Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes

1849. Halliwell, Popular Rhymes.

1864. Rimbault, Old Nursery Rhymes with tunes.

1870. Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland. Enlarged edition.

1876. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs.

1890. Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes, Tales and Jingles. Issued by Warne & Co.

1892. Northall, G. F., English Folk Rhymes.

1894. Gomme, A. B., The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

In the studies which follow, the rhymes cited have attached to them the date of the collection in which they occur.

CHAPTER II

EARLY REFERENCES

INDEPENDENTLY of these collections of nursery rhymes, many rhymes are cited in general literature. This yields a further clue to their currency at a given period. Thus Rimbault describes a book called Infant Institutes, part the first, or a Nurserical Essay on the Poetry Lyric and Allegorical of the Earliest Ages, 1797, perhaps by B. N. Turner, the friend of Dr. Johnson, which was intended to ridicule the Shakespeare commentators (N. & Q., 5, 3, 441). In the course of his argument, the author cites a number of nursery rhymes.

Again, the poet Henry Carey, about the year 1720, ridiculed the odes addressed to children by Ambrose Philips by likening these to a jumble of nursery rhymes. In doing so he cited the rhymes, "Namby Pamby Jack a Dandy," "London Bridge is broken down," "Liar Lickspit," "Jacky Horner," "See-saw," and others, which nowadays are still included among the ordinary stock of our rhymes.

Again, in the year 1671, John Eachard, the divine, illustrated his argument by quoting the alphabet rhyme "A was an apple pie," as far as "G got it."[9 - Eachard, Observations, etc., 1671, cited. Halliwell, Popular Rhymes, 1849, p. 137.] Instances such as these do not, however, carry us back farther than the seventeenth century.

Another clue to the date of certain rhymes is afforded by their mention of historical persons, in a manner which shows that the rhyme in this form was current at the time when the individual whom they mention was prominently before the eyes of the public. Halliwell recorded from oral tradition the following verse: —

Doctor Sacheverel
Did very well,
But Jacky Dawbin
Gave him a warning.

    (1849, p. 12.)
The verse refers to Dr. Sacheverel, the nonconformist minister who preached violent sermons in St. Paul's, pointing at the Whig members as false friends and real enemies of the Church. John Dolben (1662-1710) called attention to them in the House of Commons, and they were declared "malicious, scandalous, and seditious libels."

Again there is the rhyme: —

Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it,
But the devil a penny was there in it,
Except the binding round it.

    (1849, p. 48.)
This is said to preserve the names of two celebrated courtesans of the reign of Charles II (1892, p. 330).

The first name in the following rhyme is that of a famous border hero who was hanged between 1529 and 1530: —

Johnny Armstrong killed a calf;
Peter Henderson got half;
Willy Wilkinson got the head, —
Ring the bell, the calf is dead.

    (1890, p. 358.)
Among the pieces collected by Halliwell, and told in cumulative form, one begins and ends with the following line, which recurs at the end of every verse: —

John Ball shot them all.

Halliwell is of opinion that this may refer to the priest who took a prominent part in the rebellion at the time of Richard II, and who was hanged, drawn, and quartered in 1381.

But a historical name does not necessarily indicate the date of a rhyme. For a popular name is sometimes substituted for one that has fallen into contempt or obscurity. Moreover, a name may originally have indicated a person other than the one with whom it has come to be associated.

A familiar nursery song printed in the collection of c. 1783, and extant in several variants, is as follows: —

When good King Arthur rul'd the 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 plumbs,
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 fry'd.

    (c. 1783, p. 32.)
Mr. Chappell, as cited by Halliwell, considered that this version is not the correct one, but the one which begins: —

King Stephen was a worthy king
As ancient bards do sing…

The same story related in one verse only, and in simpler form, connects it with Queen Elizabeth, in a version recovered in Berkshire.

Our good Quane Bess, she maayde a pudden,
An stuffed un well o' plumes;
And in she put gurt dabs o' vat,
As big as my two thumbs.

    (1892, p. 289.)
On the face of it the last variant appears to be the oldest.

An interesting example of a change of name, and of the changing meaning of a name, is afforded by the nursery song that is told of King Arthur, and mutatis mutandis of Old King Cole. The poem of King Arthur is as follows: —

When Arthur first in Court began
To wear long hanging sleeves,
He entertained three serving men
And all of them were thieves.