FOR THE GIRLS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

FOR THE GIRLS.

THE ORIGIN OF OUR RHYMES

WHO WEAVES THE MAGIC?

My Dear Girls,— Not so long ago a little old lady died in England, and on her grava the villagers placed an inscription recording the fact that she was the heroine of the nursery rhyme "Mary had a little Lamb. The author of this rhyme remembered the old lady, as a little girl, beinr followed to school each day by her pet lamb. It was the quamtness of this that prompted her to write, for little Mary s amusement, the nursery rhyme that is known throughout the English-speaking wond to-day. "Humpty-Dumpty" and the tale of bis fall is a verse that has penetrated the very far corners of the globe. Various nations, deluding the Egyptians, Hindus and Japanese, at one time behoved that the world was originally laid as an e S g by some gfijantfc b.rd. According to a Finnish legend the egg fell and broke, the yolk becoming the sun, the white the moon, and tbe fragments of sbell tbe stars. That "Jack and Jill" holds pride of place in the nursery is simply beyond dispute. Probably the small folk who chant it can readily appreciate the plight of two little people tumbling down a hill and breaking their crowns. This rhyme always proves too much for one tendar-hearted little girl of my acquaintance, who is invariably reduced to tears at the bare mention of it. "Jack and Jill" is of very early origin and is based on an old Scandinavian myth, which, however, would take up too much space to explain here. The verse telling of that amazing pie containing the four-and-twenty blackbirds refers to a quaint old Twelfth Night custom, in the sixteenth century it was a common prank on Twelfth Night to make pies containing "surprises." The chronicler, feeling honour bound, no doubt, explains that in the pie under discussion the birds were actually put in after the baking and not before. Even so, the good King's astonishment must have been very complete "when the pie was opened and the birds began to sing . . . ." Of the many rhymes that I have failed to mention practically nothing whatever is known. This is not surprising when it is remembered that the majority have been handed down orally from one feneration to another for centuries and centuries before eVer a i » appearing in print. Their origins, alas, are lost, * XST^T*^ and how they found their way into the magic land I of nursery rhymes must forever remain a mystery. \J** " .^y^"^