Page:A book of nursery songs and rhymes (1895).pdf/13

 INTRODUCTION.

IN 1837 Mr. J. B. Ker gave a book to the world in two volumes, entitled 'The Archology of Nursery Rhymes,' which is, perhaps, one of the oddest instances extant of misdirected labour.

Mr. Ker started from the point that Nursery Rhymes are usually arrant nonsense. Why should little Miss Muffet sit on a tuffet, and little Jack Horner occupy a corner? He assumed that the English nurse was incapable of composing and singing nonsense, which, it must be allowed, was a large assumption at the outset. Then he convinced himself, and desired to convince others, that a great deal of meaning lurked behind this nonsense. To find out the meaning was his next undertaking, and he discovered that by rendering the Nursery Rhymes of Old England into Dutch words having a resemblance in sound more or less far-fetched, strings of words could be obtained which, with a little arrangement, were capable of being represented as a tirade against monarchism, sacerdotalism, catholicism. Consequently the nurses of England were the true