Page:A book of nursery songs and rhymes (1895).pdf/16

INTRODUCTION in a Misty Morning.' This appears in Durfy's 'Pills to Purge Melancholly,' 1719, in fifteen stanzas. This has as its burden, 'With how do you do? and how do you do? and how do you do again?'

I have heard this sung in a most fragmentary manner, never extending beyond three verses.

The story of Jack and Jill exists in a long ballad; of that nothing has remained in the nursery save the lines—

Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down, and broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after.

Little Jack Horner is the subject of a very lengthy ballad and chap-book tale. He is a sort of Jack the Giant Killer, and Tom Thumb, and Tom, the Piper's Son with the magic pipes that make all men dance. But what of all that remains? Nothing Everything is gone, save the solitary incident of his putting his thumb into the Christmas pudding, and belauding himself like the Pharisee. Some old ballads have been mutilated purposely, because indelicate and unfit for children's ears, and in the process of mutilation have lost their significance. They have lived in this condition, whereas