THE NURSERY RHYMES OF ENGLAND.
THE NURSERY RHYMES OF ENGLAND:
Collected by
JAMES ORCHARD HALLIWELL.
THE NURSERY RHYMES
OF
ENGLAND.
BY JAMES ORCHARD HALLIWELL.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. B. SCOTT.
LONDON AND NEW YORK: FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.
1886.
PREFACE
TO THE
FIFTH EDITION.
HE great encouragement which hasbeen given by the public to the previouseditions of this little work, satisfactorilyproves that, notwithstanding the extensionof serious education to all but the veryearliest periods of life, there still existsan undying love for the popular remnants ofthe ancient Scandinavian nursery literature.The infants and children of the nineteenthcentury have not, then, deserted the rhymeschanted so many ages since by the mothers ofthe North. This is a "great nursery fact"—aproof that there is contained in some of[page iv]these traditional nonsense-rhymes a meaningand a romance, possibly intelligible only tovery young minds, that exercise an influenceon the fancy of children. It is obvious theremust exist something of this kind; for nomodern compositions are found to supplyaltogether the place of the ancient doggerel.
The nursery rhyme is the novel and lightreading of the infant scholar. It occupies,with respect to the A B C, the position of aromance which relieves the mind from thecares of a riper age. The absurdity and frivolityof a rhyme may naturally be its chiefattractions to the very young; and there willbe something lost from the imagination ofthat child, whose parents insist so much onmatters of fact, that the "cow" must bemade, in compliance with the rules of theireducational code, to jump "under" insteadof "over the moon;" while of course thelittle dog must be considered as "barking,"not "laughing" at the circumstance.
These, or any such objections,—for itseems there are others of about equal weight,—are,it appears to me, more silly than theworst nursery rhyme the little readers willmeet with in the following pages. I amquite willing to leave the question to their