A Book of Nursery Songs and Rhymes/Introduction

by Sabine Baring-Gould

IN 1837 Mr. J. B. Ker gave a book to the world in two volumes, entitled 'The Archaeology of Nursery Rhymes,' which is, perhaps, one of the oddest instances extant of misdirected labour. Mr. Ker started from the point that Nursery Rhymes are usually arrant nonsense. Why should little Miss Muffet sit on a tuffet, and little Jack Horner occupy a corner? He assumed that the English nurse was incapable of composing and singing nonsense, which, it must be allowed, was a large assumption at the outset. Then he convinced himself, and desired to convince others, that a great deal of meaning lurked behind this nonsense. To find out the meaning was his next undertaking, and he discovered that by rendering the Nursery Rhymes of Old England into Dutch words having a resemblance in sound more or less far-fetched, strings of words could be obtained which, with a little arrangement, were capable of being represented as a tirade against monarchism, sacerdotalism, catholicism. Consequently the nurses were the true heralds and apostles of Protestant principles—such principles being scurrilous abuse of what members of the Roman Church held as sacred and respected.

Now, unhappily for Mr. Ker's argument, not one of these Netherland renderings has survived in Holland, the most Protestant country in the world, and there was absolutely no explanation of how these nursery profanities and pasquinades arrive in England, and took root there, without leaving a trace behind them. It is quite true that we drew a king from the Netherlands—William of Orange; but there is no record of his having brought over with him a fleet filled with nurse-maids, wherewith to inundate our English homes.

An equally misdirected and absurd attempt was made later by Mr. Henry George to force one of our nursery jingles into a record of English history. This was "An attempt to show that our Nursery Rhyme, "The House that Jack built," is an historical allegory, portraying eventful periods in England's history since the time of Harold, by Henry George,' published by Griffith and Farren, 1862. A specimen of this will Suffice. 'The man all tattered and torn' represents the Protestant Church under Henry VIII., 'persecuted by banishment, torture, spoliations': somewhat comical history, for it was rather the Roman Catholic Church which was despoiled by that monarch. The 'kissing the maiden all forlorn' signifies 'Elizabeth's union of the Churches.' Mr. George also gives the Jewish nursery rhyme found in all passover books, and which he pompously describes as taken out of 'an ancient Jewish hymn in the Bodleian library, Oxford,' and plays the same tricks with it. Undoubtedly Mr. George had read Mr. Ker's book.

The fact really is that which Mr. Ker recognised at the outset: Nursery Rhymes are nonsense. To which we may add, that in a good many cases they never were intended to be otherwise. They owe their origin to the circumstance that children have to be amused and lulled, and that a bit of rhyme, set to an easy tune, will lull them to sleep when peevish, and amuse them in the twilight, when they are tired of romping and racketing.

One thing a nurse would be certain to do, in either case, would be to sing to the child some ditty she herself has heard—probably as a child, and which she remembers imperfectly. A long song thus gets cut down to a couple of verses; and, in another generation, the two verses shrink into one. An instance in case is that of the song 'All in a Misty Morning.' This appears in Durfy's 'Pills to Purge Melancholly,' 1719, in fifteen stanzas. This has as its burden, 'With how do you do? and how do you do? and how do you do again?'

I have heard this sung in a most fragmentary manner, never extending beyond three verses. The story of Jack and Jill exists in a long ballad; of that nothing has remained in the nursery save the lines—

Jack and Jill went up the hill

To fetch a pail of water.

Jack fell down, and broke his crown,

And Jill came tumbling after.

Little Jack Horner is the subject of a very lengthy ballad and chap-book tale. He is a sort of Jack the Giant Killer, and Tom Thumb, and Tom, the Piper's Son with the magic pipes that make all men dance. But what of all that remains? Nothing. Everything is gone, save the solitary incident of his putting his thumb into the Christmas pudding, and belauding himself like the Pharisee. Some old ballads have been mutilated purposely, because indelicate and unfit for children's ears, and in the process of mutilation have lost their significance. They have lived in this condition, whereas the originals have happily disappeared. But in a great majority of cases nursery jingles are due to no other origin than the clashing together of rhymes. Why did

Little Jack Jingle

Use to live single—

save because the rhyme required it. And

Little Jack-a-dandy

Wanted sugar-candy;

whereas—

Little Billy Cook

Always reads a book,

for no other earthly reason than that 'candy' rhymes with 'dandy,' and 'book' rhymes with 'Cook.' It is true that some nursery rhymes, and especially game rhymes, have an origin that points back to very early beliefs and usages. This is far more the case in Germany than in England. Nevertheless, there are some of ours that derive from an early period in the history of civilisation. The counting out rhymes may be, and probably are, a relic of the time when such counting out was employed for selecting a victim for sacrifice. As I have noticed in the notes, Jack and Jill in the nursery rhyme are reminiscences of Hjuki and Bil the two children in the moon, according to Scandinavian mythology.

Some nursery rhymes have a definite object aimed at,—that of practising a child's memory, or of teaching it the letters of the alphabet, or the numbers of a clock face, or the ordinary numerals. In Jewish books of prayer for the Paschal Festival, two nursery rhymes are almost always inserted, wherewith the tedium of the service may be lightened to the children. One of these is very similar to our English, 'Sing a song of One, O!' It begins thus:—

Who is one, and who can declare it?

I will teach you it;

One is God in Heaven and on earth.

What is two, and who can declare it?

I will teach you it;

Two are the tables of the Covenant,

One is God in Heaven, etc.

What is three, and who can declare it?

I will teach you it;

Three are the Patriarchs,

Two are the tables, etc.,

One is God, etc.

and so on to twelve.

The other nursery song is like our 'Stick, stick, beat dog.' It begins:—

There was a lamb, a little lamb,

And daddy he did buy it.

There came a nasty pussy cat

And ate the little lambkin.

A dog that was enraged

Because of guiltless blood,

Came hastening swift as arrow,

And tore to death the cat.

A stick stood by the doggie

Had long been used in threat,

The stick it beat the doggie,

And doggie fell down dead.

Upon the hearth the fire,

To avenge the stick it came,

The stick was next consumed

All in the ardent flame.

There bubbled up a fountain,

The water out did well,

It washed o'er the fire

And quenched it as well.

A thirst ox came thither,

And drew towards the spring,

He drank and drank, and drinking

He drained the well away.

A butcher drew up slyly

And in his hand a knife,

He fell upon the oxen,

And took its precious life.

Then ensues a moral. God avenges all violence. Death butchers the butcher, and the butcher butchers the ox, and the ox sucks up the water, and the water quenches the fire, and the fire burns the stick, and the stick beats the dog, and the dog tears the cat, and the cat eats the little lamb that belonged to my daddy, and for which he paid—so much.