History of Nursery Rhymes



Running Head: History of Nursery Rhymes in Children’s Literature

History of Nursery Rhymes in Children’s Literature

Susan Grant

Southern Connecticut State University

History of Nursery Rhymes in Children’s Literature

Earliest traditions

For many of us, our earliest memories are linked with lullabies, songs, verses and rhymes. Oral traditions and stories have been handed down through the ages. Many civilizations had no system of writing and told and retold stories for entertainment and to preserve their histories. Many cultures used songs to convey the stories and histories to be handed down through generations.

Ancient practices of witchcraft used chants during pagan rites to produce altered states of reality. Hunters chanted prayers before venturing forth to find food for their people. Some have suggested these chants evolved into rhymes and were sung or recited by mothers to soothe their crying babies or frightened children. A brief history of nursery rhymes is the subject of this paper.

With the advent of Christianity Pagan practices were shunned and many rhymes were lost or incorporated into Christian themes. Many of the practices and rites were incorporated into holy days or holidays such as the days of the Saints, Halloween, and Christmas Eve. Divination rhymes such as pulling the petals off a daisy and reciting He loves me, he loves me not supposedly showed if the person in question was a love interest. Children’s jump rope has also been used with rhyme as a process of divining a future husband. Druid priests supposedly used counting rhymes to select sacrifices. Similarly, though less dangerous, Eenie, meenie, miney, mo, popular selection tool of the young has been traced back to Welsh counting words according to A.J. Ellis.[1]

Some nursery rhymes are based on myth and Man’s explanations for nature. Jack and Jill is based on a Swedish myth regarding the tides called Younger Edda, according to Bett. Number rhymes that helped children memorize counting may have preserved the “distinct traces of the stages through which early man has passed in learning to count.” (Bett, 48)

Superstition, fairies, dwarves, elves and other mythical creatures figure quite heavily in some cultures. Nature worship was common and rhymes chanted on certain dates such as All Hallows’ Eve. The corn spirit was dreaded by European peoples and Little Boy Blue come blow your horn, the sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn is said to refer to the corn spirit. Some peoples referred to the corn spirit as a cow.

Nursery rhymes are mentioned in Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream when Puck says that “Jack shall have Jill.”In the fifteenth century when wool trade between England and Flanders was popular the Ballad of the Bad Black Sheep contained a reference to the nursery rhyme about Bo-peep. Song books of the sixteenth and seventeenth century contained rhymes that evolved into nursery rhymes, no doubt sung by mothers to their children.

First published rhymes

An alphabet rhyme was quoted in 1671 by John Eachard, the divine. The poet Henry Carey ridiculed the odes addressed to children by Ambrose Philips. He cited certain rhymes such as Namby Pamby Jack a Dandy, London Bridge is Broken Down, Jacky Horner and others around the year 1720. Another book, Infant Institutes, part the first, or a Nurserical Essay on the Poetry Lyric and Allegorical of the Earliest Ages, published in 1797 attributed to B. N. Turner was described by Rimbault wherein he cites a number of nursery rhymes.

In 1698, Fardell, a children’s nurse is credited with originating the song Pat-a-cake which evolved into a rhyme and showed up in D’Urfrey’s comedy The Campaigners. Many such rhymes have evolved and are still popular today.

The term nursery rhyme has been found no earlier than 1824 when it appeared in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in July of that year. An anonymous writer wrote an essay parodying William Hazlitt, a literary critic, called On Nursery Rhymes in General. Prior to then, rhymes had been known as songs or ditties. In the eighteenth century rhymes were known as Tommy Thumb’s Songs or Mother Goose’s.

The following table shows the age of rhymes according to Opie & Opie. The figures represent percentages.

|% |Up to 1599 |1600-1649 |1650-1699 |1700-1749 |1750-1799 |1800-1824 |1825 & after |

|Definitely found|1.8 |6.8 |3.7 |9.6 |20.4 |21.7 |36 |

|recorded | | | | | | | |

|Probably |5.6 |6.6 |4.6 |10.4 |19.1 |21.3 |32.4 |

|identified | | | | | | | |

|Believed to date|24.2 |9.3 |15.4 |18 |20.1 |10.7 |2.3 |

Table 1: The age of Nursery Rhymes (Opie & Opie, 7)

Development of nursery rhymes

Many nursery rhymes were first folk ballads. “Tom, he was a piper’s son, whose only tune was Over the hills and far away, may be traced to a song attributed to Motteux, while the magic tune which pleased both girls and boys figures in a ballad collected by Pepys, which appears to be alluded to in 1549.” (Opie & Opie, p. 2)

Opie contends that most nursery rhymes were not intended for children originally and were unsuitable for their ears. Many are fragments of ballads and folk songs, remnants of ancient custom and ritual, street cries or mummers’ plays, or riddles. Others were derived from proverbs, such as If wishes were horses. Some were war and rebellion verses, or were poking fun at religious practices or monarchs. Still others were diversions of the scholarly and gained popularity from being performed on the stage or in London streets. Opie & Opie further say that the only true nursery rhymes before 1800 were the rhyming alphabets, verses that accompanied games, and lullabies.

Children in general were thought of as miniature adults and children’s literature was particularly sparse before 1740. Many nursery rhymes are truncated versions of adult verse. Willie Winkie is an example of a poem that was simplified for the nursery.

Green wrote about the significance of sign language in the development of children’s rhymes. He mentions primitive peoples such as the Uvinza who had a custom of hand-clapping when two grandees met, greetings made by North American Indians, and gestures made by Romans as forerunners of the hand-clapping and rhymes mothers performed for their children, such as Clap hands, papa comes, and Pat-a-cake. Bett also mentions the significance of shaking hands and the game handy-dandy he says has parallels in every age and country.

The game Can I Get There by Candlelight? is one of the universally played chain games in the British Isles, according to Green. A chain of children form a chain that is re-formed into two smaller ones. They lift up their hands to form an archway. The other children form a line and approach the gateway of arched hands and ask “How many miles to Wimbledon?” The answer is given.

How many miles to Wimbledon?

Three score and ten.

Can I get there by candlelight?

Yes! and back again.

Then open the gates and let me go.

Not without a beck and a bow

Here’s a beck and there’s a bow;

Now open the gates and we’ll all pass thro’. (Green, 78-79)

The gates are opened and some pass through and others are caught prisoners. Other games using rhymes include Here we go round the mulberry bush, and Here comes me a poor sailor from Botany Bay. Rhymes used in children’s games differ from those sung or recited by mothers to soothe children or for entertainment. It is suggested that adults may have been the originators of such games that children then learned to play amongst themselves. Riddles were also rhymed, such as:

Little Nanny Natty Coat

Has a white petticoat,

The longer she lives

The shorter she grows. (Green, 144)

The answer to the riddle is a candle.

A collection of nursery rhymes were printed in 1828 by Jane and Ann Taylor who were sisters. In 1834 John Gawler published the first volume of an Essay on the Archailogy of Popular English Phrases and Nursery Rhymes. Joseph Ritson is said to have published a collection of rhymes in 1783 entitled Gammer Gurton’s Garland. One of the earliest collections of poems and songs was Mary Cooper’s Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book dating back to about 1744.

Mother Goose

Mother Goose nursery rhymes are probably the best known rhymes today that have survived through the ages. It is not clear exactly how Mother Goose came into being. One legend arose in Boston in the middle of the nineteenth century claiming Mistress Elizabeth Goose, widow of Isaac Goose, Vergoose, or Vertigoose, of Boston became the step-mother of ten children and had six of her own. One of her daughters married Thomas Fleet, a printer, also of Boston who supposedly published the book Songs for the Nursery or Mother Gooses’s Melodies for Children. He is said to have collected them from his mother-in-law as she spoke the verses. Unfortunately, his story cannot be verified by any concrete evidence.

Mother Goose verses, according to Arbuthnot, were translated into English in 1729 from Perrault’s collection of eight folk talks published in1679 as Contes de ma mere l’Oye, or Tales of Mother Goose. They were tales of make-believe that years later, John Newbery and his publishing firm realized were profitable and published a collection of traditional jingles and verses as Mother Goose’s Melody. The date of this printing is estimated to be around 1765, though dates differ. It contains fifty-two verses with a moral added at the end of each. At the conclusion of the book sixteen songs from Shakespeare appear. It has been said that a toy-book was supposedly published as Mother Goose’s Melody or Sonnets for the Cradle by John Carnan, the stepson of John Newbery. In 1719 Thomas Fleet printing house in Boston may have published a collection of nursery rhymes entitled Songs for the Nursery or Mother Goose’s Melodies for Children. Publishing dates may differ, but the popularity of the verses is apparent.

To children the verses are catchy and easy to mimic. Many articles have been written as to the historical significance of nursery rhymes and whether or not they had meanings under the surface. Little Miss Muffet was said to have been Mary Queen of Scots, frightened by a spider, or John Knox. Sing a Song of Sixpence, was said to be about Henry VIII and two of his six wives. Humpty Dumpty is said to have been an anti-royalist chant dating back to the English Civil War.

Some rhymes do have political meaning while others are said to have, but may not. Regardless of whether every nursery rhyme has a deeper meaning, the value and longevity of nursery rhymes is evident. As children from eighteen months to six years listen to the songs and rhymes they learn to chant them with the beat and enjoy the lilt to the lyrics. The melody and movement is attractive to children. The silliness and nonsense of the rhymes are appealing and entertaining to children and adults. In order to appeal to young children there is an element of word play or catchy phrasing that makes one remember it easily and want to repeat it just because it is fun and sounds good. Old-fashioned language doesn’t seem to deter children from enjoying nursery rhymes, nor the violent nature of many of them.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,

She had so many children she didn’t know what to do.

She gave them some broth without any bread,

And whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed. (Green, 144)

Modern rhymes

Modern children’s book authors that have employed rhyme and verse with success include Dr. Seuss, whose catchy verse can be quoted by almost anyone who has not lived in a vacuum for the past 50 years. Green Eggs and Ham, is almost universally recognizable. Lynley Dodd’s Hairy McLary and Slinky Malinki books are favorites of many young children, and Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw illustrate the popularity of telling a story in verse, though not quite the same as the nursery rhymes such as Mother Goose that are normally short and succinct. Shel Silverstein uses rhyme as catchy language, but his work is more poetry than verse or rhyme, and not all of his work would be suitable for very young children.

The well-known poem Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star has had several revisions, one of the most recent by John Agard in 1991. His version is about a firefly instead of a star. Judith Viorst’s poetry, as delightful as it is, I do not believe can be classified as nursery rhyme.

The many reprinted editions of Mother Goose perhaps are evidence enough that modern writers have not captured their audience like the old-fashioned nursery rhymes have. Nancy Van Laan’s Possum Come A-Knockin’ (1990) comes close, having been chosen to receive the Parents’ Choice Gold Award. But the story, while told in a catchy rhythm that begs to be turned into a song, it does not fit the mold of a traditional nursery rhyme.

Conclusion

Nursery rhymes are older than the written word and show no signs of losing popularity. While modern writers and poets produce excellent verse, nothing can truly compare to the lullabies, riddles, folk songs, game and playground verses, and other rhymes that have been collected from the 1700’s to the late 1800’s. And whether or not their meanings can be deciphered does not seem to matter. While the history is interesting and the meaning of the rhymes sometimes controversial, the purpose of the rhymes is to entertain.

References

Arbuthnot, M. H. (1965). The real Mother Goose. Retrieved November 4, 2007, from The Real Mother Goose Web site:

Bett, H. (1924). Nursery rhymes and tales: their origin and history. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.

Eckstein, L. (1906). Comparative studies in nursery rhymes. London: Duckworth & Co.

Green, P. B. (1899). A history of nursery rhymes. London: Greening & Co., Ltd.

Opie, I. & Opie, P. (1951). The Oxford Dictionary of nursery rhymes. London: Oxford University Press.

Roberts, C. (2004). Heavy words lightly thrown: the reason behind the rhyme. New York, New York: Gotham.

Yetter, E. (2006).Rhyming Witchcraft: The History and Use of Rhymes. Retrieved from the World Wide Web October 24, 2007 at .

Zipes, J., L. Paul., Vallone, L., & Hunt, P.(Eds.). (2005). The Norton anthology of children's literature. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co.

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[1] Yetter refers to the Anglo-Cymric Score, by A.J. Ellis who talks about Welsh counting words.

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