The Nursery Rhyme Book Part 25

[Ill.u.s.tration: Notes.]

THE origin of the right nursery rhymes is, of course, popular, like the origin of ballads, tales (_Marchen_), riddles, proverbs, and, indeed, of literature in general. They are probably, in England, of no great antiquity, except in certain cases, where they supply the words to some child's _ballet_, some dance game. A game may be of prehistoric antiquity, as appears in the rudimentary forms of backgammon, _Pachin_ and _Patullo_, common to Asia, and to the Aztecs, as Dr. Tylor has demonstrated. The child's game--

"Buck, buck, How many fingers do I hold up?"

was known in ancient Rome as _bucca_, though it would be audacious to infer that it arrived in Britain since the Norman Conquest. Hop-scotch is also exceedingly ancient, and the curious will find the theories of its origin in Mr. Gomme's learned work on Children's Dances and Songs, published by the Folk-Lore Society. Dr. Nicholson's book on the Folk-Lore of Children in Sutherland, still unpublished when I write, may also be consulted. One of the songs collected by Dr. Nicholson was copied down by a Danish traveller in London during the reign of Charles II. Robert Chambers's "Popular Rhymes of Scotland" is also a treasure of this kind of antiquities. It is probable that the Lowland rhymes have occasionally Gaelic counterparts, as the nursery tales certainly have, but I am unacquainted with any researches on this topic by Celtic scholars.

In Mr. Halliwell's Collection, from which this volume is abridged, no ma.n.u.script authority goes further back than the reign of Henry VIII., though King Arthur and Robin Hood are mentioned. The obscure Scottish taunt, levelled at Edward I. when besieging Berwick, is much in the manner of a nursery rhyme:--

"Kyng Edward, When thu havest Berwic, Pike thee!

When thu havest geton, Dike thee!"

This, as Sir Herbert Maxwell says, "seems deficient in salt," but was felt to be irritating by the greatest of the Plantagenets. The jingles on the King of France, against the Scots in the time of James I., against the Tory, or Irish rapparee, and about the Gunpowder Plot, are of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Great Rebellion supplies "Hector Protector" and "The Parliament soldiers are gone to the king;" "Over the water and over the sea" (or lee) is a parody of a Jacobite ditty of 1748, and refers genially to that love of ale and wine which Prince Charles displayed as early as he showed military courage, at the age of fourteen, when he distinguished himself at the siege of Gaeta. His grandfather, James II., lives in "The rhyme for _porringer_;" his father in "Jim and George were two great lords."

_Tout finit par des chansons._

Of non-historical jingles, Mr. Halliwell found traces in MSS. as old as the fifteenth century. But it would be a very rare accident that led to their being written down when n.o.body dreamed of studying Folk-Lore with solemnity. "Thirty days hath September" occurs in the "Return from Parna.s.sus," of Shakspeare's date, and a few s.n.a.t.c.hes, like "When I was a little boy," occur in Shakspeare himself, just as a German version of "My Minnie me slew" comes in Goethe's _Faust_. Indeed, the sc.r.a.ps of magical versified spells in _Marchen_ are entirely of the character of nursery rhymes, and are of dateless antiquity. The rhyme of "Dr.

Faustus" may be nearly as old as the mediaeval legend dramatised by Marlowe. The Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists put nursery rhymes in the mouths of characters; a few jingles creep into the Miscellanies, such as "The Pills to purge Melancholy." Among these (1719) is "Tom the piper's son," who played "Over the hills and far away," a song often adapted to Jacobite uses. In 1719, when the Spanish plan of aid to James III. collapsed, pipers must have been melancholy enough.

_Melismata_ (1611) already knows the "Frog who lived in a well," and in _Deuteromelia_ (1609) occurs the "Three blind mice." On the Riddles, or _Devinettes_, chapters might be, and have been written. They go back to Samson's time, at least, and are as widely distributed as proverbs, even among Wolufs and Fijians. The most recent discussion is in Mr. Max Muller's "Contributions to the Science of Mythology" (1897). For using "charms," like "Come, b.u.t.ter, come," many an old woman was burned by the wisdom of our ancestors. Such versified charms, _deduc.u.n.t carmima lunam_, are the _karakias_ of the Maoris, and the _mantras_ of Indian superst.i.tion. The magical papyri of ancient Egypt are full of them. In our own rhyme, "Hiccup," regarded as a personal kind of fiend ("Animism"), is charmed away by a promise of a b.u.t.ter-cake. There is a collection of such things in Reginald Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft."

Thus our old nursery rhymes are smooth stones from the brook of time, worn round by constant friction of tongues long silent. We cannot hope to make new nursery rhymes, any more than we can write new fairy tales.

THE END