Page:A book of nursery songs and rhymes (1895).pdf/15

INTRODUCTION for it was rather the Roman Catholic Church which was despoiled by that monarch. The 'kissing the maiden all forlorn' signifies 'Elizabeth's union of the Churches.' Mr. George also gives the Jewish nursery rhyme found in all passover books, and which he pompously describes as taken out of 'an ancient Jewish hymn in the Bodleian library, Oxford,' and plays the same tricks with it. Undoubtedly Mr. George had read Mr. Ker's book.

The fact really is that which Mr. Ker recognised at the outset: Nursery Rhymes are nonsense. To which we may add, that in a good many cases they never were intended to be otherwise. They owe their origin to the circumstance that children have to be amused and lulled, and that a bit of rhyme, set to an easy tune, will lull them to sleep when peevish, and amuse them in the twilight, when they are tired of romping and racketing.

One thing a nurse would be certain to do, in either case, would be to sing to the child some ditty she herself has heard—probably as a child, and which she remembers imperfectly. A long song thus gets cut down to a couple of verses; and, in another generation, the two verses shrink into one.

An instance in case is that of the song 'All