Nursery Rhymes

I

Introduction

Nursery Rhymes, songs, chants, riddles, and rhymes for small children, found the world over, and often passed down through families. It is estimated that over 500 rhymes, some of which were known in the 7th century, and most of which can be found in 17th-century writing, are still being used and adapted in English-speaking countries. They have become deeply embedded in world culture.

Many reasons have been suggested for their survival. The rhythms may appeal particularly to small children; the words are often nonsensical, yet may help children to acquire the sounds of their language; and they are often participatory (for example, children may clap hands to “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man” or ride on parents’ legs to “This is the way the ladies ride”). For older children, there are physical games associated with “Ring-a-ring o’roses”, or “Lucy Locket lost her pocket”, and language games, such as the tongue-twister “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper”. Some, like “One, two, buckle my shoe”, are counting rhymes; others are succinct stories (again with potential for performing actions), such as “Little Miss Muffet”.

II

Oral History

As with fairy tales, the majority of the rhymes were not initially intended for children, and include fragments of ballads, folk songs, drinking songs, political satire, playground rhymes, and many other forms. Some are charms: one, “Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home”, appeared in the earliest surviving nursery rhyme book, Mary Cooper’s Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book (1744), and parallel versions are found in several countries in northern Europe. Others are lullabies: “Rock-a-bye baby” (c. 1756), which may refer to tree-hung cradles, has been claimed as the first poem written in America, by a boy from the Mayflower. Yet others are original poems, such as “Mary had a Little Lamb” by the American magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale, which first appeared in the Juvenile Miscellany in 1830.

What the rhymes are actually about is rarely clear. It seems likely that “The grand old Duke of York” is a lampoon on Frederick, Duke of York, based on an older rhyme, “The King of France went up the hill... “. On the other hand, “Ring-a-ring o’ roses / A pocket full of posies, / A-tishoo! A-tishoo! / We all fall down” is very commonly assumed to be referring to the Great Plague; however, there is no direct evidence for this, and the British academics Iona and Peter Opie point out that there are non-English versions which suggest that “all fall down” is merely an energetic part of an innocent singing game. Many seem to have dramatic references that are now forgotten: “Peter, Peter Pumpkin-Eater, / Had a wife and couldn’t keep her”; or “Goosey Goosey Gander / Whither shall I wander? / Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady’s chamber”. On the whole, it is virtually impossible to trace many of the origins: “Old King Cole”, for example, has been related to both a rich 16th-century merchant, and to the father of the legendary giant Finn MacCool. The “cock-horse” in “Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross” might be an extra coach-horse, harnessed for steep hills, and the rider may have been Lady Godiva.

III

Evolution and Publication

The printed history of the nursery rhyme can be traced from A Little Book for Little Children (c. 1702-1712) by “T.W.”, through Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, to Mother Goose’s Melody: or, Sonnets for the Cradle of c. 1765. This includes over 50 verses, including the first-known printing of “Jack and Jill”, “Hush-a-by baby”, and both the tune and verse of “An old woman tossed in a blanket... “. The book was very popular, and, with Benjamin Tabart’s Songs for the Nursery (1805), formed the basis of two highly influential American collections, Mother Goose’s Quarto (Boston, c. 1825), and Mother Goose’s Melodies (1833). The last-mentioned book sold 100,000 copies, and was much imitated; in some parts of the United States, the term “Mother Goose Rhymes” is still used. Other rhymes appeared individually: The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog (1805), said to have been composed as a political satire by Sarah Catherine Martin, was influential in making children’s literature more lively in the 19th century.

The rhymes have been collected by scholars; James Orchard Halliwell published The Nursery Rhymes of England in 1842, and Frank Kidson published 75 British Nursery Rhymes in 1904; the definitive British collection is Iona and Peter Opie’s The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951).

Over the years, the rhymes have acquired many variants. “Baby Bunting” has at various times and in various places been wrapped in a rabbit skin, a hare’s skin, a bullie’s (calf’s) skin, a lammie’s (lamb’s) skin, and a lion’s skin. The modern counting-rhyme, “Eeenie, meeney, miney, mo” echoes dialects: the Opies cite East Anglian shepherds’ counting words: “Ina, mina, tethtra, methera”, a Cornish version: “Ena, mena, mona, mite”, and an Austrian version, “Eine, meine, mine, mu”. The second line was, in the earliest English versions, “catch a tinker” or “catch a chicken”; the American version, “catch a Nigger”, which dominated usage for a century, is now rarely heard, because the word is now considered offensive.

Beatrix Potter used several nursery rhymes in The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903), and there have been many illustrated collections. Among the most distinguished British examples are those by Andrew Lang and L. Leslie Brooke (1897), Arthur Rackham (1923), Brian Wildsmith (1963), Raymond Briggs (1966), Helen Oxenbury and Brian Alderson (1975), Quentin Blake (1983), and Michael Foreman (1990). Iona and Peter Opie edited a collection of less-well-known rhymes, Tail Feathers from Mother Goose, in 1992. In the United States, notable versions have been produced by Blanche Fisher Wright (The Real Mother Goose; 1916), and by Alice and Martin Provensen (1976).

As nursery rhymes are now to some extent passed down through printed texts, they have become one of the more stable elements in the oral tradition for children; others, such as playground rhymes, are now more likely to be influenced by contemporary songs and passing cultural references.