The Nursery Rhyme Book

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.

"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: —

"Onery
Twoery
Tickery
Tin
Alamacrack
Tenamalin
Pin
Pan
Musky Dan
Tweedleum
Twiddleum
Twenty-one
Black fish
White trout
Eery, Ory
You are out."

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 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 (#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" —

"Les yeux bleus
Vont aux cieux.
Les yeux gris
Vont à Paradis.
Les yeux noirs
Vont à Purgatoire."

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.

I. Historical

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!

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 noblemen beside;
And what they could not eat that night,
The queen next morning fried.

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.

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

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.

PLEASE to remember
The Fifth of November.
Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

OVER the water, and over the sea,
And over the water to Charley;
Charley loves good ale and wine,
And Charley loves good brandy,