Page:The Chinese Boy and Girl.djvu/24

Rh verses have been added without rhyme, reason, rhythm, sense or good taste. They are as follows:

The moral teachings of nursery rhymes are as varied as the morals of the people to whom the rhymes belong. The "Little Mouse" already given contains both a warning and a penalty. The mouse which had climbed up the candlestick to steal tallow was unable to get down. This was the penalty for stealing, and indicates to children that if they visit the cupboard in their mother's absence and take her sweetmeats without her permission, they may suffer as the mouse did. To leave the mouse there after he had repeatedly called for that halo-crowned grandmother, who refused to come, would have been too much for the child's sympathies, and so the mouse doubles himself up into a wheel, and rolls to the floor.

In other rhymes, children are warned against stealing, but the penalty threatened is rather an indication of the untruthfulness of the parent or nurse than a promise of reform in the child, for they are told that,