Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories Part 1

Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories.

by Robert Ford.

PREFACE.

In offering to the public this collection of Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, and Children's Stories--the mult.i.tudinous items of which, or such, at least, as were not living in my own memory, have been gathered with patient industry, albeit with much genuine delight, from wide and varied sources--I antic.i.p.ate for the work a hearty and general welcome, alike from old and young. It is the first really sincere effort to collect in anything like ample and exclusive fashion the _natural literature_ of the children of Scotland, and meets what has long appealed to me as decidedly a felt want. The earlier pages are occupied with a commentary, textually ill.u.s.trated, on the generally puerile, but regularly fascinating Rhymes of the Nursery, the vitality and universal use of which have been at once the wonder and the puzzle of the ages. This is followed in turn by a chapter on Counting-out Rhymes, with numerous examples, home and foreign; which is succeeded, appropriately, by a section of the work embracing description of all the well-known out-door and in-door Rhyme-Games--in each case the Rhyme being given, the action being portrayed. The remaining contents the t.i.tle may be left to suggest. I may only add that the Stories--including "Blue Beard," and "Jack the Giant Killer," and their fellow-narratives--ten in all--are printed _verbatim_ from the old chapbooks once so common in the country, but now so rare as to be almost un.o.btainable.

Essentially a book about children and their picturesque and innocent, though often apparently meaningless, frolics, by the young in the land, I am a.s.sured, it will be received with open arms. From the "children of larger growth"--those who were once young and have delight in remembering the fact--the welcome, if less boisterous, should be not less sincere. Commend to me on all occasions the man or woman who, "with lyart haffets thin and bare," can sing with the poet--

"Och hey! gin I were young again, Ochone! gin I were young again; For chasin' b.u.mbees owre the plain Is just an auld sang sung again."

ROBERT FORD.

287 ~Onslow Drive~, ~Dennistoun~, ~Glasgow~.

RHYMES OF THE NURSERY.

Writing on the subject of nursery rhymes more than half a century ago, the late Dr. Robert Chambers expressed regret because, as he said, "Nothing had of late been revolutionised so much as the nursery." But harking back on the period of his own childhood, he was able to say, with a feeling of satisfaction, that the young mind was then "cradled amidst the simplicities of the uninstructed intellect; and _she_ was held to be the best nurse who had the most copious supply of song, and tale, and drollery, at all times ready to soothe and amuse her young charges. There were, it is true, some disadvantages in the system; for sometimes superst.i.tious terrors were implanted, and little pains were taken to distinguish between what tended to foster the evil and what tended to elicit the better feelings of infantile nature. Yet the ideas which presided over the scene," he continues, "and rung through it all the day in light gabble and jocund song, were simple, often beautiful ideas, generally well expressed, and unquestionably suitable to the capacities of children.... There was no philosophy about these gentle dames; but there was generally endless kindness, and a wonderful power of keeping their little flock in good humour. It never occurred to them that children were anything but children--'Bairns are just bairns,' my old nurse would say--and they never once thought of beginning to make them men and women while still little more than able to speak." They did not; and, in the common homes of Scotland, they do not to this hour. The self-same rhymes and drollery which amused Dr. Chambers as a child are amusing and engaging the minds and exercising the faculties of children over all the land even now. I question if there is a child anywhere north of the Tweed who has not been entertained by

Brow, brow, brinkie, Ee, ee, winkie, Nose, nose, nebbie, Cheek, cheek, cherrie, Mou, mou, merry, Chin, chin, chuckie, Curry-wurry! Curry-wurry! etc.

Or the briefer formula, referring only to the brow, the eye, the nose, and the mouth, which runs:--

Chap at the door, Keek in, Lift the sneck, Walk in.

And it was only the other evening that I saw a father with his infant son on his knee, having a little hand spread out, and entertaining its owner by travelling from thumb to little finger, and repeating the old catch:--

This is the man that broke the barn, This is the man that stole the corn, This is the man that ran awa', This is the man that tell't a', And puir Pirly Winkie paid for a', paid for a'.

well as its fellow-rhyme:--

This little pig went to the market, This little pig stayed at home; This little pig got roast beef, This little pig got none; This little pig cried, Squeak! squeak!

I can't find my way home.

Than the nonsense rhymes and capers that have delighted the nursery life of Scotland for many generations, none, of course, could be more delectable--none more suitable. While charming the sense, they have awakened imagination and developed poetic fancy in thousands who otherwise might have blundered into old age proving stolid and uninteresting men and women. They are, for this reason, part and parcel of every properly-balanced life, and the healthy and happy mind can never let them go.

Johnny Smith, my fallow fine, Can you shoe this horse o' mine?

Yes, indeed, and that I can, Just as weel as ony man.

Ca' a nail into the tae, To gar the pownie climb the brae; Ca' a nail into the heel, To gar the pownie trot weel; There's a nail, and there's a brod, There's a pownie weel shod, Weel shod, weel shod, weel shod pownie.

What pleasing recollections of his own early childhood many a father has had when, sitting with his child on his knee, he has demonstrated and chanted that rude rhyme by the fireside o' nights far, as often has been the case, from the scene where he learned it! To know such is to realise one, at least, of the various reasons why the old delight in the frolics of the young.

Hush-a-by baby on the tree top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock; When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, And down will come cradle and baby and all.

This is a rhyme which "every child has joyed to hear." Its origin, as told in the records of the Boston (U.S.) Historical Society, is not more curious than beautiful and significant. "Shortly after our forefathers landed at Plymouth, Ma.s.sachusetts (I am quoting), a party were out in the fields where the Indian women were picking strawberries. Several of the women, or squaws as they were called, had papooses--that is babies--and, having no cradle, they had them tied up in Indian fashion and hung from the limbs of the surrounding trees. Sure enough, when the wind blew these cradles would rock! A young man of the party observing this, pulled off a piece of bark and wrote off the above words, which is believed to be the first poetry written in America." Several have curious histories.

Little Jack Horner Sat in a corner Eating his Christmas pie; He put in his thumb And pulled out a plum, And said, What a good boy am I!

Master Horner, it appears, was not a myth, but a real personage.

Tradition tells that when Henry VIII. suppressed the monasteries, and drove the poor old monks from their nests, the t.i.tle-deeds of the Abbey of Mells, including the sumptuous grange built by Abbot Bellwood, were demanded by the Commissioners. The Abbot of Glas...o...b..ry determined instead that he would send them to London; and, as the doc.u.ments were very valuable, and the road was infested by thieves, to get them to the metropolis safely he ordered a pie to be made, as fine as ever smoked on a refectory table, inside of which the precious doc.u.ments were placed, and this dainty he entrusted to a lad named Horner to carry up to London and deliver into the hands of the party for whom it was intended. But the journey was long, the day was cold, the boy was hungry, the pie was tempting, and the chances of detection, the youth presumed, were small.

So he broke the crust of the pie, and behold the parchment! He pulled it forth innocently enough, wondering by what chance it could have reached there, and arrived in town. The parcel was delivered, but the t.i.tle-deeds of Mells Abbey estate were missing. Jack had them in his pocket, and--now learning their value--he kept them there. These were the juiciest plums in the pie. Great was the rage of the Commissioners, heavy the vengeance they dealt out to the monks. But Jack kept his secret and the doc.u.ments, and when peaceful times were restored he claimed the estates and received them. So goes the story; and it may be true. But, then, in the light of its truth, whether Master Horner deserved the t.i.tle of "good boy" bestowed on him by the rhyme will be more than doubtful.

We all know the lines,

Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow; And everywhere that Mary went, The lamb was sure to go.

It followed her to school one day, It was against the rule, And made the children laugh and play, To see a lamb at school.

These verses were founded, it appears, on an actual circ.u.mstance, and the heroine Mary may be still living. Less than eighty years ago she was a little girl, the daughter of a farmer in Worcester County, Ma.s.sachusetts, U.S. One spring her father brought a feeble lamb into the house, and Mary adopted it as her especial pet. It became so fond of her that it would follow her everywhere. One day it followed her to the village school, and, not knowing well what to do with it there, the girl put it under her desk and covered it over with her shawl. There it stayed until Mary was called up with her cla.s.s to the teacher's desk to say her lesson; but then the lamb went quietly after her, and the whole school burst out laughing. Soon after, John Rollstone, a fellow-student with Mary, wrote a little rhyme commemorating the incident, and the verses went rapidly from lip to lip, giving the greatest delight to all.

The lamb grew up to be a sheep, and lived many years; and when it died Mary grieved so much that her mother took some of its wool, which was "white as snow," and knitted for her a pair of stockings to wear in remembrance of her pet. Some years after, Mrs. Sarah Hall composed additional verses to those of John Rollstone, making the complete rhyme as we know it.[A] Mary took such good care of the stockings made from her lamb's fleece that when she was a grown-up woman she was able to give one of them to a church bazaar in Boston. As soon as it became known that the stocking was from the fleece of "Mary's little lamb,"

every one wanted a piece of it. So the stocking was unravelled, and the yarn cut into short pieces. Each piece was fastened to a card on which Mary wrote her full name, and those cards sold so well that they brought the handsome sum of 28 to the Old South Church in Boston.

[Footnote A: The following are the added lines referred to:--

And so the teacher turned him out, But still he lingered near, And waited patiently about Till Mary did appear.

And then he ran to her, and laid His head upon her arm.

As if he said, "I'm not afraid, You'll shield me from all harm."

"What makes the lamb love Mary so?"

The eager children cry.

"Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,"

The teacher did reply.

Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall; Not all the King's horses, nor all the King's men, Could set Humpty-Dumpty up again.

Attempts have been made to show how that was suggested by the fall of a bold bad baron who lived in the days of King John; but every child more than ten years old knows that the lines present a conundrum, the answer to which is--an egg. And yet, were it no conundrum, but only a nonsense rhyme, its fascination for the budding intellect would be no less. It is enough when, with the jingle of rhyme, the imagination, is tickled, as in

Hey diddle dumplin' my son John, Went to his bed with his trowsers on; One shoe off and the other shoe on, Hey diddle dumplin', my son John;

or--

Cripple d.i.c.k upon a stick, And Sandy on a soo, Ride away to Galloway To buy a pund o' woo';

or yet again in--

Sing a sang o' saxpence, A baggie fu' o' rye, Four-and-twenty blackbirds, Bakit in a pie.

When the pie was opened The birds began to sing; And wasna that a dainty dish To set before the King?

The King was in his counting-house Counting out his money, The Queen was in the parlour Eating bread and honey, The maid was in the garden Hanging out the clothes, When by came a blackbird And snapped aff her nose.

For such supreme nonsense no historical origin need be sought, surely.

Yet part of the latter has been at least applied to a historical personage in a way that is worth recalling. Dr. H. J. Pye, who was created Poet Laureate in succession to Thomas Warton, in 1790, was, as a poet, regularly made fun of. In his _New Year Odes_ there were perpetual references to the coming spring: and, in the dearth of more important topics, each tree and field-flower were described: and the lark, and every other bird that could be brought into rhyme, were sure to appear; and his poetical and patriotic _olla podrida_ ultimately provoked the adaptation:--