Nursery Rhymes

A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the late 18th/early 19th century and in North America the term Mother Goose Rhymes, introduced in the mid-1700s, is still often used

Early nursery rhymes
A French poem, similar to "Thirty days hath September", numbering the days of the month, was recorded in the 13th century. From the later Middle Ages there are records of short children's rhyming songs, often as marginalia. From the mid-16th century they begin to be recorded in English plays. Most nursery rhymes were not written down until the 18th century, when the publishing of children's books began to move from polemic and education towards entertainment, but there is evidence for many rhymes existing before this, including "To market, to market" and "Cock a doodle doo", which date from at least the late 16th century.

The first English collections, Tommy Thumb's Song Book and a sequel, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, are both thought to have been published before 1744, with such songs becoming known as 'Tommy Thumb's songs'. The publication of John Newbery's compilation of English rhymes, Mother Goose's Melody, or, Sonnets for the Cradle (London, c.1765), is the first record we have of many classic rhymes, still in use today. These rhymes seem to have come from a variety of sources, including traditional riddles, proverbs, ballads, lines of Mummers' plays, drinking songs, historical events, and, it has been suggested, ancient pagan rituals. About half of the currently recognised "traditional" English rhymes were known by the mid-18th century.

Meanings of nursery rhymes
Many nursery rhymes have been argued to have hidden meanings and origins. John Bellenden Ker (?1765–1842), for example, wrote four volumes arguing that English nursery rhymes were actually written in 'Low Saxon', a hypothetical early form of Dutch. He then 'translated' them back into English, revealing in particular a strong tendency to anti-clericalism.[15][16] Many of the ideas about the links between rhymes and historical persons, or events, can be traced back to Katherine Elwes's book The Real Personages of Mother Goose (1930), in which she linked famous nursery-rhyme characters with real people, on little or no evidence. She assumed that children's songs were a peculiar form of coded historical narrative, propaganda or covert protest, and rarely considered that they could have been written simply for entertainment.

List Of Nursery Rhymes                                                                                                              


"Baa, Baa, Black Sheep"

"Doctor Foster"

"Goosey Goosey Gander"

"The Grand Old Duke of York"

"Humpty Dumpty"

"Jack and Jill"

"Little Boy Blue"

"Little Jack Horner"

"London Bridge Is Falling Down"

"Mary Had a Little Lamb"

"Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary"

"Old King Cole"

"Ring a Ring o' Roses"

"Rock-a-bye Baby"

"There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe"

"Three Blind Mice"

"Who Killed Cock Robin?"