Welcome to Nurseryland!
There’s a lady as you may have heard,
Who can fly through the sky on a bird!
She’s a darling old dame,
Mother Goose is her name,
And of poems she knows every word!
Yes, Mother Goose is the patroness of nursery poems. She first showed up in 1695 in a fairy tale book published by Charles Perrault in France. By 1729 she had crossed to England (“Histories or Tales of Past Times, Told by Mother Goose”), and she flew the Atlantic in 1786, landing at a printer’s in Worcester, Mass. where “Mother Goose’s Melody” was published. She continues to be a popular figure, and national Mother Goose Day is celebrated every May 1st.
Several things can be noticed immediately about the earliest Mother Goose rhymes. The first is that they are usually quite short and the rhymes are mostly simple, all part of the oral tradition that allows the verses to be remembered easily and passed down from generation to generation. To wit:
Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick,
Jack jump over
The candle stick.
This one is a little more complex, also four lines but with quite a clever set of internal rhymes:
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.
Then there is the importance of animals in nursery verses: cats, mice, horses. cows, foxes, lots of bears named Teddy, the occasional lion or kangaroo and, of course, Mother Goose’s gander. Conversations with animals are frequent.
Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?
I’ve been to London to look at the queen.
Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you there?
I frightened a little mouse under her chair.
Many of Mother Goose’s rhymes are associated with singing and games.
This game poem involves sneezing and falling down:
Ring-a-ring o’roses,
A pocket full of posies.
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.
And here’s a game of capturing, enlivened by a lovely damsel.
London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My Fair Lady.
Hmm. That might be a good title for a musical.
The origins of many nursery poems are lost in the mist of time, but others, especially longer ones, are the work of some accomplished poets, among them: Edward Lear (1812-1883), who wrote “The Owl and the Pussycat” with its “runcible spoon” (a pronged combination of a fork and a spoon); and Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), whose “A Child’s Garden of Verses” contains sixty-five poems including “The Swing” and “My Shadow.”
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.
He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
A poetry wag recently offered an amended version:
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
It’s only after dark that I’ve the slightest privacy.
Other writers, including Ogden Nash and John Ciardi, published books of nursery rhymes, but the dean among them is A.A. Milne (1882-1956), who created Winnie-the-Pooh and made his own son, Christopher Robin, a household celebrity.
They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace —
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
“A soldier’s life is terrible hard,”
Says Alice.
They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace —
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We saw a guard in a sentry-box.
“One of the sergeants looks after their socks,”
Says Alice.
They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace —
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We looked for the King, but he never came.
“Well, God take care of him, all the same,”
Says Alice.
Intriguingly, a number of English nursery rhymes may have historical underpinnings, often attached to political events or real personages. There has been speculation that “Bo-peep” refers to Mary, Queen of Scots, “Jack Sprat” to Charles I, and “Little Boy Blue” to Cardinal Wolsey. I have read that “Three Blind Mice” might be about Queen Mary I executing three Protestant bishops. I only know that as kids we used to sing “Three Blind Mice” to the umpires at baseball games.
Note: Occasionally a bit of the archaic sneaks into nursery rhymes. In “The King’s Breakfast” (See video below) a cow is referred to as an alderney. It turns out that this is a breed that was once raised on the island of Alderney in the English Channel. Evidently the Channel Isles have a monopoly on cow breeds. Two neighboring islands are Jersey and Guernsey. Live and learn.
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Finally, you may ask: are new nursery rhymes still being written? Well I guess so! I discovered this one just the other day.
I know a brilliant chap named Reg,
His brilliant wife is Becky,
Until they’ve read their Berkshire Edge
They won’t sit down for brekkie.
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Now for our video. featuring the members of the First Poetry Quartet: Cynthia Herman, Jill Tanner, George Backman and Norman Snow. We asked them to take us back to the days of their childhood, and they happily agreed. As we join them, it appears that there are some problems in Nurseryland!
CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR VIDEO: MOTHER GOOSE
Editor’s Note: If this column seems familiar, it’s because we ran it during the Christmas season last year, too. But it seems so appropriate, and Anyone for Tennyson has so many new followers, that we decided to bring it back as our Christmas classic. We hope Christmas will be merry in your nursery.
