ABOUT SOME OLD RHYMES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 19, 7 May 1892, Page 485

ABOUT SOME OLD RHYMES.

‘ Sing a Song of Sixpence ’ is as old as the sixteenth century. ‘ Three Blind Mice ’ is to be found in a music book dated 1609. ‘ The Frog and the Mouse ’ was produced in 1580. ‘ Three Children Sliding on the lee ’ dates from 1639. ‘ London Bridge is Broken Down ’ is of unfathomed antiquity. * Boys and Girls Come Out to Play 'is certainly as old as the reign of Charles 11. ; so is ‘ Lucy Locket lost her Pocket,’to the tune of which ‘Yankee Doodle’ was written. ‘ Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, Where Have You Been ’ is of the age of Queen Elizabeth. * The old woman tossed in a blanket' was written in the reign of James IL, and is supposed to allude to him. Some of these skippy verses were incorporated with ‘Mother Goose’s Melodies,’ and suggested some of them. Mother Goose was a real, and not a fictitious, person. Her maiden name was Goose : she came of an excellent family, and was born in Boston. Her daughter Elizabeth married Thomas Fleet, a printer. They were blessed with a son, to whom grandmother Goose became very much attached. It was for him that she composed and sang the ditties. Mr Fleet, her son-in law, was a shrewd fellow. He saw that money could be made out of the nursery rhymes, and so he issued them in a book under the title of ‘ Mother Goose’s Melodies,’ and they became widely known and instantly popular.

• Little Jack Horner ’ is said to be founded on fact, and it is a very old jingle. There are several versions of the story, but the accepted one is that the Abbot of Glastonbury had offended Henry VII by building his kitchen so substantially that the destroyers of the monasteries were unable to throw it down. In a >age the king sent for the abbot, who. hoping to appease the monarch, sent to him his steward, John Horner, with a wonderful pie, the interior of which was composed of the title deeds to twelve manors. But as John Horner sat in the corner of the waggon that carried him to the king, he was induced by curiosity to lift up the crust and to abstract therefrom a title deed, which, on his safe and successful return home he showed to the abbot, and told him that the king had given him the deed for a reward. The deed was that of the Manor of Wells.