occasional rhymes to chant when it is raining or snowing, or when a ladybird or snail is
encountered. Alphabet and number rhymes, riddles, tongue twisters, rhymed proverbs
and rhymes of advice are for people approaching school age. However, the lines which
have caused nursery rhyme books to be called ‘poets’ primers’ are from evocative,
magical songs like ‘How far is it to Babylon?’, ‘I have four sisters beyond the sea’, and
‘Tom, he was a piper’s son’, with its refrain of ‘Over the hills and far away’. These, and
the long ballad-like songs such as ‘A fox jumped up one winter’s night’, are for aesthetic
pleasure alone, and lucky is the family who has at least one performer who can say or
sing some of them from beginning to end.
Most people, even those who disclaim any repertoire, will find that they know about
twelve nursery rhymes, which are in such common use that they seem to be ‘in the air’
and no one can remember how they first came to know them. These are the rhymes most
illustrated in ephemeral children’s books, and used to decorate babies’ toys and children’s
china. Typically, they are narratives which pack a whole drama into four or six lines,
and describe characters which have entered the English language: everyone
understands an allusion to the Grand Old Duke of York’s march or Mother Hubbard’s
cupboard. They include ‘Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle’, ‘Hickory, dickory,
dock’ (with its limerick-like structure), and a group of histories, each beginning Little
Somebody-or-other and each containing six dactylic lines, which may have originated in
a seventeenth-century craze similar to the later limerick craze. The best-known of these
are ‘Little Miss Muffet’, ‘Little Polly Flinders’, and ‘Little Jack Horner’, but other less
skilful attempts have survived, such as ‘Little Poll Parrot’ and ‘Little General Monk’
(General Monk was a famous Cromwellian soldier who died in 1669).
Two of the chief characteristics of nursery rhymes are their brevity and strongly-
marked rhythm; in fact these may be said to be necessary qualifications for a verse to
enter the nursery rhyme canon, since they ensure memorability. In a desperate need to
pacify or divert a squalling infant an adult needs to recall instantly the rhyme that will
do the trick.
Another effect of the emphatic syllables is to implant the rhythms of the English
language in minds too young to understand all the words (and some of the words are
distinctly archaic). Rhymes with trochaic lines, like Baa, baa, black sheep and Humpty
Dumpty sat on a wall, are the simplest for 2-year-olds to master, and are favourites for
reciting to admiring grandparents.
The overwhelming majority of nursery rhymes were not in the first place composed for
children. They are for the most part fragments of songs and ballads originally intended
for adult delectation. For instance, the ballad of the ‘Moste Strange weddinge of the
ffrogge and the mowse’ was registered at Stationers’ Hall in 1580, and went through
various transmogrifications before, in the early nineteenth century, Grimaldi made
famous the version with the refrain Rowley, powley, gammon and spinach which is still
popular today. ‘Lavender’s blue’ and ‘One misty moisty morning’ were, in the second
half of the seventeenth century, black-letter ballads written by anonymous literary
hacks.
Anonymity is, by definition, a requirement of traditional verse, which is handed down
by word of mouth without thought of authorship. The few authors of nursery rhymes
whose names are known are never credited with their productions. Who cares to know
174 TYPES AND GENRES