Solution. It is a payre of shooes for in the day ;

they be full of mans feete but at night, when he goes to bed, they be empty,
;

& it may be assoyled by any other part of mans raiment* [1629].

A Whetstone for Dull Wits (J. White), c. 1765 / Royal Riddle Book, 1820 / Sir Gregory
Guess's Present (T. Batchelar), C.1S20 I N&
Q, 1865 / Folk-Lore, 1923.
&
Cf Riddles, Charades, Conundrums, 1824, 'Two brothers we are, yet can't hope to be
sav'd ; From our very first day to our last we're enslav'd ; Our office the hardest, arid food
sure the worst, Being cramm'd with warm flesh till we're ready to burst ; Though low in
our state, even kings wc support, And at balls have the principal share in the sport.*

102
 BROW BENDER
80
Brow bender,
Eye peeper,
Nose dreeper.
Mouth eater,
Chin chopper,
Knock at the door.
Ring the bell.
Liftup the latch,
Walk in . . .

Take a chair,
Sit by there.
How d'you do this morning ?
Infant amusement. As the words is laid successively on the
are repeated, a finger
baby's forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, and chin. While saying 'knock at the
door', the chin is tickled 'ring the bell', the hair or ear pulled 'hft up the latch
; ;

and walk in', the baby's nose is raised and a fmger is popped in the mouth.
The fullest version found is the Scottish one which starts with the toe and ends
at the top of the head
Tae titly,

Litde fitty,

Shin sharpy.
Knee knapy,
Hinchie pinchy,
Wymie bulgy.
Breast berry,
Chin cherry,
Moo merry,
Nose nappy,
Ee winky,
Broo brinky,
Ower the croon.
And awa' wi' it.

Very many variations have been collected of this rhyme but it is notable that
the earhest version (1788) is similar to the first five lines of the text version,

which was orally collected in 1944.

T Thumb's SB, 1788 / Nurse Lovechild's DFN, c. 1830, 'Forehead frowner, eye winker.
Nose smeller, cherry cheek her, Mouth eater, and chin chopper, Peter Van, Pea' / Chambers,
1842, 'Brow, brow, brenty, Ee, ee, winkey. Nose, nose, nebbie, Cheek, cheek, cherry.
Mouth, mouth, merrie, Chin, chin, chackie, Catch a flee, catch a flee' / JOH, 1844, 'Eye
winker, Tom Tinker, Nose dropper, Mouth eater, Chin chopper. Chin Chopper' /
Old Nurse's Book, Charles Bennett, 1858 / Shropshire Folk-Lore, G. F. Jackson, 1883,
'Knock at the door (forehead). Ring the bell (ear). Peep through the keyhole (eye),

103
 BROW BENDER
Lift up the latch (nose), Wipe your shoes (on upper lip), Walk in, Chin, chin, chin,
checker' / Folk-Lore, i886, 1887, and 1889, gives numerous variants / Q, 1910, 'Torn N&
Thumper, Ben Bumper, Long'nation, Tem'tation, Little man o' war, war, v^^ar*, remem-
bered from c. 1845 / Oral collection, 1944.
Cf Datiske Folkesagn,]. M. Thiele, 1820-3, Tandebeen, Oisteen, Naescbecn, MundeHp,
Hagetip, Dikke, dikke, dik' ('Brow-bone, Eye-stone, Nose-bone, Mouth-hp, Chin-tip,
Dikke, dikke, dik', nurse tickles child under cliin) [JOH, 1849] / Deutsche Kinderbuch,
Karl Simrock, 1848, 'Kinne Wippenchen, Roth Lippchen, Nuppelnasichen, Augenbra-
michen, Zupp, zupp Harichen' / Das Englische Kinderlied, L. Bockhelcr, 1935 / Rimes et
jeiix de Venfance, E. Rolland, 1883, 'Nez cancan, Bouche d'argent, Menton de buis, Joue
brulee, Joue r6tie, Petit euyet. Grand euyet. Toe, toe, maillet'; seven versions / Chinese
Mother Goose Rhymes, I. T. Headland, 1900, 'Knock at the door. See a face. Smell an odor.
Hear a voice, Eat your dinner. Pull your chin, or Ke chih, ke chih'. (In the original
Chinese given the last two lines are perhaps only nonsense.)

81

Bounce, buckram, velvet's dear,

Christmas comes but once a year;
And when it comes, it brings good cheer,
But when it's gone it's never near.
In the seventeenth century this was of scorn, and was co-opted by the
a proverb
mummers for their Christmas entertainment.The second and third hnes were,
and are, particularly popular, and often appear alone, as in the 1573 edition of
Tusser's Five hundreth good pointes of hushandrie :

At Christmas play and make good cheere,

for Christmas comes but once a yeere.

It also heads the greeting rhymes of carol singers today :

Christmas comes but once a year

And when it comes it brings good cheer,
A pocketful of money, and a cellar full of beer,
And a good fat pig to last you all the year.

In Clarke's proverb collection (1639), and in JOH's nursery rhymes, only the
firsttwo lines of the rhyme appear, which made Hazlitt, who in 1862 knew it
simply as a 'nursery jingle', beheve that it was made up of two two-line
proverbs.

Paroemiologia Latina, John Clarke, 1639, first couplet / English Proverbs, John Ray, 1670,
complete rhyme / Alexander and the King of Egypt (T. Wilson), 1788, in mummers' play,
'Bounser Buckler, velvet's dear' / North Country Words,]. T. Brockett, 1825 / Every Day
Book, WiUiam Hone. 1827 /JOH, 1843 / English Proverbs, W. C. Hazhtt, 1862.
Cf. the typically Irish 'Christmas comes but wanst a year. And when it comes it brings
good cheer. And when it goes it laves us here. And what'll wc do for the rest o' the year* ?
[Stevenson's Quotations].

82
BufF says BufF to all his men,
And I say BufF to you again
104
 BUFF
BufF neither laughs nor smiles,
But carries his face,
With a very good grace,
And passes the stick to the very next place.
An old forfeits game. The players seat themselves in a circle, and one, taking a
wand, points at his neighbour repeating the rhyme with mock solemnity.
it

The player pointed at then becomes the one who points, and so on round the
circle. 'It is a game', remarks Chambers, *in which the only art consists in

keeping one's gravity while saying absurd things.' Those who laugh or smile
must pay a forfeit. Sometimes, to increase the difficulty, the one pointed at is
made to take a more active part, and the following dialogue takes place:
I. 'Knock, knock!' [Thumping floor with stick.)
2. 'Who's there?'
1. 'Buff.'
2. 'What says Buff?'
1. 'Buff says Buff to all his men.
And I say Buff to you again.'
2. 'Methinks Buff smiles.'
I. 'Buff neither laughs nor smiles,
But looks in your face [or, strokes his face]
With a comical grace
And dehvers the staff to you, sir.*
OED quotes Cotgrave's French-English dictionary (i6ii), 'Esdaffer, to buff,
or burst out into a laughter.*

Girl's Own
Book, Mrs. Child, 1831 [1832] / NR
from the Royal Collections (J. G. Rusher),
c. 1840 / JOH,
1842 / Shropshire Folk-Lore, G. F. Jackson, 1883, similar to quote; also
Folk-lore, 1888, and Riddles and Rhymes (T. Nelson), 1892. NeweU, 1883, 'My father sent
—
me here with a staff, To speak to you and not to laugh Methinks you smile Methinks —
I don't, I smooth my face with ease and grace, And set my staff in its proper place' /
Gomme, 1894.
Cf Deutsches Kinderbuch, Karl Simrock, 1848, the child in the middle of the circle says
'Ich gieng einmal iiber den Kirchhof, Da begegnet mir ein Bischof Der Bischof der war
jung und fein, Er wollt nicht gem aUeine sein, Der Bischof, der Bischof, der Bischof.'
He strikes with a of one of the children in the circle, who steps forward
stick in front
saying, 'Vater Eberhard, Ich fasse dich an deinen ehrwiirdigen Bart. Wenn du mich wirst
schen lachen, Werd ich an deiner Stelle wachen.* Also, 'Ich bin der Herr von Rech,
Verbiete Lach und Sprech Wer lacht und spricht Ein Pfand verbricht.'
:

83

I had adog and they called him BufF,

httle
I sent him buy me snuff,
to a shop to
But he lost the bag and spilt the stuff;
I sent him no more but gave him a cuff.

For coming from the mart without any snuff.

105
London Cries for Children, 1806 Old Nurse's Book of Rhymes, 1858

'Young lambs to sell'. Engraving of William Liston, toy lamb

seller, for which he specially posed in 1826
 BUFF
NRfrom the Royal Collections (J. G. Rusher), c. 1840 / NR, Tales and Jingles, 1844, and
cuff and that's enough* / Gomme, 1894,
JOH, 1844, four lines only, fourth line 'So take a
aswords for the game 'Drop Handkerchief'/ Rymour Club, 1913. 'Bufe* as a name for a
dog occurs from 1567 onwards.
Cf. 'I had a little dog and his name was Blue Bell.'

84
Hot cross buns!
Hot cross buns!
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot cross buns!
If your daughters do not like them
Give them to your sons
But if you haven't any of these pretty Kttle elves
You cannot do better than eat them yourselves.
This was formerly a street cry, as mentioned, for instance, in Poor Robin s

Almanack for 1733:

Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs
With one or two a penny hot cross buns.

Hence it became a calendar folk-chant, customarily sung by children on Good

Friday, when the hot cross buns are eaten for breakfast. The song is now
remembered in the nursery throughout the year, and often accompanies the
game in which the hands are placed flat in a pile, and the lowest removed and
placed on the top, and so on.

Christmas Box, 1797 / No. 2 of the Flowers of Harmony (G. Walker), c. 1800, sheet music /
London Cries for Children (Darton and Harvey), 1806, as illustration, p. 106 / The Moving
Market : or Cries of London (G. Ross), 181 5, as 1806 / Blackwood's, ?John Wilson, Jvily 1824 /
Cries of London (J. Catnach), c. 1830, abridged version [Hindley, 1881] /JOH, 1846 /
Baby's Bouquet, 1879 / Oral collection, 1946, 'One a penny poker. Two a penny tongs.
Three a penny fire shovel. Hot cross buns' / A Latin rendering is in L.-M. Hawkins's
Anecdotes, 1822.

85

Come, butter, come.

Come, butter, come
Peter stands at the gate
Waiting for a butter cake.
Come, butter, come.
Although this centuries-old charm was still in superstitious use at the time, it
was set to music in 1798 as a 'Bagatelle for Juvenile Amusement', Indeed its

107
 BUTTER
supernatural aid has been consistently called upon through 400 years of Pro-
Thomas Ady, writing in 1656, knew an old woman who said the
testantism.
butter would come straight away if it was repeated three times, 'for it was
taught my Mother by a learned Church-man in Queen Maries days, when as
Churchmen had more cunning and could teach people many a trick, that our
Ministers now a days know not'. A writer in Folk-Lore in 1878 said, 'I have often
heard our cook repeating [this rhyme] over her churn when the butter was
slow in forming'. Crofton says it was 'well known in Reddish Vale, on the
borders of Lancashire and Cheshire in 1880'. Another writer, in 1936, heard it
recited in Southern Indiana 'to the accompanying splash of the old-fashioned
churn when the butter was slow in coming'. It is indeed easy to believe that the
pixies have got into the chum when the cream will not clot, although one has
been steadily turning the handle for twice as long as usual. The strange line
'Peter stands at the gate' is found in other charms, as in one for toothache
begiiming 'When Peter sat at Jerusalem's gate', and may be traced back to the
old story of St. Peter, when our Lord relieved him of his troubles 'Ad portam
Galylee iacebat Petrus. Venit dominus et interrogavit eum .* It
. may be
. .

compared with a Spanish charm 'Appollonia was at the gate of heaven', and
perhaps be traced back ultimately to the prayer of Seth the son of Adam at the
gates of Paradise in the apocryphal Gospel ofNicodemus.

A Candle in the Dark, Thomas Ady, 1656 / Satan's Invisible World Discovered, George
Sinclair,1685, probably quoting Ady / Christmas Box, vol. iii, 1798 / JOH, 1842 /
Northamptonshire Words, A. E. Baker, 1854, 'Churn, butter, churn, In a cow's horn; I
never see'd such butter, Sin' I was born. Peter's waiting at the gate', &c. Also 'Churn,
butter, churn, Come, butter, come, A little good butter Is better than none' / Folk-Lore,
1878 and 1936 / Lincolnshire Glossary, Mabel Peacock, 1889, 'Churn, butter, dash. Cow's
gone to the marsh, Peter stands at the toll gate Begging butter for his cake ; Come, butter,
come!' / Crofton MS, 1901 / Mother Goose's NR, L. E. Walter, 1924.

86
Can you make me cambric shirt, a
and thyme.
Parsley, sage, rosemary,
Without any seam or needlework ?
And you shall be a true lover of mine.
Can you wash yonder well.
it in
and thyme.
Parsley, sage, rosemary,
Where never sprung water, nor rain ever fell ?

And you shall be a true lover of mine.

Can you dry it on yonder thorn.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,
Which never bore blossom since Adam was born ?
And you shall be a true lover of mine.
108
 CAMBRIC SHIRT
Now you've asked me questions three,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,
I hope you'll answer as many
for me.
And you shall be a true lover of mine.
Can you find me an acre of land.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,
Between the salt water and the sea sand?
And you shall be a true lover of mine.

Can you plough with a ram's horn.

it

and thyme,
Parsley, sage, rosemary,
And sow it all over with one peppercorn?
And you shall be a true lover of mine.
Can you reap it with a sickle of leather,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
And bind it up with a peacock's feather?
And you shall be a true lover of mine.
When you have done and fmished your work,
and thyme.
Parsley, sage, rosemary,
Then come to me for your cambric shirt.
And you shall be a true lover of mine.
Ritson described this (1794) as *a little English song sung by children and maids*.
He had already set it down, ten years earHer, in Gammer Gurtons Garland or The
Nursery Parnassus, and his version (as above) is still the best known. The story
of a maid being asked to do the seemingly impossible task of making a shirt
from a piece of linen 3 inches square may be traced to the Middle Ages. There
was once a king who was stronger, wiser, and more handsome than any man,
but he had no wife. His friends, when they urged him to marry, received the
reply 'You know I am rich enough and powerful enough as I am; find me a
:

maid who is good looking and sensible, and I will take her to wife, though she
be poor.* A maid was found whom his friends thought both beautiful and inteUi-
gent, and was of royal blood besides. The king, however, wished to make a
trial of her sagacity and sent her a bit of linen 3 inches square, with the promise

that he would marry her if she would make him a shirt from it of proper
length and width. The girl repHed that if the king would send her an imple-
ment in which she could work the shirt, she would make it for him. So the
king sent her Vas debitum et precosium', the shirt was made, and the king
married her. This is one of the tales in the fourteenth century Gesta Romanorum,
a tale which may be linked with oriental stories of great age. It is known also in
Germany, where it was set down by the Grimms. Whatever variations there

109
 CAMBRIC SHIRT
arc in the tasksdemanded in different renderings of the song, it is noticeable
that one of them is always the making of a shirt. Professor Child says, *A man
asking a maid to sew him a shirt is equivalent to asking for her love, and her
consent to sew the shirt is equivalent to an acceptance of the suitor*. The
earhest appearance of the verses is in the black-letter broadside ballad The
Wind hath blown my Plaid away, or, A Discourse betwixt a young Woman and the
The young woman wishes the knight would
Elphin Knight, printed about 1670.
marry her though the knight says she is over young. The girl says she has a
younger sister who was married the previous day. Whereupon the knight says

Married with me if thou wouldst be,

A courtesie thou must do to me.

For thou must shape a sark to me,

Without any cut or heme, quoth he.
Thou must shape it knife-and-sheerlesse,
And also sue it needle-threedlesse.
To which the maid rephes:

If that piece of courtesie I do to thee,

Another thou must do to me.

I have an aiker of good ley-land.

Which lycth low by yon sea-strand.

For thou must eare it with thy horn.

So thou must sow it with thy corn.

And bigg a cart of stone and lyme,

Robin Redbreast he must trail it hame.
Thou must barn it in a mouse-holl,
And thrash it into thy shoes soil.

And thou must winnow it in thy looff.

And also seek it in thy glove.

For thou must bring it over the sea,

And thou must bring it dry home to me.
When thou hast gotten thy turns well done,
Then come to me and get thy sark then.

This ballad has been attributed to James I of Scotland. In later versions the
setting is changed, and it is an old sweetheart who is challenged to prove her love
with the and answers in the same strain. It is to this group that Ritson's
tasks,
'Parsley, sage, rosemary,and thyme' belongs. Later, in the nineteenth century,
the second series of tasks is found transposed into the Ught-hearted nursery
nonsense song *My father left me three acres of land' (q.v.) in which the riddle
theme is completely lost.

The Wind hath blown my Plaid away, c. 1670 / GG's Garland, 1784 / Son^s ofN. Scotland,
Peter Buchan, 1825 / Ancient Scottish Ballads, G. R. Kinloch, 1827 / Kinloch MSS, c. 1827,

IIO
 CAMBRIC SHIRT
'Did ye ever travel twixt Berwick and Lyne? Sober and grave grows merry in time.
There ye'U meet wi a handsome young dame, Ance she was a true love o'mine. Tell her
to sew me a holland sark, And sew it all without needle-wark And syne we'll be true :

lovers again, TeU her to wash it at yon spring-well. Where neer wind blew, nor yet rain
fell. Tell her to dry it on yon hawthorn, That neer sprang up sin Adam was born. Tell her

to iron it wi a hot iron. And plait it a' in ae plait round' [Child] / Motherwell MS, c. 1827,
'Come, pretty Nelly, and sit thee down by me. Every rose grows merry wi thyme And
I will ask thee questions three, And then thou wilt be a true lover of mine. Thou must buy

me a cambrick smock .' [Child] / JOH, 1843, from GG's Garland j English and Scottish
. .

Popular Ballads, F.J. Child, 1882 / Traditional Tunes, Frank Kidson, 1891, *Oh where are
you going? To Scarborough fair. Savoury, sage, rosemary, and thyme' / English County.
Songs, L. E. Broadwood and J. A. Fuller-Maitland, 1893, 'Is any of you going to Scar-
borough Fair? Remember me to the lad as hves there, (bis) For once he was a true lover
of mine .' Baring-Gould,
. . 1895, 'Will you buy me, my lady, a cambric shirt? Whilst
every grove rings with a merry antine (antienne); And stitch it without any needle-work?
O and then you shall be a true lover of mine.* 'In Cornwall formerly it formed a portion
of a sort of play, and was sung by a young man and a young woman. The story was that
she was engaged to him, he died, and his ghost came to claim her. She escapes through
setting the ghost tasks, after he has set her others, which are impossible of accompUsh-
ment' / Songs of Norfolk, W. Rye, 1897, sixth and last verse, 'And pick it up with a cobbler's
awl . And stow it aU into the mousen's hall' / Tailor of Gloucester, Beatrix Potter (p.p.
. .

ed.), 1902 / Folk-Song, 1907, with tune 'As I roved out by the sea side, Ev'ry rose grows
merry in time, I met a httlc girl. And I gave her my hand. And I says Will you be a true
lover of mine? If you are to be a true lover of mine. Every rose grows merry in time. You
must make me a shirt without needle or seam. And it's then you wdll be a true lover of
mine', nine verses in all / Correspondent, 1949, 'Can you make me a sable shirt?*
Cf. 'I have four sisters beyond the sea,' It may be that the problems in the present version
of the song are not impossible of solution a shirt without seam might be a cobweb a well
: ;

where rain never fell, a dew pond. Allan Cunningham wove the song into a lengthy piece
called 'The Bridegroom's Darg* which appears in Cromek's Remains of Galloway Song,
1 8 10.
••• The refrain of this song, and the related 'My father left me three acres of land', list
a number of plants, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, juniper, gentle, holly, ivy, and broom,
to which magical properties were ascribed. It is quite possible that the refrains are the
survival of an incantation.

87
A carrion crow sat on an oak,
Watching a tailor shape his cloak
Wife, cried he, bring me my bow,
That I may shoot yon carrion crow.
The and missed his mark,
tailor shot
And shot his own sow
through the heart
Wife, bring brandy in a spoon,
For our poor sow is in a swoon.
Amongst riddles, jokes, and epitaphs in a small commonplace book of Charles
I's time, the rhyme appears in this form:

Hie hoe the carryon crow for I have shot something too low I have quite
missed my mark, & shot the poore sow to the harte Wyfe bring treakel in a
spoone, or else the poore sowes harte wil downe.

Ill
 CARRION CROW
In the papers of Francis Grose, published in 1796 after his death, it is described
as 'a silly vulgar ballad':

The carrion crow sat upon an oak.

And spied a taylor cutting out a cloak
With a heigh ho the carrion crow
!

Sing tol de rol, de riddle row!

The carrion crow he began for to rave,

And call'd the taylor a lousy knave
With a heigh ho! &c.

Oh wife, fetch me my arrow and my bow.

That I may shoot this carrion crow ;

With a heigh ho &c. !

The taylor he shot, and he miss'd his mark.

And shot the old sow through the heart
With a heigh ho &c. !

Oh wife, fetch me some treacle in a spoon.

For the old sow is in a terrible swoon
With a heigh ho &c. !

The old sow died, and the bells they did toll,

And the little pigs pray'd for the old sow's soul
With a heigh ho &c. !

Zooks! quoth the taylor, I care not a louse.

For we shall have black puddings, chitterlings, and souse ;

With a heigh ho! &c.

Sloane MS, 1489, c. 1627 / The Olio, Francis Grose, 1796 / Grandmamma's (J.Fairburn), NR
c. 1825 / Rhymes for the Fireside (Thomas Richardson), c. 1828 / Collection ofNR (Ohver and
Boyd), c. 1830 / JOH, 1842, as text, also similar, with refrain 'Sing heigho, the carrion
crow, Fol de rol, de rol, de rhino' / The Carrion Crow, Marcus Ward, c. 1875 / Baby's
Bouquet, 1879, with refrain 'Derry, derry, derry, decco' / A
Garland of Country Songs, S.
Baring-Gould, 1895, version taken down from Comishman, 1844 / Kidson, 1904 / The
Tailor and the Crow, Leslie Brooke, 191 1 / Williams, 1923, similar to Grose's ballad, with
refrain 'Rogue, go back! The carrion crow cried "Pork" / Nursery Songs from the Ap-
*

palachian Mountains, Cecil Sharp, 1923 / Folk-Song, 1934.

88
A cat came of a barn,
fiddling out
With of bag-pipes under her arm
a pair
She could sing nothing but, Fiddle cum fee.
The mouse has married the humble-bee.
Pipe, cat ; dance, mouse
We'll have a wedding at our good house.
112
 CAT
Rhyme found in a variety of forms, the earHest recorded appearing to be that
in a Wiltshire manuscript dated 1740

Fiddle-de-dee, fiddle-de-dee
The wasp has married the humble bee
Puss came dancing out of the bam
With a pair of bagpipes under her arm.
One for Johnnie and one for me,
Fiddle-de-dee, fiddle-de-dee!

very possible that the ditty sung by the cat is 'The Fly and the Humble
It is

Bee* (q.v.) alsoknown in nursery circles. A tune called 'Fiddle-dc-dee' is in

The Second Book of the Compleat Country Dancing Master (1719).
A Wiltshire MS, 1740 [Folk-Lore, 1901] / Nursery Songs and London Jingles (J. G. Rusher),
both c. 1840, 'A cat came singing out of a barn, With a pair of bagpipes under her arm.
She sang nothing but fiddle-de-dee, Worried a mouse and a humble bee, Puss began
purring, mouse ran away, And off the bee flew with a wild huzza!' / JOH, 1842 / Baby's
Bouquet, 1879, 'Pussy-cat high, Pussy-cat low. Pussy-cat was a fme teazer of tow.
Pussy-cat she came into the barn. With her bag-pipes under her arm. And then she told
a tale to me. How Mousey had married a humble bee. Then was I ever so glad. That
Mousey had married so clever a lad.'

89
The cat sat asleep by the side of the fire,

The mistress snored loud as a pig

Jack took up his fiddle by Jenny's desire,
And struck up a bit of a jig.
This verse, usually found alone, is the first of the fifteen in Whimsical Incidents,

or. The Power of Music, a Poetic Tale by a near Relation of Old Mother Hubbard,
pubhshed by J. Harris, 25 October 1805. The lines, though, were not neces-
sarily new at this date. In *A Medley, Composed out of several Songs' in Pills
to Purge Melancholy (1707) there is a possible reference to them ('The old
Woman and her Cat sat by the Fire').
Whimsical Incidents, 1805; (Wm. Charles, Philadelphia), 1815 [Rosenbach] / GG's Garland,
1810 /JOH, 1842 / Traditional Nursery Songs, Felix Summerly, 1843, illustration by John
Linnell.

90
Diddlety, diddlety, dumpty,
The cat ran up the plum tree;
Half a crown
To fetch her down,
Diddlety, diddlety, dumpty.
For some reason cats, in song, frequently take refuge in plum trees, e.g. 'Lady

113
 CAT
come dowTi and see the Cat sits in the Plum-trcc' in Pammelia, Musicks Mis-
cellanie (1609).

Douce MS, c. 1815, 'Feedum fiddledum fee, the cat's got into the tree. Pussy come down.

Or crack your crown, And toss you into the sea' / London Jingles (J. G. Rusher),
I'll

c. 1840 / JOH, 1853 / Mother Goose, Kate Greenaway, 1881 / Bolton, 1888, 'Iddlety,

diddler>', dumpty, The cat ran up the plum-tree, Send a hack to fetch her down, Iddlety,
diddlety, dumpty.'

Sing, sing, what shall I sing?

The cat's run away with the pudding string!
Do, do, what shall I do?
The cat has bitten it quite in two
Formerly a performer's appeal for what to sing next ; more recently a child's
rhyme m place of a song.
Songs for the Nursery, 1805 / Koningsmarke, J. K. Paulding, 1823 / Gallovidian Encyclopedia,
J. Mactaggart, 1824 [1876], and MG's Quarto, c. 1825, first couplet only / London Jingles
(J. G.
Rusher), c. 1840 /JOH, 1843 / Cumberland Glossary, W. Dickinson, 1879, 'Sing,
sing, what mun I sing? Cat's run away wi' t' puddin pwoke string. Some get puddin'
and some gat prick: They war n't warst off 'at gat clout to lick' / Mother Goose, Arthur
Rackham, 191 3.

92
Old chairs to mend Old ! chairs to mend
I never would cry old chairs to mend,
If I'd as much money as I could spend,
I never would cry old chairs to mend.

Old clothes to sell ! Old clothes to sell

I never would cry old clothes to sell.

If I'd as much money as I could teU,
I never would cry old clothes to sell.

GG's Garland, 18 10, order of lines, 3, 2, i, 4 / NRfrom the Royal Collections (J. G. Rusher),
c. 1840 /JOH, 1843 / Baring-Gould, 1895 / Mother Goose, Arthur Rackham, 1913.
Cf. 'Young lambs to sell'.

93
As I was going by Charing Cross,
I saw a black man upon a black horse

They told me it was King Charles the First

Oh dear, my heart was ready to burst!
114
 CHARING CROSS
In a ballad preserved in a Stuart manuscript at Oxford appear two lines
reminiscent of the second couplet:

But because I cood not a vine Charlies the furste

By my troth my hart was readdy to burst.

Black, in the seventeenth-century manner employed here, usually refers to the

colour of the hair, but may in this instance be describing the blackness of
tarnished brass. It is likely that this Puritan jingle satirizing the uninhibited
emotions of the Royalists was not composed until the Restoration. In 1675 the
statueof Charles I, which had originally been erected in King Street (and may
today be seen at the top of Whitehall), was re-erected on the site of the old
Charing Cross, and amongst London cries was:
I cry my matches at Charing Cross,
Where sits a black man on a black horse.

Ashmole MS 36, c. / Pretty Tales, 1808, 'Ride a Cock Horse, To Charing Cross, To
1660
see a Black Man Upon a Black Horse* / JOH, 1843 / Look! the Sun, Edith Sitwell, 1941.
It also appears to be referred to by Charles Lamb, Feb. 1 801, in a letter to Thomas Manning.

94
King Charles the First walked and talked
Half an hour after his head was cut off.
Peter Puzzle well, 1792, 'King Charles walked and talked seven years after his head was cut
oflf'// Saw Esau, lona and Peter Opie, 1947.

95
Charley, Charley,
Stole the barley
Out of the baker's shop.
The baker came out
And gave him a clout.
Which made poor Charley hop.
JOH, 1844 / Rymour Club, 191 1 / Correspondent, 1949, for skipping.

Cf. 'Handy spandy, Jack-a-Dandy*.

96
Over the water and over the lea,
And
over tlie water to Charley.
Charley loves good ale and wine.
And Charley loves good brandy,
115
 CHARLES
And Charley loves a pretty girl
As sweet as sugar candy.

Over the water and over the lea,

And over the water to Charley.

I'll have none of your nasty beef,

Nor I'll have none of your barley;

But I'll have some of your very best flour
To make a white cake for my Charley.
According to Andrew Lang this is a parody of a Jacobite ditty of 1748. Probably
itwas one like that in The True Loyalist, surreptitiously printed in 1779
The K g he has been long from home;
—
—
The P ce he has sent over
To kick the Usurper off the throne
And send him to Hannover.
O'er the water, o'er the sea,
O'er the water to C he: —
Go the world as it will
We'll hazard our lives for C—he.
Or 'Come boat me o'er*, which was refurbished by Bums, and has a similar
refrain;
We'll o'er the water and o'er the sea,
We'll o'er the water to Charhe;
Come weal, come woe, we'll gather and go,
And hve or die wi' Charhe.
The song is referred to in The Old Shop (1841) where some of the
Curiosity
handbills for Jarley's Wax-Work Show were 'couched in the form of parodies
on popular melodies, as **.
. . Over the water to Jarley".' And Charles Lamb is
said to have had a liking for the tune, feeling that the lines (3-6 of the text)
had a personal apphcation.

Songs for the Nursery, 1805, lines 3-6, as also, Douce MS, c. 1815, and MG's Quarto,
c. 1825 / JOH, 1842 / Only True MG
Melodies, c. 1843, 'Charley loves good cake and ale,
Charley loves good candy, Charley loves to kiss the girls, When they are clean and handy' /
Baby's Bouquet, 1879 / Crofton MS, 1901, 'Charley over the water, Charley over the sea
—
Charley caught a pretty bird. Can't catch me' formula for a game of catch. The air
'O'er the Water to CharUe' is in James Oswald's Pocket Companion, ante 1750.

97
Charley Wag, Charley Wag,
Ate the pudding and left the bag.
This is, properly, a derisive call after persons named Charles, but by the middle

116
 CHARLEY WAG
of the nineteenth century it had also gained admittance to the nurseries of both
England and America. 'Wag', in some places, is a nickname for Charles. The
EngHsh phrase 'to play the CharUe W-ag', to play the truant, comes not from
the rhyme, but from the later serial story Charlie Wag, the Boy Burglar (c. i860),
*the least defensible of "penny dreadfuls'".

Only True MG
Melodies, c. 1843 / JOH, 1844 / Northall, 1892, 'Charley Wag, Charley
Wag! Ate the pudding and swallowed the bag' / Lark Rise, Flora Thompson, 1939, 'Old
Charley-wag! Old Charley-wag! Ate the pudden and gnawed the bag!'

98
Charley Warlie had a cow,
Black and white about the brow
Open the gate and let her through,
Charley Warlie's old cow.
'In Galloway', said Mactaggart in 1824, 'now slumbers a singular old song and
dance, called Dolly Beardy. After going through a world of trouble with great
pleasure, I got a hint respecting the song, and here is the result of that:

Dolly Beardy was a lass,

De'il the Hke o'r on the grass,
Her lad was but a moidert ass,
Hey, Dolly Beardy/
Altogether he gave eight verses, of which the third was:

Dolly Beardy had a cow,

Black and white about the mou*,
She keeped her ay rifting fu',
Smock, Dolly Beardy.
There is proof that this song is more than three centuries old. 'Kathe-
tolerable
rine Bairdie' one of the tunes given 'for kissing, for clapping, for loving, for
is

proving' in a manuscript of the Scottish poet Sir Wilham Mure, beUeved to

have been written not later than 1628; the same tune (called 'Kette Bairdie*)
appears in the Skene MS., of about 1700, and (called 'Simon Brodie') in the
M^Farlan MS. of about 1743. So certain was Scott that this was a popular dance
in the reign of James IV that he introduces it ('Chrichty Bairdie') in The For-
tunes of Nigel. When it was first given into children's keeping is uncertain, but
William Dauney, bom in 1800, said "Kitty Bairdie" is the heroine of a nursery
'

rhyme in the recollection of most people*.

Herd MS, 1776, 'Symon Brodie had a cow The cow was lost, and he cou'd na find her
:

When he had done what man could do, The cow came hame, and her tail behind her'
(two verses) / Gallovidian Encyclopedia, J. Mactaggart, 1824 [1876] / Chambers, 1842,
'Katie Beardie had a coo, Black and white about the mou'; Wasna that a dentie coo?
Dance, Katie Beardie!' (four verses) /JOH, 1844, 'Wooley Foster has a cow, Black and
white about the mow. Open the gates and let her through, Wooley Foster's ain cow' /
JOH, 1853, as text / Rymour Club, 1911, additional verses / Correspondent, 1948, 'Wiley,
Wiley, had a cow, Black and white upon his brow'.

5208 1 17 K
 CHILDREN
99
Three children shding on the ice,
Upon a summer's day,
As it fell out, they all fell in.

The rest they ran away.

Now had these children been at home,

Or sliding on dry ground.
Ten thousand pounds to one penny
They had not all been drowned.

You parents all that children have.

And you that have got none,
If you would have them safe abroad.
Pray keep them safe at home.
These stanzas are similar to three appearing in a ballad The Lamentation of a
Bad Market; or, the Drowning of three Children in the Thames. If the word of
the pubhsher may be accepted, this was, 300 years ago, one of the 'choice
Peices of Drollery' which was 'Got by heart, and often repeated by divers witty
Gentlemen and Ladies, that use to walke in the New Exchange, and at their
Recreations in Hide Park.' The ballad begins

Some Christian people all give earc.

Unto the greife of us,
Caus'd by the death of three Children dearc,
The which it happened thus.

It of *a bridge of London town' and was probably occa-

describes the burning
sioned by the fire which, in February 1633, destroyed much of London Bridge.
Stanzas 12, 18, and 19, run:

Three Children shding there abouts,

Upon a place too thin.
That so at last it did fall out,
That they did all fall in.

Yee Parents all that Children have.

Andyee that have none yet
Preserve your Children from the Grave,
And teach them at home to sit.

For had these at a Sermon been.

Or elseupon dry ground.
Why then I would never have been seen.
If that they had been drown'd.

118
 PLATE V

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 CHILDREN
This isundoubtedly a burlesque of the pious ballad-mongers whose 'Provi-
dential Warning and Goodly Counsels' wearied the CavaHer aristocracy. The
modern condensed version is first noted in the writings of Dr. WagstafFe at the
latter end of Queen Anne's reign (one verse) and in a song collection of 1744
(the three verses). The subsequent popularity of the piece among children may
be gauged by the number of its appearances in juvenile collections, though
Southey, at two years old, could not bear it. JOH in 1843 described it as Very
popular*. The ballad was sung to the tune 'Chevy Chase' or 'Lady's Fall' and
was printed with music in Pills to Purge Melancholy. The condensed version has
been attributed to Gay, and also to Goldsmith, but the possibihty of it being
the latter's work is precluded by the earliness of its appearance in print.

The Loves of Hero and Leander, 165 1 / Merry Drollery, W. N. &q., 1661, ballad entitled
'The Fire on London Bridge* /The Lamentations of a Bad Market (F. Coles, &c.), c. 1680 /
Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1700 / Character of Richard St —
le, Esq., W. Wagstaffe, c. 1712

(one verse)/ Philomel (M. Cooper), 1744 / The Robin (C. Hitch), 1749 / FT Thumb's
LSB, c. 1760, one verse / Pretty Book of Pictures, Tommy Trip (J. Newbery), 1762 [1767] /
MG's Melody, c. 1765 / GG's Garland, 1784 / T Tit's SB, c. 1790 / Christmas Box, 1797 /
Songs for the Nursery, 1805 / Vocal Harmony, c. 1806 / Nurse Louechild's DFN, c. 1830 /
London Jingles (J. G. Rusher), c. 1840 /JOH, 1842 / Harry's Ladder of Learning (David
Bogue), c. 1850 [N& Q, 13th s.] / My ABC ofNR Friends (R. Tuck), 1947.
The tune "Three Children SUding on the Thames' is in Songs Compleat, 1719.

100
The first day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
A partridge in a pear tree.
The second day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.

The third day of Christmas,

My true love sent to me
Three French hens,
Tw^o turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The fourth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Four colly birds.
Three French hens.
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
119
 CHRISTMAS
The fifth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.

The sixth day of Christmas,

My true love sent to me
Six geese a-laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds.
Three French hens.
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.

The seventh day of Christmas,

My true love sent to me
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five gold rings.
Four colly birds.
Three French hens.
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.

The eighth day of Christmas,

My true love sent to me
Eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming.
Six geese a-laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds.
Three French hens.
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.

120
 CHRISTMAS
The ninth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Nine drummers drumming,
Eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five gold rings.
Four colly birds.
Three French hens.
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.

The tenth day of Christmas,

My true love sent to me
Ten pipers piping,
Nine drummers drumming.
Eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming.
Six geese a-laying.
Five gold rings.
Four colly birds.
Three French hens.
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The eleventh day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Eleven ladies dancing.
Ten pipers piping.
Nine drummers drumming.
Eight maids a-milking.
Seven swans a-swimming.
Six geese a-laying,
Five gold rings.
Four colly birds.
Three French hens.
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.

121
 CHRISTMAS
The twelfth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Twelve lords a-leaping,
Eleven ladies dancing,
Ten pipers piping.
Nine drummers drumming.
Eight maids a~milking,
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds.
Three French hens.
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
A rhyme or chant, also known meaning of which, if it has any,
in France, the
has yet to be satisfactorily explained. The found in a diminutive
lines are first
children's book Mirth without Mischief, pubHshed in London about 1780. They
are there the words of a fireside memory-and-forfeits game, 'The Twelve
Days of Christmas', which 100 years later Lady Gomme described playing
every Twelfth Day night before eating mince pies and twelfth cake. The leader
of the game commenced by saying the lines of the *first day', and they were
repeated by each member of the company in turn, then the leader said the
'second' and the 'first' days together, which were similarly repeated round the
circle. This was continued until the Hnes for the 'twelve days* were said by
every player. For each mistake a forfeit was demanded in the manner of
'The Play of the Wide-mouth waddling Frog' (q.v.). In Scotland, early in the
nineteenth century, the recitation began:

The king sent his lady on the first Yule day,

A popingo-aye [peacock];
Wha learns my carol and carries it away?
The succeeding gifts were three partridges, three plovers, a goose that was grey,
three starlings, three goldspinks, a bull that was brov^m, . three ducks a-merry
laying, three swans a-merry swimming, an Arabian baboon, three hinds
a-merry hunting, three maids a-merry dancing, three stalks o* merry corn. In the
Cambresis, in the north of France, the game is called 'Les dons de I'an*, and the
sequence is one partridge, two turtle doves, three wood-pigeons, four ducks
flying, five rabbits trotting, six hares a-field, seven hounds running, eight shorn
sheep, nine homed oxen, ten good turkeys, eleven good hams, twelve small
cheeses. In the west of France the piece is known as a song, 'La foi de la loi', and
is sung 'avec solennite', the sequence being a good stuffing without bones, two
:

breasts of veal, three joints of beef, four pigs' trotters, five legs of mutton, six
partridges with cabbage, seven spitted rabbits, eight plates of salad, nine

122
 CHRISTMAS
dishes for a chapter of canons, ten full casks, eleven beautiful full-breasted
maidens, and twelve musketeers with their swords. A Languedoc chant is
similar, but the gifts are made on the first fifteen days of May. A partridge that
flies is followed by two doves, three white pigeons, four ducks flying in the

air, five rabbits, six hares, seven hunting dogs, eight wliite horses, nine homed

oxen, ten bleating sheep, eleven soldiers coming from war, twelve maidens,
thirteen white nosegays, fourteen white loaves, fifteen casks of wine. Sugges-
tions have been made that the gifts have significance, as representing the food
or sport for each month of the year. Importance has certainly long been
attached to the Twelve Days, when, for instance, the weather on each day was
carefully observed to see what it would be in the corresponding month of the
coming year. Nevertheless, whatever the ultimate origin of the chant, it seems
probable that the lines which survive today both in England and France are
merely an irreligious travesty, possibly of a chant like *Dic mihi quid unus?', or
of a carol hke that in Sloane MS. 2593, and in Wright's MS. (printed 1847) of
the fifteenth century

The fyrst day of 5ole have we in mynd,

How God was man born of our kynd;
For he the bondes wold onbynd
Of all owre synnes and wykednes.
The secund day we syng of Stevene,
That stoned and steyyd up even
To God that he saw stond in hevyn.
And crounned was for hys prouesse.
The iij. day longeth to sent Johan, &c.

Mirth without Mischief {C. Sheppard), c. 1780, as text / Buchan MS, c. 1828, as quote/
Chambers, 1842, as 1828 / JOH, 1842, *My mother sent to me four canary birds. .. . . .

eight ladies dancing nine lords a leaping, ten ships a sailing, eleven ladies spinning,
. . .

twelve bells ringing' / Rimbault, 1846, as JOH / Gomme, 1898 / Folk Songs from Somerset^
Cecil Sharp, 1905 / Folk-Song, 191 5, five versions noted by Cecil Sharp in which singer
begins with the 'twelfth day' and omits a day at a time until 'second day' when process
is reversed. Thus one version begins 'The twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to

me: Twelve bulls a-roaring. Eleven bears a-baiting. Ten lords a-leaping, [no 'nine*].
Eight hares a~running, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five golden rings.
Four colley birds. Three French hens, Two turtle-doves And a part of a juniper tree' /
Come Hither, Walter de la Mare, 1923 / The 12 days of Christmas, Margaret Levetus,
c. 1946.
•••
If 'The partridge in the pear tree* of the EngUsh version is to be taken literally it
looks as if the chant comes from France, since the Red Leg partridge, which perches in
trees more frequently than the common partridge, was not successfully introduced into
England until about 1770.
Cf. Chants chansons populaires du Camhrisis, A. Durieux and A. Bruyelle, 1864, 'Le
et
douzi^m' moisdel'an, que dormer ^ ma mie? Douz' bons larrons, Onze bons jambons,
Dix bons dindons Neuf bceufs comus, Huit moutons tondus, Sept chiens courants, Six
,

lievres aux champs, Cinq lapins trottant par terre, Quatre canards volant en I'air, Trois
ramicrs des bois. Deux tourterelles, Une
Une pertriolle, Qui vole et vole et
pertriolle,
vole, Une pertriolle Qui vole Du bois au champ* /
Chants et chansons populaires des provinces
de I'ouest, J. Bujeaud, 1866, begins, '(Le Prieur:) La premier' parti' d' la foi d' la loi, Dit'-la-
moi, frere Gr6goire? (Frere Gr^goire:) Un bon farci sans os'.Ends, 'Douze mousquetaires,
Avec leurs rapi^res; Onze demoiselles, Fort gentill's et belles, Gami's de t^tons, Voili
qui est bon ; Dix futailles pleines, Qui feront merveille Neuf plats de chapitre. Pour servir
;

123
 CHRISTMAS
de suiteHuit plats de saladc, Pour garnir la table Sept