The Nursery Rhyme Book

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There was "Who Killed Cock Robin?" which I knew by heart before I could read, and I learned to read (entirely "without tears") by picking out the letters in the familiar words. I remember the Lark dressed as a clerk, but what a clerk might be I did not ask. Other children, who are little now, will read this book, and remember it well when they have forgotten a great deal of history and geography. We do not know what poets wrote the old Nursery Rhymes, but certainly some of them were written down, or even printed, three hundred years ago. Grandmothers have sung them to their grandchildren, and they again to theirs, for many centuries. In Scotland an old fellow will take a child on his knee for a ride, and sing—

About the people mentioned in this book:—We do not exactly know who Old King Cole was, but King Arthur must have reigned some time about 500 to 600 A.D. As a child grows up, he will, if he is fond of poetry, read thousands of lines about this Prince, and the Table Round where his Knights dined, and how four weeping Queens carried him from his last fight to Avalon, a country where the apple-trees are always in bloom. But the reader will never forget the bag-pudding, which "the Queen next morning fried." Her name was Guinevere, and the historian says that she "was a true lover, and therefore made she a good end." But she had a great deal of unhappiness in her life.

I cannot tell what King of France went up the hill with twenty thousand men, and did nothing when he got there. But I do know who Charley was that "loved good ale and wine," and also "loved good brandy," and was fond of a pretty[10] girl, "as sweet as sugar-candy." This was the banished Prince of Wales, who tried to win back his father's kingdom more than a hundred years ago, and gained battles, and took cities, and would have recovered the throne if his officers had followed him. But he was as unfortunate as he was brave, and when he had no longer a chance, perhaps he did love good ale and wine rather too dearly. As for the pretty girls, they all ran after him, and he could not run away like Georgey Porgey. There is plenty of poetry about Charley, as well as about King Arthur.

About King Charles the First, "upon a black horse," a child will soon hear at least as much as he can want, and perhaps his heart "will be ready to burst," as the rhyme says, with sorrow for the unhappy King. After he had his head cut off, "the Parliament soldiers went to the King," that is, to his son Charles, and crowned him in his turn, but he was thought a little too gay. Then we come to the King "who had a daughter fair, and gave the Prince of Orange her."[11]

There is another rhyme about him:—

The truth is, that the Prince of Orange and the King's daughter fair (really a very pretty lady, with a very ugly husband) were not at all kind to the King, but turned him out of England. He was the grandfather of Charley who loved good ale and wine, and who very nearly turned out King Georgey Porgey, a German who "kissed the girls and made them cry," as the poet likewise says. Georgey was not a handsome King, and nobody cared much for him; and if any poetry was made about him, it was[12] very bad stuff, and all the world has forgotten it. He had a son called Fred, who was killed by a cricket-ball—an honourable death. A poem was made when Fred died:—

This poet seems to have preferred Charley, who wore a white rose in his bonnet, and was much handsomer than Fred.

Another rhyme tells about Jim and George, and how Jim got George by the nose. This Jim was[13] Charley's father, and the George whom he "got by the nose" was Georgey Porgey, the fat German. Jim was born on June 10; so another song says—

But, somehow, George really got Jim by the nose, in spite of what the poet says; for it does not do to believe all the history in song-books.

After these songs there is not much really useful information in the Nursery Rhymes. Simple Simon was not Simon Fraser of Lovat, who was sometimes on Jim's side, and sometimes on George's, till he got his head cut off by King George. That Simon was not simple.

The Babes in the Wood you may read about here and in longer poems; for instance, in a book called "The Ingoldsby Legends." It was their wicked uncle who lost them in the wood, because he wanted their money. Uncles were exceedingly bad long ago, and often smothered their nephews in the[14] Tower, or put out their eyes with red-hot irons. But now uncles are the kindest people in the world, as every child knows.

About Brian O'Lin there is more than this book says:—

He is also called Tom o' the Lin, and seems to have been connected with Young Tamlane, who was carried away by the Fairy Queen, and brought back to earth by his true love. Little Jack Horner lived at a place called Mells, in Somerset, in the time of Henry VIII. The plum he got was an estate which had belonged to the priests. I find nobody else here about whom history teaches us till we come to Dr. Faustus. He was not "a very good man"; that is a mistake, or the poem was written by a friend of the Doctor's. In reality he was a wizard, and raised up Helen of Troy from the other world, the most beautiful woman who[15] ever was seen. Dr. Faustus made an agreement with Bogie, who, after the Doctor had been gay for a long time, came and carried him off in a flash of fire. You can read about it all in several books, when you are a good deal older. Dr. Faustus was a German, and the best play about him is by a German poet.

As to Tom the Piper's Son, he was probably the son of a Highlander, for they were mostly on Charley's side, who was "Over the hills and far away." Another song says—

Tom piped this tune, and pleased both the girls and boys.[16]

About the two birds that sat on a stone, on the "All-Alone Stone," you can read in a book called "The Water-Babies."

Concerning the Frog that lived in a well, and how he married a King's daughter and was changed into a beautiful Prince, there is a fairy tale which an industrious child ought to read. The frog in the rhyme is not nearly so lucky.

After these rhymes there come a number of riddles, of which the answers are given. Then there are charms, which people used to think would help in butter-making or would cure diseases. It is not generally thought now that they are of much use, but there can be no harm in trying. Nobody will be burned now for saying these charms, like the poor old witches long ago. The Queen Anne mentioned on page 172 was the sister of the other Princess who married the Prince of Orange, and she was Charley's aunt. She had seventeen children, and only one lived to be as old as ten years. He was a nice boy, and had a regiment of boy-soldiers.[17]

"Hickory Dickory Dock" is a rhyme for counting out a lot of children. The child on whom the last word falls has to run after the others in the game of "Tig" or "Chevy." There is another of the same kind:—

Most of the rhymes in this part of the book are sung in games and dances by children, and are very pretty to see and hear. They are very old, too, and in an old book of travels in England by a Danish gentleman, he gives one which he heard sung by[18] children when Charles II. was king. They still sing it in the North of Scotland.

In this collection there are nonsense songs to sing to babies to make them fall asleep.

Bessy Bell and Mary Gray, on page 207, were two young ladies in Scotland long ago. The plague came to Perth, where they lived, so they built a bower in a wood, far off the town. But their lovers came to see them in the bower, and brought the infection of the plague, and they both died. There is a little churchyard and a ruined church in Scotland, where the people who died of the plague, more than two hundred years ago, were buried, and we used to believe that if the ground was stirred, the plague would fly out again, like a yellow cloud, and kill everybody.

There is a French rhyme like "Blue-Eye Beauty"—

[19]None of the other rhymes seem to be anything but nonsense, and nonsense is a very good thing in its way, especially with pictures. Any child who likes can get Mrs. Markham's "History of England," and read about the Jims, and Georges, and Charleys, but I scarcely think that such children are very common. However, the facts about these famous people are told here shortly, and if there is any more to be said about Jack and Jill, I am sure I don't know what it is, or where the hill they sat on is to be found in the geography books.

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[1] The boys are sons of Charles II. The pious brother is James, Duke of York.[41]

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[1] Merry.[107]

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[1] The pod or shell of a pea.

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[At the conclusion, the captive is privately asked if he will have oranges or lemons (the two leaders of the arch having previously agreed which designation shall belong to each), and he goes behind the one he may chance to name. When all are thus divided into two parties, they conclude the game by trying to pull each other beyond a certain line.]

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[And so on with the others, naming the second finger "Longman," the third finger "Ringman," and the fourth finger "Littleman." Littleman cannot dance alone.] [176]

[Children stand round, and are counted one by one, by means of this rhyme. The child upon whom the last number falls is out, for "Hide and Seek," or any other game where a victim is required.]

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[The following is a game played thus: A string of boys and girls, each holding by his predecessor's skirts, approaches two others, who with joined and elevated hands form a double arch. After the dialogue, the line passes through, and the last is caught by a sudden lowering of the arms—if possible.]

[A string of children, hand in hand, stand in a row. A child (a) stands in front of them, as leader; two other children (b and c) form an arch, each holding both the hands of the other.]

[a passes by under the arch, followed by the whole string of children, the last of whom is taken captive by b and c. The verses are repeated, until all are taken.]

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As she was coming home, she came to a stile; but the pig would not go over the stile.

She went a little farther, and she met a dog. So she said to the dog—

But the dog would not.

She went a little farther, and she met a stick. So she said—

But the stick would not.

She went a little farther, and she met a fire. So she said—

But the fire would not.

She went a little farther, and she met some water. So she said—

But the water would not.

She went a little farther, and she met an ox. So she said—

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But the ox would not.

She went a little farther, and she met a butcher. So she said—

But the butcher would not.

She went a little farther, and she met a rope. So she said—

But the rope would not.

She went a little farther, and she met a rat. So she said—

But the rat would not.

She went a little farther, and she met a cat. So she said—

The cat said, "If you will give me a saucer of milk, I will kill the rat."

So the old woman gave the cat the milk, and when she had lapped up the milk—

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In Mr. Halliwell's Collection, from which this volume is abridged, no manuscript authority goes further back than the reign of Henry VIII., though King Arthur and Robin Hood are mentioned. The obscure Scottish taunt, levelled at Edward I. when besieging Berwick, is much in the manner of a nursery rhyme:—

This, as Sir Herbert Maxwell says, "seems deficient in salt," but was felt to be irritating by the greatest of the Plantagenets. The jingles on the King of France, against the Scots in the time of James I., against the Tory, or Irish rapparee, and about the Gunpowder Plot, are of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Great Rebellion supplies "Hector Protector" and "The Parliament soldiers are gone to the king;" "Over the water and over the sea" (or lee) is a parody of a Jacobite ditty of 1748, and refers genially to that love of ale and wine which Prince Charles displayed as early as he showed military[277] courage, at the age of fourteen, when he distinguished himself at the siege of Gaeta. His grandfather, James II., lives in "The rhyme for porringer;" his father in "Jim and George were two great lords." Tout finit par des chansons.

Of non-historical jingles, Mr. Halliwell found traces in MSS. as old as the fifteenth century. But it would be a very rare accident that led to their being written down when nobody dreamed of studying Folk-Lore with solemnity. "Thirty days hath September" occurs in the "Return from Parnassus," of Shakspeare's date, and a few snatches, like "When I was a little boy," occur in Shakspeare himself, just as a German version of "My Minnie me slew" comes in Goethe's Faust. Indeed, the scraps of magical versified spells in Märchen are entirely of the character of nursery rhymes, and are of dateless antiquity. The rhyme of "Dr. Faustus" may be nearly as old as the mediæval legend dramatised by Marlowe. The Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists put nursery rhymes in the mouths of characters; a few jingles creep into the Miscellanies, such as "The Pills to purge Melancholy." Among these (1719) is "Tom the piper's son," who played "Over the hills and far away," a song often adapted to Jacobite uses. In 1719, when the Spanish plan of aid to James III. collapsed, pipers must have been

melancholy enough.

Melismata (1611) already knows the "Frog who lived in a well," and in Deuteromelia (1609) occurs the "Three blind mice." On the Riddles, or Devinettes, chapters might be, and have been written. They go back to Samson's time, at least, and are as widely distributed as proverbs, even among Wolufs and Fijians. The most recent discussion is in Mr. Max Müller's "Contributions to the Science of Mythology" (1897). For using "charms," like[278] "Come, butter, come," many an old woman was burned by the wisdom of our ancestors. Such versified charms, deducunt carmima lunam, are the karakias of the Maoris, and the mantras of Indian superstition. The magical papyri of ancient Egypt are full of them. In our own rhyme, "Hiccup," regarded as a personal kind of fiend ("Animism"), is charmed away by a promise of a butter-cake. There is a collection of such things in Reginald Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft." Thus our old nursery rhymes are smooth stones from the brook of time, worn round by constant friction of tongues long silent. We cannot hope to make new nursery rhymes, any

more than we can write new fairy tales.[279]

THE END

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.