The Nursery Rhymes of England.

by Various.

PREFACE

The great encouragement which has been given by the public to the previous editions of this little work, satisfactorily proves that, notwithstanding the extension of serious education to all but the very earliest periods of life, there still exists an undying love for the popular remnants of the ancient Scandinavian nursery literature.

The infants and children of the nineteenth century have not, then, deserted the rhymes chanted so many ages since by the mothers of the North. This is a "great nursery fact"--a proof that there is contained in some of these traditional nonsense-rhymes a meaning and a romance, possibly intelligible only to very young minds, that exercise an influence on the fancy of children. It is obvious there must exist something of this kind; for no modern compositions are found to supply altogether the place of the ancient doggerel.

The nursery rhyme is the novel and light reading of the infant scholar. It occupies, with respect to the A B C, the position of a romance which relieves the mind from the cares of a riper age.

The absurdity and frivolity of a rhyme may naturally be its chief attractions to the very young; and there will be something lost from the imagination of that child, whose parents insist so much on matters of fact, that the "cow" must be made, in compliance with the rules of their educational code, to jump "_under_" instead of "_over_ the moon;" while of course the little dog must be considered as "barking,"

not "laughing" at the circ.u.mstance.

These, or any such objections,--for it seems there are others of about equal weight,--are, it appears to me, more silly than the worst nursery rhyme the little readers will meet with in the following pages. I am quite willing to leave the question to their decision, feeling a.s.sured the catering for them has not been in vain, and that these cullings from the high-ways and bye-ways--they have been collected from nearly every county in England--will be to them real flowers, soothing the misery of many an hour of infantine adversity.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

FIRST CLa.s.s--HISTORICAL.

I.

Old King Cole Was a merry old soul, And a merry old soul was he; He called for his pipe, And he called for his bowl, And he called for his fiddlers three.

Every fiddler, he had a fiddle, And a very fine fiddle had he; Twee tweedle dee, tweedle dee, went the fiddlers.

Oh, there's none so rare, As can compare With King Cole and his fiddlers three!

[The traditional Nursery Rhymes of England commence with a legendary satire on King Cole, who reigned in Britain, as the old chroniclers inform us, in the third century after Christ.

According to Robert of Gloucester, he was the father of St. Helena, and if so, Butler must be wrong in ascribing an obscure origin to the celebrated mother of Constantine. King Cole was a brave and popular man in his day, and ascended the throne of Britain on the death of Asclepiod, amidst the acclamations of the people, or, as Robert of Gloucester expresses himself, the "fole was tho of this lond y-paid wel y-nou." At Colchester there is a large earthwork, supposed to have been a Roman amphitheatre, which goes popularly by the name of "King Cole's kitchen." According to Jeffrey of Monmouth, King Cole's daughter was well skilled in music, but we unfortunately have no evidence to show that her father was attached to that science, further than what is contained in the foregoing lines, which are of doubtful antiquity. The following version of the song is of the seventeenth century, the one given above being probably a modernization:--

Good King Cole, He call'd for his bowl, And he call'd for fidlers three: And there was fiddle fiddle, And twice fiddle fiddle, For 'twas my lady's birth-day; Therefore we keep holiday, And come to be merry.]

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 stuff'd 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 n.o.blemen beside; And what they could not eat that night, The queen next morning fried.

III.

[The following song relating to Robin Hood, the celebrated outlaw, is well known at Worksop, in Nottinghamshire, where it const.i.tutes one of the nursery series.]

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Is in the mickle wood!

Little John, Little John, He to the town is gone.

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Is telling his beads, All in the green wood, Among the green weeds.

Little John, Little John, If he comes no more, Robin Hood, Robin Hood, He will fret full sore!

IV.

[The following lines were obtained in Oxfordshire. The story to which it alludes is related by Matthew Paris.]

One moonshiny night As I sat high, Waiting for one To come by; The boughs did bend, My heart did ache To see what hole the fox did make.

V.

[The following perhaps refers to Joanna of Castile, who visited the court of Henry the Seventh, in the year 1506.]

I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear; The king of Spain's daughter came to visit me, And all was because of my little nut tree.

I skipp'd over water, I danced over sea, And all the birds in the air couldn't catch me.

VI.

[From a MS. in the old Royal Library, in the British Museum, the exact reference to which is mislaid. It is written, if I recollect rightly, in a hand of the time of Henry VIII, in an older ma.n.u.script.]

We make no spare Of John Hunkes' mare; And now I Think she will die; He thought it good To put her in the wood, To seek where she might ly dry; If the mare should chance to fale, Then the crownes would for her sale.

VII.

[From MS. Sloane, 1489, fol. 19, written in the time of Charles I.]

The king of France, and four thousand men, They drew their swords, and put them up again.

VIII.

[In a tract, called 'Pigges Corantoe, or Newes from the North,' 4to Lond. 1642, p. 3, this is called "Old Tarlton's Song." It is perhaps a parody on the popular epigram of "Jack and Jill." I do not know the period of the battle to which it appears to allude, but Tarlton died in the year 1588, so that the rhyme must be earlier.]

The king of France went up the hill, With twenty thousand men; The king of France came down the hill, And ne'er went up again.

IX.

The king of France, with twenty thousand men, Went up the hill, and then came down again; The king of Spain, with twenty thousand more, Climb'd the same hill the French had climb'd before.

X.