CHAPTER I._A History of Nursery Rhymes

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HISTORY

NURSERY

RHYMES

PERCY B. GREEN

LONDON

GREENING & CO., LTD.

20, CECIL COURT

CHARING CROSS ROAD

1899

Now Reissued by

Singing Tree Press

1249 Washington Blvd., Detroit, Michigan. 1968

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 68-31082

Transcriber's Note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note, whilst

significant amendments are noted at the end of the text.

Archaic and dialect spellings remain as printed.

Greek text has been transliterated and is shown between {braces}.

The oe ligature is shown as [oe]. The + character has been used to

represent the cross symbols used in Chapter IX.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION xiii

PART I.

CHAP.

I. Prehistoric man--His language one of signs and sounds--The

story of Psammetichus and the Two Babies--Idiom of

language a survival of primitive peoples 1

II. Modern types of early man--Sign-language of people living on

the globe to-day--The custom of the UVINZA grandees--The

"good-morning" of the Walunga tribe--Signs of

hospitality in the sign vocabulary of the North American

Indian--The "attingere extremis digitis" of the

Romans--Clap-hands one of the first lessons of the

Nursery--The modern survival of hand-clapping--"Is it

rude to shake hands, Nurse?"--A hypercritical

mother--Plato's rebuke--Agesilaus and his

children--Nursery classics and critical babies--"Lalla,

lalla, lalla" of the Roman child--The well-known baby

dance of "Crow and caper, caper and crow" 8

III. Writers on comparative religions show that entire religious

observances come down to modern peoples from heathen

sources--The Bohemian Peasant and his Apple Tree--A myth

of long descent found in the rhyme of "A Woman, a

Spaniel, and Walnut Tree"; our modern "Pippin, pippin,

fly away," indicates the same sentiment--The fairy tale

of Ashputtel and the Golden Slipper, the legend from

which came our story of Cinderella--Tylor on Children's

Sports--The mystery of Northern Europe at Christ's

coming--The Baby's Rattle--Ancestral worship follows sun

and moon worship, and gives us the tales of fairies,

goblins, and elves--Boyd Dawkins' story of the Isle of

Man farmer--A Scandinavian Manxman--Modernised lullaby

of a Polish mother--"Shine, Stars"--"Rain, rain, go

away"--Wind making--LULLABIES--Bulgarian, German,

"Sleep, Baby, Sleep"--The lullaby of the Black

Guitar--"Baby, go to Sleep"--English version, "Hush

thee, my Babby"--Danish lullaby of "Sweetly sleep, my

little Child"--"Bye, baby bunting" 17

IV. Elf-land--Old-time superstitions--A custom of providing a

feast for the dead known in Yorkshire, North-west

Ireland, and in Armenia--The Erl King of Goethe--Ballet

of the Leaf-dressed Girl--The Spirit of the Waters--An

Irish legend of Fior Usga--Scotch superstition--Jenny

Greenteeth of Lancashire--The Merrow of the West of

Ireland--Soul Cages--The German rhyme of "O Man of the

Sea, come list unto Me"--Mysticism among uncivilised

races--The Corn Spirit--The Rye-wolf--"The Cow's in the

Corn"--"Ring a ring a rosies"--"Cuckoo Cherry Tree"--Our

earliest song, "Summer is a-coming in"--"Hot Cockles" at

Yorkshire funerals--"Over the Cuckoo Hill, I

oh!"--Indian Lore 34

PART II.

I. GAMES--Whipping-tops, Marbles, etc.--"I am good at Scourging

of my Toppe," date 15--(?)--Dice and

Pitch-and-Toss--"Dab a Prin in my Lottery Book"--"A'

the Birds of the Air"--Hop Scotch--"Zickety, dickety,

dock"--"All good Children go to Heaven"--"Mary at the

Cottage Door."

MARRIAGE GAMES--"If ever I Marry I'll Marry a Maid,"

1557 A.D.--London Street Games--A Wedding--"Choose one,

choose two, choose the nearest one to you"--"Rosy

Apple, Lemon, and Pear"--The King of the

Barbarines--"I've got Gold and I've got Silver"--A

Lancashire Round Game--"Fol th' riddle, I do, I do, I

do"--Round Game of the Mulberry Bush--"Pray, Mr. Fox,

what time is it?"--"Mother, buy me a Milking

Can"--"Here comes a Poor Sailor from Botany Bay"--"Can

I get there by Candle-light?" 58

II. NURSERY GAMES--A Game for a Wet Day--"Cows and Horses walk

on four legs"--A Game nearly 300 years old--"There were

two birds sitting on a stone"--A B C Game--"Hi diddle

diddle"--"I Apprentice my Son"--An Armenian Child's

Game, "Jack's Alive"--Russian Superstition 80

III. JEWISH RHYMES--"A kid, a kid my father bought for two

pieces of money--a kid! a kid!"--"The house that Jack

built"--The Scotch version, "There was an old woman

swept her house and found a silver penny"--The Chad

Gadyâ--"Who knoweth One" 89

IV. An ancient English Rhyme--"A Frog who would a-wooing go,"

the version of same sung in Henry VIII.'s reign--Songs

of London Boys in Tudor times--"Quoth John to

Joan"--"Good parents in good manners do instruct their

child"--"Tom a Lin"--"Bryan O'Lynn"--Four songs sung by

children in Elizabeth's reign--"We'll have a Wedding at

our House" 100

V. CAT RHYMES--"Pussy-cat, pussy-cat"--"Ten little mice sat down

to spin"--"The rose is red, the grass is green"--"I Love

little Pussy"--"Three Cats sat by the Fireside"--"There

was a Crooked Man"--"Ding dong bell"--Cat tale of Dick

Whittington 112

VI. A Cradle Song of the first century, "Sleep, O son, sleep" 117

VII. JACK RHYMES 123

VIII. RIDDLE MAKING--German riddle of "Seven White and Seven

Black Horses"--Greek riddle of the Two Sisters; another

of "The year, months, and days"--"Old Mother

Needle"--"Purple, yellow, red, and green"--"As round as

an Apple"--"Humpty Dumpty"--The Ph[oe]nix

fable--"Ladybird! ladybird! fly away home" 127

IX. NURSERY CHARMS--"When a twister twisting twists him a

twist"--An Essex Charm for a Churn--"Matthew, Mark,

Luke, and John" Charms.

MONEY RHYMES--"How a lass gave her lover three slips

for a tester"--"Little Mary Esther"--"Sing a Song of

Sixpence"--"There was an old man in a velvet

coat"--"See-saw"--"One a penny"--"There's never a

maiden in all the town"--"Pinky, pinky,

bow-bell"--Numerical Nursery Rhyme--Baker's Man 134

X. SCRAPS--"Oh, slumber, my darling, thy sire is a

knight"--"Bye, baby bumpkin"--"Nose, nose, jolly red

nose"--"I saw a man in the moon"--A Henry VIII.

Rhyme--"Peg-Peg"--"Round about"--"Father

Long-legs"--"Two-penny rice"--"Come when you're

called"--A Game--"Nanny Natty Coat"--"As I was going

down Sandy Lane"--"There was an old woman"--"Robert

Rowley"--"Little General Monk"--"Dr. Tom Tit"--"Tommy

Trot"--"Goosey Gander"--"The White Dove sat on the

Castell Wall"--"This Little Pig"--"Little Bo

Peep"--"See-saw, Margery Daw"--"Four-and-twenty

Tailors"--"Little Moppet"--"Hub-a-dub, dub"--"Diddle

Dumpling"--"Jack and Jyll"--"The Cat and the

Fiddle"--"Baa! baa! black sheep"--"Here comes a poor

Duke out of Spain"--"Ride to the

market"--"Cross-patch"--"The Man of the South"--A

Lancashire Fragment--"Dickery dock"--"There was an old

woman toss'd up in a blanket"--"We're all in the

dumps"--A Proverb--A Compliment--The Reverse 141

XI. SONGS--"Will the love that you're so rich

in?"--"Cock-a-doodle doo"--"King Cole"--"Rowsty

dowt"--"There was a Little Man"--The Creole's

Song--"Dapple Grey"--"Blue Betty"--"Tom, Tom, the

Piper's Son"--"Oh dear, what can the matter

be?"--"Simple Simon"--"I saw a Ship a-sailing"--"David

the Welshman"--"My Father he Died" 152

XII. SCOTCH RHYMES--"As I went up the Brandy Hill"--Scotch

version of Bryan O'Lynn--"Cripple Dick"--"Pan, Pan,

Play"--"Gi'e a thing"--A Gruesome Riddle--"King and

Queen of Cantelon"--Hidee--"Wha's your Daddie?"--"The

Moon is a Lady" 162

XIII. A favourite Nursery Hymn--The Latin version of the

Virgin's Lullaby 169

XIV. "There was a maid came out of Kent"--"Martin Smart"--"Great

A, little B"--A Nursery Tale--"A duck, a drake"--"Hark!

Hark!"--A B C Jingles--A Catch Rhyme 173

XV. BELL RHYMES--"Banbury Cross"--"Gay go up, and gay go

down"--"Mary, Mary, quite contrary"--The Provençal

"Ding-dong" 178

XVI. Political Significations of Nursery Rhymes--"Come,

Jack"--"A man of words"--Pastorini, Lord Grey,

Lyttleton, Dan O'Connell, and Lord Brougham caricatured 185

INTRODUCTION

Without advancing any theory touching the progression of the mother's

song to her babe, other than declaring lullabies to be about as old as

babies, a statement which recalls to mind an old story, entitled "The

Owl's Advice to an Inquisitive Cat."

"O cat," said the sage owl of the legend, "to pass life agreeably most

of all you need a philosophy; you and I indeed enjoy many things in

common, especially night air and mice, yet you sadly need a philosophy

to search after, and think about matters most difficult to discover."

After saying this the owl ruffled his feathers and pretended to think.

But the cat observed that it was foolish to search after such things.

"Indeed," she purringly said, "I only trouble about easy matters."

"Ah! I will give you an example of my philosophy, and how inquiry ought

to be made. You at least know, I presume," scoffingly exclaimed the owl,

"that the chicken arises from the egg, and the egg comes from the hen.

Now the object of true philosophy is to examine this statement in all

its bearings, and consider which was first, the egg or the bird."

The cat was quite struck with the proposition.

"It is quite clear," went on the owl, "to all but the ignorant, one or

other appeared first, since neither is immortal."

The cat inquired, "Do you find out this thing by philosophy?"

"Really! how absurd of you to ask," concluded the feathered one. "And I

thank the gods for it, were it as you suggest, O cat, philosophy would

give no delight to inquirers, for knowing all things would mean the end

and destruction of philosophy."

With this owl's apology nursery-lore is presented to my readers without

the legion of verified references of that character demanded as

corroborative evidence in the schools of criticism to-day.

A few leading thoughts culled from such men as Tylor, Lubbock, Wilson,

McLennan, Frazer, and Boyd Dawkins, etc., the experiences of our modern

travellers among primitive races, Indian and European folk-lore, the

world's credulities past and present, have helped me to fix the idea

that amongst the true historians of mankind the children of our streets

find a place.

A HISTORY

NURSERY RHYMES

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

"The scene was savage, but the scene was new."

Scientists tell us many marvellous tales, none the less true because

marvellous, about the prehistoric past. Like the owl in the preface,

they are not discouraged because the starting-point is beyond reach; and

we, like the cat, should try to awaken our interest when evidences are

presented to us that on first hearing sound like the wonderful tales of

the Orient.

Thousands of years ago in our own land dwelt two races of people, the

River Drift-men and the Cave-dwellers. The River Drift-man was a hunter

of a very low order, possessing only the limited intelligence of the

modern Australian native. This man supported life much in the same way

we should expect a man to do, surrounded by similar conditions; but, on

the other hand, the Cave-dweller showed a singular talent for

representing the animals he hunted, and his sketches reveal to us the

capacity he had for seeing the beauty and grace of natural objects. Were

a visit to be paid to the British Museum, his handicraft, rude when

compared to modern art, could be seen in the fragments beyond all cavil

recording his primitive culture.

Without, then, any very great stretch of imagination we can picture to

ourselves this man as belonging to one of the most primitive types of

our race, having little occasion to use a vocabulary--save of a most

meagre order; and indeed his language would embody only a supply of

words just expressive of his few simple wants. Without daring to compare

primitive culture with modern advancement, this prototype's appetites

would have been possibly served for the greater part by sign-language,

and the use of a few easy protophones. To-day, after the lapse of ages

since this Second Stone Age, man went up and possessed the land; we with

our new inventions, wants, and newly-acquired tastes have added a legion

of scientifically constructed sounds, built up on the foundation he laid

with his first utterances, for language is not the outcome of race, but

of social contact. As an interpolation the tale of the Egyptian

Psammetichus is worth telling at this stage.

Desirous of finding--as the ancients then thought existed--the original

language of mankind, Psammetichus isolated two babies from birth in

separate apartments, and for two years they were not allowed to hear the

sound of a human voice. At the end of that time they were brought

together and kept for a few hours without food. Psammetichus then

entered the room, and both children uttered the same strange cry,

"Becos, Becos." "Ah!" said Psammetichus, "'Becos, Becos,' why! that is

Phrygian for bread," and Phrygian was said to have been the ancient

universal language of man. Still, however one feels disposed to imagine

what took place in the Baby Kingdom of these remote ages, brief

allusions only will be made to the veiled past, when either

sign-language, or relics, or myths of long descent are presented to us

in the form of nursery-lore.

How many thousands of years have gone by since the period known to

scientists as the Pleistocene was here--a time when the whole of Britain

and North-West Europe wore a glistening mantle of ice, and when man

could scarce exist, save on the fringe of the south-east littoral of

England--none can say. At all events it may be safely assumed that not

till the end of the Pleistocene Era was Britain or Scandinavia the abode

of man, when the fauna and flora assumed approximately their present

condition, and the state of things called Recent by geologists set in.

Whether the Aryans be accepted as the first people to inhabit our

ice-bound shores in the remote past matters little, and from whence they

sprang (according to Max Müller "somewhere in Asia," or Dr. Schrader

"European Russia," or Herr Penka "from the east to the far west of the

Scandinavian Peninsula") matters still less, "for," says Professor

Huxley, "the speakers of primitive Aryan may have been (themselves) a

mixture of two or more races, just as are the speakers of English or of

French at the present time"; and archæology takes us no further back

than into the Neolithic or Second Stone Age, when the poetry of the

human voice gave a dramatic value to the hitherto primitive

sign-language limitation of the Old Drift-men. At this age, the

Neolithic, arithmetical questions arising in the course of life would

necessarily assume a vocal value instead of a digital one. No longer

would fifteen be counted by holding out ten fingers and five toes, but

an idiomatic phrase, descriptive of the former sign-language, "_of two

hands and one foot's worth_" would be used, just as to-day an African

would express the same problem in a number of cows, and as the

comparatively modern Roman used such pictorial phrases as "_to condemn

a person of his head_." From this era, centuries before the Celt

traversed our shores, "the progress of civilisation" has gone on in one

unbroken continuity from the Second Stone Age man to the present time.

CHAPTER II.

"O dea, si prima repetens ab origine pergam et vacet annales

nostrorum audire laborum. Ante diem clauso componat Vesper

Olympo."--VERGIL, _Æneid_, Book I. 372.

"O goddess, if I were to proceed retracing them from their first

origin, and thou hadst leisure to hear the records of our labours

before (the end), the Evening Star would lull the day to rest,

Olympus being closed."

However, granting the scientific imagination to assume a starting-point

when the vast Ice Period was vanishing and language was not the test of

race, but of social contact, it must be allowed that the River Drift-man

was the first of his species that touched our shores, followed by the

Cave-dwellers some thousands of years later; the latter man having his

abode fixed to a locality, and his wanderings within prescribed limits.

He may have, this prehistoric man, this Cave-dweller, chattered like a

monkey in a patois understood only by his own family; but what is more

reasonable to suppose than that the Drift-men of the marshes and

coastlines had only a restricted use for vocal sounds, sign-language

being expressive enough to meet their few wants? Meagre social

conditions, peculiar isolation, savagery, strife for life, call for no

complex language, but sign-language has the authority of people living

on the globe to-day, not only amongst uncivilised races, but traces are

seen in our very midst.

The few examples of custom and signs given below will better illustrate

the force of the statement.

"Amongst the Uvinza, when two grandees meet, the junior leans forward,

bends his knees, and places the palms of his hands on the ground, one on

either side his feet, while the senior claps hands over him six or

seven times."

In the morning among the Walunga all the villagers turn out, and a

continuous clapping is kept up to the vocalisation of a shrill

"Kwi-tata?" or "How do you do?"

Two special signs for "good" are in the sign-vocabulary of the North

American Indians, and are worth recording. The person greeting holds the

right hand, back up, in front of and close to the heart, with the

fingers extended and pointing to the left. Another habit is that of

passing the open right hand, palm downwards, from the heart, towards the

person greeted. A stranger making his appearance on the frontier line of

an Indian camp seldom fails to recognise the true sentiment of the

chief's salutation, the extended fingers on the left side meaning--

"You are near my heart--expect no treachery," a most solemn surety;

while the hand sent from the heart towards the visitor seems to say--

"I extend hospitality to you."

The "attingere extremis digitis" of the Romans expressed the same

temperate conduct.

But greeting by gesture and hand-clapping still live, and are discovered

in the first lessons given by a mother to her babe.

"Clap hands, papa comes,"

and

"Pat a cake, pat a cake, my little man,

Yes, I will, mother, as fast as I can"

have a universal significance in Child Land. Unfortunately this survival

of hand-clapping, a vestige of a habit belonging to primitive people,

does not begin and end in our modern nursery.

"When I was a child I spake as a child, but when I became a man I put

away childish things," is a resolve daily forgotten.

In the theatre, when our sentiment is awakened by the craft of the stage

player, we show approbation by a round of hand-clapping not one whit

less savage than the habit of the Uvinza grandee or the good-morning

among the Walunga tribe.

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us!"

This demonstration of feeling may have more _corps d'esprit_ than the

feeble "hear, hear" of the educated or self-restrained man, but

sign-language, especially among the Anglo-Saxon race, is on the wane.

Its exodus is slowly going on, lingering anon in the ritual of

religions, yet in social life ever being expelled.

"It is rude to point," says the nursemaid to her little charge.

"Is it rude to shake hands, nurse?" once exclaimed a child cynic. The

nurse was nonplussed. The middle-class mother answers the child's

question--

"Yes, dear--with anyone in a lower position."

"That's a case," said an Irishman on hearing it, "of twopence-halfpenny

looking down on twopence," or by another comparison, it is a case of one

English grandee clapping his hands over another grandee's head. Still,

though educational influences and nine-tenths of the coterie of society

wage war against sign-language, ill-mannered men and badly-behaved

children must always be with us.

"'Tis rude to laugh" is another precept of the hypercritical mother.

Why? Goodness only knows!--for none but a pompous blockhead or a solemn

prig will pretend that he never relaxes. But let ancient Plato, brimful

as he was of philosophy, answer the question "When not to laugh?"

Indulging one day in idle waggery, Plato, on seeing a staid disciple

approach, suddenly exclaimed to his fellows, "Let's be wise now, for I

see a fool coming," and under hypocrisy's mask all merriment ceased.

Agesilaus in mere sport romped with his children, and delighted them by

riding on a stick round the nursery, possibly singing, after the manner

of many a modern rollicking nursery-loving father--

"Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross."

With men, however, kingly proclamations, laws, empires pass away and are

forgotten, time obliterates their memories, but in Child Land all the

inhabitants, from the tiniest crower to the ten-year-old boy, show an

eager appreciation in the conservation of the pleasing lore contained in

the lullabies, the jingles, the tales, the riddles, the proverbs, and

the games of the nursery classics.

And what terrible critics these babies are! What a perverse preference

they have for the soft jingle of nonsensical melody; blank verse with

its five accents and want of rhythm does not soothe: they must have

the--

"Lalla, lalla, lalla,

Aut dormi, aut lacta"

of their prototype of Roman days.

How they revel and delight in the mother's measured song of--

"Dance, little baby, dance up high,

Never mind, baby, mother is nigh;

Crow and caper, caper and crow,

There, little baby, there you go.

Up to the ceiling, down to the ground,

Backwards and forwards, round and round;

So dance, little baby, and mother will sing,

With a high cockolorum and tingle, ting ting."

Or--

"With a merry, gay coral, and tingle, ting ting."[A]

FOOTNOTES:

[A] First printed in a selection of nursery rhymes by Taylor, 1828. A

modern well-known baby dance.

CHAPTER III.

"The moon is up; by Heaven, a lovely eve!

Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand."

The Norwegian explorer, Dr. Nansen, in his address to the Royal

Geographical Society on February 9th, 1897, stated:--

"The long Arctic day was beautiful in itself, though one soon got tired

of it. But when that day vanished and the long Polar night began, then

began the kingdom of beauty, then they had the moon sailing through the

peculiar silence of night and day. The light of the moon shining when

all was marble had a most singular effect."[B]

Writers on Comparative Religions for the most part assert that moon

worship amongst the almost utterly savage tribes in Africa and America,

the hunting, nomad races of to-day, is a noteworthy feature. "It is not

the sun that first attracted the attention of the savage."[C] "In order

of birth the worship of the night sky, inclusive of that of the moon,

precedes that of the day sky and the sun. It was observed long ago that

wherever sun worship existed moon worship was to be found, being a

residuum of an earlier state of religion."[D]

What the early primal melody of thousands of years ago may have been one

can hardly suggest, but that the subject-matter of the song was mythical

there can be very little doubt, and, like folk-lore tales, built upon

and around nature worship; for as the capacity for creating language

does not exhaust all its force at once, but still continues to form new

modes of speech whenever an alteration of circumstances demands them, so

it is with myths. The moon during a long Polar night reigning in a

kingdom of crystalline beauty, when all around is silence and grandeur,

would suggest to the dweller on the fringe of the ice fields--his deity.

The sun, in like manner shedding forth its genial warmth, the

agriculturist would learn to welcome, and to ascribe to its power the

increase of his crop, and just as the limitation of reason holds the

untutored man in bondage, so the myth, the outcome of his ignorance,

becomes his god.

Even though social advancement has made rapid strides among

comparatively modern peoples and nations, not only traces of

mythological, but entire religious observances, reclothed in Christian

costumes, are still kept up. Praying to an apple tree to yield an

abundant crop was the habit of the Bohemian peasant, until Christian

teaching influenced him for the better; yet such a hold had the

tradition of his ancestors over him that the custom still survives, and

yearly on Good Friday before sunrise he enters his garden, and there on

his knees says--

"I pray, O green tree, that God may make thee good."

The old form ran thus--

"I pray thee, O green tree, that thou yield abundantly."

In some districts the lash of the Bohemian peasant's whip is well

applied to the bark of the tree, reminding one of the terse verse--

"A woman, a spaniel, and walnut tree,

The more you beat them the better they be."

There is also something akin, in this Bohemian's former sentiment, to

the wish our nursery children make while eating apples. Coming to the

cores they take out the pippins and throw them over the left shoulder,

exclaiming--

"Pippin, pippin, fly away;

Bring me an apple another day."

Surely a tree hidden within its fruit.

In the German fairy tale of Ashputtel, also known as the golden

slipper--a similar legend is extant amongst the Welsh people--and from

which our modern tale of Cinderella and her glass slipper came, a tree

figured as the mysterious power. After suffering many disappointments

Ashputtel, so the legend relates, goes to a hazel tree and complains

that she has no clothes in which to go to the great feast of the king.

"Shake, shake, hazel tree,

Gold and silver over me,"

she exclaims, and her friends the birds weave garments for her while the

tree makes her resplendent with jewels of gold and silver.

"Children's sport, popular sayings, absurd customs, may be practically

unimportant, but they are not philosophically insignificant, bearing as

they do on primitive culture."[E] Trans-Alpine Europe was a greater

mystery to the nations on the littoral of the Mediterranean at the time

of Christ's appearance in Syria than any spot in Central Africa is to us

to-day.

Across the Northern mountain chains were regions unaffected by Greek or

Roman culture, and the only light shed on the memorials of Northern

Europe's early youth comes from the contributory and dimly illuminative

rays of folk-lore.

THE BABY'S RATTLE

at this juncture is worth according a passing notice, though degenerated

into the bauble it now is.

Among the Siberian, Brazilian, and Redskin tribes it was held as a

sacred and mysterious weapon. This sceptre of power of the modern

nursery--the token primitive man used, and on which the Congo negro

takes his oath--has lost its significance.

The Red Indian of North America had his Rattle man, who, as physician,

used it as a universal prescription in the cure of all disease,

believing, no doubt, that its jargon would allay pain, in like manner as

it attracts and soothes a cross child; and this modern type of primitive

man, the Red Indian, although fast dying out, has no obscured visions of

the records of childhood; they have remained since his _anno mundi_ ran

back to zero. To him the great sources of religious and moral suasion

which gave birth to mediæval and modern Europe, and so largely

contributed to the polity of Asia and the upraising of Africa, have been

a dead letter, which spell his extinction. He lived up to his racial

traditions, and is fast dying with them. His language, his arts, his

religious rites are of an unfamiliar past.

Leaving the Red Indian moon worshipper with his death rattle awhile and

harking back to Europe, Norway stands out as the richest country in

legendary lore, for old-time superstitions have lingered among the

simple and credulous people, living pent up on the horrid crags, where

torrents leap from cliff to valley. Their tales of goblins and spirits,

tales of trolls, gnomes, and a legendary host of other uncanny

creatures, point to the former nature and ancestral worship of a people

cut off from the advancing civilisation of their time. Luckily for the

archæologist, superstitious beliefs and folk-lore tales have preserved

the graves of the Stone Age inhabitants of the country from desecration.

As in Norway so in the Isle of Man, and in the western districts of

Ireland.

In Man until the fifties many of the inhabitants believed in the Spirit

of the Mountains; indeed, even in County Donegal and the West Riding of

Yorkshire, up to the last twenty years, fairy superstition was rife.

Boyd Dawkins gives in his chapter, "Superstition of the Stone Age: Early

Man in Britain," an account of an Isle of Man farmer who, having allowed

investigation to be made in the interests of science on portions of his

lands, becoming so awed at the thought of having sanctioned the

disturbing of the dead, that he actually offered up a heifer as a burnt

sacrifice to avert the wrath of the Manes. After lunar and solar

worships this ancestral worship of the Isle of Man farmer ranks next in

point of age, a survival of which is seen in the respect paid by country

people to the fairies, the goblins, and the elves. Equally so has the

spirit of former beliefs been handed down to us in the song of the

nurse, and in the practices of rural people.

A modernised lullaby of a Polish mother bears traces in the last stanza

of a quasi-native worship--

"Shine, stars, God's sentinels on high,

Proclaimers of His power and might,

May all things evil from us fly;

O stars, good-night, good-night!"

Other instances of nature worshippers are amusing as well as being

instructive. The Ojebway Indians believe in the mortality of the sun,

for when an eclipse takes place the whole tribe, in the hope of

rekindling the obscured light, keep up a continual discharge of

fire-tipped arrows from their bows until they perceive again his majesty

of light. Amongst the New Caledonians the wizard, if the season continue

to be wet and cloudy, ascends the highest accessible peak on a

mountain-range and fires a peculiar sacrifice, invoking his ancestors,

and exclaiming--

"Sun, this I do that you may be burning hot,

And eat up all the black clouds of the sky,"

reminding one of the puerile cry of the weather-bound nursery child--

"Rain, rain, go away,

Come again another day."

Wind-making among primitive people was universally adopted; even at a

late period the cultured Greeks and Romans believed in a mythical wind

god.

It was the custom of the wind clan of the Omahas to flap their overalls

to start a breeze, while a sorcerer of New Britain desirous of appeasing

the wind god throws burnt lime into the air, and towards the point of

the compass he wishes to make a prosperous journey, chanting meanwhile a

song. Finnish wizards made a pretence of selling wind to land-bound

sailors. A Norwegian witch once boasted of sinking a vessel by opening a

wind-bag she possessed. Homer speaks of Ulysses receiving the winds as a

present from Æolus, the King of Winds, in a leather bag.

In the highlands of Ethiopia no storm-driven wind ever sweeps down

without being stabbed at by a native to wound the evil spirit riding on

the blast. In some parts of Austria a heavy gale is propitiated by the

act and speech of a peasant who, as the demon wings his flight in the

raging storm, opens the window and casts a handful of meal or chaff to

the enraged sprite as a peace offering, at the same time shouting--

"There, that's for you; stop, stop!"

A pretty romance is known in Bulgarian folk-lore. The wife of a peasant

who had been mysteriously enticed away by the fairies was appealed to by

her husband's mother to return.

"Who is to feed the babe, and rock its cradle?"

sang the grandmother, and the wind wafted back the reply--

"If it cry for food, I will feed it with copious dews;

If it wish to sleep, I will rock its cradle with a gentle breeze."

How devoid of all sentiment our Englished version of the same tale

reads.

"Hush-a-bye, baby, on a tree top,

When the wind blows the cradle will rock,

When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,

Down comes the baby and cradle and all."

No wonder this purposeless lullaby is satirised in the orthodox libretto

of Punch's Opera or the Dominion of Fancy, for Punch, having sung it,

throws the child out of the window.

The poetic instinct of the German mother is rich in expression, her

voice soothing and magnetic as she sways her babe to and fro to the

melody of--

"Sleep, baby, sleep!

Thy father tends the sheep,

Thy mother shakes the branches small,

Whence happy dreams in showers fall.

Sleep, baby, sleep!

"Sleep, baby, sleep!

The sky is full of sheep,

The stars the lambs of heaven are,

For whom the shepherd moon doth care.

Sleep, baby, sleep!"[F]

The lullaby of the Black Guitar, told by the Grimm brothers in their

German fairy tales, gives us the same thought.

"Thou art sleeping, my son, and at ease,

Lulled by the whisperings of the trees."

Another German nurse song of a playful yet commanding tone translates--

"Baby, go to sleep!

Mother has two little sheep,

One is black and one is white;

If you do not sleep to-night,

First the black and then the white

Shall give your little toe a bite."

A North Holland version has degenerated into the flabby Dutch of--

"Sleep, baby, sleep!

Outside there stands a sheep

With four white feet,

That drinks its milk so sweet.

Sleep, baby, sleep!"

The old English cradle rhyme, evidently written to comfort fathers more

than babies, is given by way of contrast, and, as is usual with our own

countrymen, the versification is thoroughly British, slurred over and

slovenly--

"Hush thee, my babby,

Lie still with thy daddy,

Thy mammy has gone to the mill

To grind thee some wheat

To make thee some meat,

Oh, my dear babby, do lie still!"

The Danish lullaby of

"Sweetly sleep, my little child,

Lie quiet and still.

The bird nests in the wood,

The flower rests in the meadow grass;

Sweetly sleep, my little child."

This last recalls the esteem our Teuton ancestors had for their scalds,

or polishers of language, when poetry and music were linked together by

the voice and harp of minstrelsy, and when the divine right to fill the

office of bard meant the divine faculty to invent a few heroic stanzas

to meet a dramatic occasion.

One more well-known British lullaby--

"Bye, baby bunting,

Daddy's gone a-hunting

To get a little _hare skin_

To wrap the baby bunting in."

The more modern version gives "_rabbit skin_."

FOOTNOTES:

[B] _Times'_ report, February 10th, 1897.

[C] F. SPIEGEL.

[D] WELCKER, _Griechische Götterlehre_, i. 551.

[E] TYLOR.

[F] Wagner introduced the music to which it is sung in his _Siegfried_

idyll.

CHAPTER IV.

"One very dark night, when the goblins' light

Was as long and as white as a feather,

A fairy spirit bade me stray

Amongst the gorse and heather.

The pixies' glee enamoured me,

They were as merry as merry could be.

"They held in each hand a gold rope of sand,

To every blue-bell that grew in the dell

They tied a strand,

Then the fairies and pixies and goblins and elves

Danced to the music of the bells

By themselves, merry, merry little selves."

To the kingdom of elf-land few English nursery poems have any reference.

Our continental neighbours have preserved a few, but the major number

are found in versions of the folk-lore tales belonging to the people

dwelling in the hilly districts of remote parts of Europe. Norway,

Switzerland, Italy, and even Poland present weird romances, and our own

country folk in the "merrie north country," and in the lowlands of

"bonnie Scotland," add to the collection. The age to which most of them

may be traced is uncertain; at all events, they bear evidences of

belonging to a period when nature worship was universal, and the

veneration of the mysterious in life common to our ancestors. The Second

Stone Age men, it is said, cremated their dead who were worthy of

reverence, and worshipped their shades, and the nursery tales of pixies

and goblins and elves are but the mythical remains of their once

prevailing religion--universal the world over. The inception of this

ancestral worship probably took place during that period known as the

Neolithic Age, when the moon, stars, and sun no longer remained the

mysterious in life to be feared and worshipped. In the dreary process of

evolution a gradual development took place, and nature worship and

ancestral veneration evolved into the more comprehensive systems of

Buddha, Confucius, and the later polytheism of Greece, Ancient Tuscany,

and Rome, leaving high and dry, stranded, as it were, in Northern

Europe, Ireland, and North Britain, an undisturbed residuum of

ante-chronological man's superstitions. Evidences of primitive man's

religion are seen in the customs and practices of our rural folk to-day.

In vast forest districts, or in hilly regions far away from the refining

influences of social contact, the old-time superstitions lingered,

changing little in the theme, and inspiring the succeeding generations,

as they unfolded in the long roll-call of life, with the same fears of

the mystery of death and of a future life. One of the customs of recent

practice is fitly described as follows:--

In Yorkshire and in north-west Irish homesteads, and even far away in

the East amongst the Armenian peasantry, a custom was, until late years,

in vogue, of providing a feast for the departed relatives on certain

fixed dates. All Hallows' Eve being one of the occasions a meal was

prepared, and the feast spread as though ordinary living visitants were

going to sit round the "gay and festive board." The chain hanging down

from the centre of the chimney to the fireplace was removed--a boundary

line of the domestic home--but at these times especial care was taken to

remove it so that the "pixies and goblins and elves" could have a

licence to enter the house. In spite of Christian teaching and other

widening influences the belief remained fixed in the minds of the rural

classes that elves, goblins, sprites, pixies, and the manes were stern

realities.

The Erl King of Goethe, a sprite endowed with more than human passions,

elegantly portrays the modern idea of an old theme. How he haunted the

regions of the Black Forest in Thuringia, snatching up children rambling

in the shades of the leafed wood, to kill them in his terrible shambles.

The King of the Wood and the Spirit of the Waters were both early among

the terrors of old-time European peasantry's superstitions.

Another surviving custom, carried out with much picturesque ceremony, is

common to the peoples of the Balkan States. In time of water-famine,

more particularly in Servia, the girls go through the neighbouring

villages singing a Dodolo song of--

"We go through the village,

The clouds go in the sky;

We go faster,

Faster go the clouds;

They have overtaken us,

And wetted the corn and wine."

Precisely as the hawthorn bushes were stripped of their blossoms by

Maying parties in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so

in Servia the ballet of the leaf-dressed girl, encircled by a party of

holiday-makers, proceeds through the hamlets invoking not the Fair

Flora, but the Spirit of the Waters; the central figure, the girl in

green, being besprinkled by each cottager.

The Greeks, Bulgarians, and Roumanians observe a similar ceremony, but

on the confines of Russia so intense is the belief in the superstition

of the water goblin that in times of long drought a traveller

journeying along the road has often been seized by the ruthless hands of

the villagers and ceremoniously flung into a rivulet--a sacrifice to

appease the spirit that lay in the waters. In Ireland the fairy-tale of

Fior Usga--Princess Spring-water--has a kindred meaning; she, so the

legend relates, sank down in a well with her golden pitcher, and the

flood-gates opened and swamped the parched and barren countryside near

Kinsale.

In Germany, when a person is drowned, people recollect the fancies of

childhood, and exclaim, "The River Spirit claims its yearly sacrifice."

Even the hard-reasoning Scotch, years ago, clung to the same

superstitious fancy which oftentimes prevented some of the most selfish

of their race from saving their drowning fellows. "He will do you an

injury if you save him from the water" was one of their fears. In

England, too, the north-country people speak of the River Sprite as

Jenny Greenteeth, and children dread the green, slimy-covered rocks on a

stream's bank or on the brink of a black pool. "Jenny Greenteeth will

have thee if thee goest on't river banks" is the warning of a Lancashire

mother to her child.

The Irish fisherman's belief in the Souls' Cages and the Merrow, or Man

of the Sea, was once held in general esteem by the men who earned a

livelihood on the shores of the Atlantic. This Merrow, or Spirit of the

Waters, sometimes took upon himself a half-human form, and many a sailor

on the rocky coast of Western Ireland has told the tale of how he saw

the Merrow basking in the sun, watching a storm-driven ship. His form is

described as that of half man, half fish, a thing with green hair, long

_green teeth_, legs with scales on them, short arms like fins, a fish's

tail, and a huge red nose. He wore no clothes, and had a cocked hat

like a sugar-loaf, which was carried under the arm--never to be put on

the head unless for the purpose of diving into the sea. At such times he

caught all the souls of those drowned at sea and put them in cages made

like lobster pots.

The child's tale of the German fisherman and his wife tells the same

story--

"O Man of the Sea, come list unto me,

For Alice, my wife, the plague of my life,

Hath sent me to beg a boon of thee."

Unless such past credulities as these be considered it would be most

difficult to account for many of the sayings of child-days, and the

archaic ideas that have drifted into our folk-lore tales. On all hands

it is admitted that it is no unusual thing to find a game or practice

outliving the serious performance of which it is an imitation. The

condition of a people who originally held such mystic and crude ideas is

seen to-day in types of aborigines and uncivilised races.

In Halmahero, a large island to the west of New Guinea, a wizard goes

through a ceremony somewhat similar to the Servian village maid's.

Cutting down branches, he dips them into the water and sprinkles the

parched ground.

In Ceram the outer barks of certain trees are cast on the surface of

running streams and rivulets and dedicated to the spirits that lie in

the waters, that after this offering they may arise from the depths of

the deep and clothe the earth with a cloud of mist.

THE CORN SPIRIT.

Another spirit, dreaded by all European peoples, was the Spirit of the

Corn. In Russia especially children of the rural class sing songs of a

very distant age, mother handing down to child themes unexposed to

foreign influence. It is true the Church has altered the application of

many by dressing up afresh pagan observances in Christian costumes.

There are several, but one of the songs of the Russian serf to his

prattling offspring illustrates this statement. Before reading it, it

should be borne in mind that Ovsen is the Teutonic _Sun God_ who

possessed a boar, and that the antiquity of the song belongs to a time

when the Russian peasant's forefathers worshipped the glories of the

heavens, deifying the Sun for his fire and lustre.

The translation of this poem of the fire worshippers is taken from

Ralston's _Songs of the Russian People_, and runs as follows. Imagine

the crooning voice of the old Slav woman singing it to her nurse child.

"In the forest, in the pine forest,

There stood a pine tree,

Green and shaggy.

Oh Ovsen! Oh Ovsen!

"The Boyars came,

Cut down the pine,

Sawed it into planks,

Built a bridge,

Fastened it with nails.

Oh Ovsen! Oh Ovsen!

"Who will go

Over the bridge?

Ovsen will go there,

And the New Year.

Oh Ovsen! Oh Ovsen!"

Another song asks--

"On what will he come?

On a dusky swine.

What will he chase?

A brisk little pig."

The present singers of songs about Ovsen receive presents in lieu of the

old contributions towards a sacrifice to the gods. The habit is to ask

in some such words as these--

"Give us a pig for Vasily's Eve."

Pigs' trotters used to be offered as a sacrifice at the beginning of the

New Year, and the custom still prevails in Russia of proffering such

dishes at this time. The compliments of the season are commemorated by

giving away the feet of the "brisk little pig." The first day of the New

Year was Ovsen's day, but now consecrated to the memory of St. Basil the

Great. The previous evening was called St. Basil's Eve, or Vasily's

Eve. In one of the little Russian songs it is said--

"Ilya comes on Vasily's Day,"

meaning on St. Basil's, or New Year's Day, comes the Sun-god, or

thunder-bearer, originally Pevan, who, under Christian influences,

becomes Elijah, or Ilya.

"Ilya comes on Vasily's Day;

He holds a whip of iron wire,

And another of tin.

Hither he comes,

Thither he waves,

Corn grows."

This supports the inference that the agriculturist was a nature

worshipper. But quite apart from sun worshippers, and their songs about

corn-growing, the children of the rural classes in many other parts of

Europe have fixed ideas, or beliefs, in the "Spirit of the Cornfield";

their sayings are represented by different figures, "a mad dog in the

corn," "a wolf in the corn," are found amongst the many shibboleths of

the youngsters playing in the fields prior to harvest-time. That they

dread the wavy movement of the grain-laden stalks is certain, and the

red poppy, the blue cornflower, the yellow dandelion, and the marguerite

daisy, although plucked by tiny hands on the fringe of the fields, it is

not often tiny feet trample down the golden stalks. At nightfall, in

Germany, an old peasant, observing the gentle undulating motion of the

ripe crop while seated before his cottage, will exclaim--

"There goes the rye-wolf. The wolf is passing through the corn."

In some parts the "corn spirit" was said to be a cow.

"The cow's in the corn."

In one of our home counties--Hertfordshire--it is a "mare," and the

custom of "crying the mare" has allusion to the corn spirit, and is

spoken of in some villages to-day. There are several rhymes that carry a

notice of cornfield games.

"Ring a ring a rosies,

A pocket full of posies.

Hush!--The Cry?--Hush!--The Cry?

All fall down."

* * * * *

"Little boy blue come blow me thy horn,

The sheep in the meadow,

The cow's in the corn.

Where is the boy that looks after the sheep?

Under the haystack fast asleep."

The "Little Boy Blue" rhyme, it has been urged, had only reference to

the butcher's boy. The rhyme is very much older than the blue-smocked

butcher's boy, and in truth it may be said the butcher boy of a century

ago wore white overalls.

The former rhyme, "Ring a Ring a Rosies," is known in Italy and Germany.

In the northern counties of England the children use the words, "Hushu!

Hushu!" in the third line.

The Spirit of the Cornfield is dreaded by children of all European

countries. In Saxon Transylvania the children gather maize leaves and

completely cover one of their playmates with them. This game is intended

to prefigure death.

"CUCKOOS!"

"Cuckoo cherrytree, catch a bird

And give it to me."[G]

The people of the Oral and Tula Governments, especially the maidens,

christen the cuckoo "gossip darlings!"

In one of the Lithuanian districts the girls sing--

"Sister, dear,

Mottled cuckoo!

Thou who feedest

The horses of thy brother,

Thou who spinnest silken threads,

Sing, O cuckoo,

Shall I soon be married?"

In _Love's Labour's Lost_ a passage occurs where the two seasons, Spring

and Winter, vie with each other in extolling the cuckoo and the owl.

_Spring._

"When daisies pied, and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he--

Cuckoo!

Cuckoo! cuckoo!

O word of fear,

Unpleasing to the married ear!"

Thus is cuckoo gossip perpetuated in rhyme and song; but an old belief

in the mysteriously disappearing bird gave an opportunity to children to

await its return in the early summer, and then address to it all kinds

of ridiculous questions.

"How many years have I to live?" is a favourite query. The other like

that of the Lithuanian maid, "Shall I soon be married?" meets with

favour amongst single girls.

A German song, entitled "The Shepherd Maiden," indicates this custom.

The words being--

"A shepherd maiden, one fine day,

Two lambs to pasture led,

To verdant fields where daisies grew,

And bloomed the clover red;

There spied she in a hedge close by

A cuckoo, call with merry cry,

Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!"

After chasing the immortal bird from tree to tree to have her question,

"Shall I soon be married?" answered, the song concludes with this

taunting refrain--

"Two hundred then she counted o'er,

The cuckoo still cried as before,

Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!"

In our earliest published song, words and music composed by John of

Forsete, monk of Reading Abbey, date 1225, and entitled "Sumer is icumen

in," the cuckoo is also extolled--

"Summer is a-coming in, loudly sing, cuckoo;

Groweth the seed, bloweth the mead, and springeth wood anew.

Sing, cuckoo! Merry sing, cuckoo,

Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!"

The peasantry of Russia, India, and Germany contribute to the collection

of cuckoo-lore. Grimm mentions a Cuckoo Hill in Gauchsberg. The cuckoo

and not the hill may have had the mystic sense.

Identical with this Cuckoo Hill, in its solemn significance, there

occurs a passage in the game of Hot Cockles, played formerly at

Yorkshire funerals.

"Where is the poor man to go?"

the friends whine, and the mutes who are in readiness to follow the

coffin beat their knees with open hands and reply--

"Over the Cuckoo Hill, I oh!"

The association of ideas about the prophetic notes of the cuckoo's

mocking voice--in matters of marriage and death--are pretty general, and

there are still further many points of identity in the tales told by

the children of India and Southern Russia. Like the Ph[oe]nix idea

amongst the people of Egypt, Persia, and India, these traditions

allegorise the soul's immortality.

A WORD ON INDIAN LORE.

The old prose editions of the sacred books of India--the law codes of

the Aryans--were suitably arranged in verse to enable the contents to be

committed to memory by the students. In these rules the ritual of the

simplest rites is set forth. New and full moon offerings are given, and

regulations minutely describing as to the way salutation shall be made.

Much after the fashion of the grandees or the Red Indian moon worshipper

of North America, it is told how a Brâhmana must salute stretching forth

his right hand level with his ear, a Kshalriza holding it level with

the breast, a Sûdra holding it low--all caste observances and relics of

a sign-language.

"A householder shall worship gods, manes, men, goblins, and rishis,"

remains of ancestral worship. "Adoration must be given to him who wears

the moon on his forehead," the oldest known form of worship, possibly,

of the Drift-man's period, "and he shall offer libations of water,

oblations of clarified butter, and worship the moon." The butter

oblation was practised by the Celts! They have a lunar penance, "he

shall fast on the day of the new moon."

These observances belonged to a people who, without doubt, migrated from

the West to the East. The manes and goblins are pre-Celtic, and have

likewise been preserved by those who travelled, as the journey became

possible, towards Asia. Some of our nursery tales, children's games,

are likewise known to them. The same legends are extant in the East and

West, all of which have a common origin, and that a religious one.

FOOTNOTES:

[G] An old English child rhyme mentioned in BARNES' _Shropshire

Folk-lore_.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

"Oh, Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band,

Let sage or cynic prattle as he will,

These hours, and only these, redeemed

Life's years of ill!"

GAMES.

The annual calendar of dates when certain of the pastimes and songs of

our street children become fashionable is an uncertain one, yet games

have their seasons most wonderfully and faithfully marked. Yearly all

boys seem to know the actual time for the revivification of a custom,

whether it be of whipping tops, flirting marbles, spinning peg-tops, or

playing tip-cat or piggy. This survival of custom speaks eloquently of

the child influence on civilisation, for the conservation of the human

family may be found literally portrayed in the pastimes, games, and

songs of the children of our streets.

Curious relics of past cruelties are shadowed forth in many of the

present games--some of which are not uninteresting. The barbarous custom

of whipping martyrs at the stake is perpetuated by the game of whip-top.

In a black-letter book in the British Museum, date 15--(?) occurs this

passage--

"I am good at scourging of my toppe,

You would laugh to see me morsel the pegge,

Upon one foot I can hoppe,

And dance trimly round an egge."

The apprentices of the London craftsmen followed the popular diversion

of cock-throwing on Shrove Tuesday and tossing pancakes in the

frying-pan--the latter custom is still kept up at Westminster School.

Both bear allusion to the sufferings and torments of men who died for

conscience sake.

Dice and pitch-and-toss, also modern games of the present gutter

children, in primitive times were the ways and means adopted by the

learned to consult the oracles. Much in the same way the Scotch laddie

and wee lassie play--

"Dab a prin in my lottery-book;

Dab ane, dab two, dab a' your prins awa',"

by sticking at random pins in their school-books, between the leaves of

which little pictures are placed. This is the lottery-box, the pictures

the prizes, and the pins the forfeits.

Another favourite Scotch game is--

"A' the birds of the air, and the days of the week."

Girls' pleasures are by no means so diversified as those of boys. It

would be considered a trifle too effeminate were the little men to amuse

themselves with their sisters' game of Chucks--an enchanting amusement,

played with a large-sized marble and four octagonal pieces of chalk.

Beds, another girlish game, is also played on the pavement--a piece of

broken pot, china or earthenware, being kicked from one of the beds or

divisions marked out on the flags to another, the girls hopping on one

leg while doing so. It is a pastime better known as Hop Scotch, and is

played in every village and town of the British Isles, varying slightly

in detail. The rhymes used by street children to decide who is to begin

the game are numerous.

The Scotch version of a well-known one is given below--

"Zickety, dickety, dock, the mouse ran up the nock,

The nock struck one, down the mouse ran,

Zickety, dickety, dock."

"Anery, twaery, tickery, seven,

Aliby, crackeby, ten or eleven;

Pin pan, muskidan,

Tweedlum, twodlum, twenty-one."

Amongst the notable men in the world's history who have depicted

children's games, St. Luke the Evangelist tells in a pleasant passage of

how Jesus likened the men of His day to children sitting in the

market-place and calling to their playmates--

"We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced;

We have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept."

A vivid picture, illustrating puerile peevishness.

In the thousands of years that street plays have been enacted by the

youngsters, no poet's, philosopher's, nor teacher's words have been more

to the point. Every child wants to take the most prominent part in a

game, but all cannot be chief mourners, else there will be no

sympathising weepers.

"Who'll be chief mourner? I, said the dove,

I'll mourn for my love."

To-day things are better arranged, a counting-out rhyme settles the

question of appointment to the coveted post. Like the

"Zickety, dickety, dock, the mouse ran up the clock"

of the north-country children.

"Whoever I touch must be he"

ends and begins the counting-out verse of the Southern youngsters,

which runs as follows--

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,

All good children go to heaven.

My mother says the last one I touch must be he."

Of the numerous variations of this rhyme the one at present in demand by

London children is--

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,

All good children go to heaven.

A penny on the water, twopence on the sea,

Threepence on the railway, and out goes she."

Another and more generally known rhyme of--

"1, 2, 3, 4,

Mary at the cottage door

Eating cherries off a plate,

5, 6, 7, 8,"

is also used for the same purpose.

But are there no peevish children to-day? None sulking in nursery or

playground over games just as the little Israelites did 1900 years ago

in the market-place at Nain?

Remember the lesson of old--

"We have piped, and ye have not danced;

We have mourned to you, and ye have not wept."

MARRIAGE GAMES.

In India and Japan marriage ceremonies bear a feature of youthful play.

Amongst the Moslems in the former country--where the doll is

forbidden--the day previous to a real wedding the young friends of the

bridegroom are summoned to join in a wedding game. On the eve of the day

they all meet and surround the bridegroom-elect, then they make for the

house of the bride's parents. On arrival at the gates the bride's

relatives shut the doors and mount guard.

"Who are you," exclaims the bridegroom, "to dare obstruct the king's

cavalcade? Behold the bridegroom cometh! Go ye not out to meet him?" The

answer comes from within the abode. "It is a ruse--so many thieves roam

about, more than probable you and your band are of them."

* * * * *

In England in 1557 the boys of London town sang a rhyme at their mock

wedding feasts of--

"If ever I marry I'll marry a maid,

To marry a widow I'm sore afraid,

For maids are simple and never will grudge,

But widows full oft as they say know too much."

This song was entered at the Stationers' Hall, 1557 A.D.

LONDON STREET GAMES.

A WEDDING.

After the preliminary rhyme of--

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,

All good children go to heaven.

A penny on the water, twopence on the sea,

Threepence on the railway, and out goes she,"

has been said, the lot falls on one of the girls to be the bride. A ring

is formed and a merry dance begins, all the children singing this

invitation--

"Choose one, choose two, choose the nearest one to you."

The girl bride then selects a groom from the rest of the other children.

He steps into the centre of the ring, joins hands and kisses her, after

which, collecting a posy from each of the others, he decorates her with

flowers and green leaves. A fresh ring is now formed--figuratively the

wedding ring; the whole of the children caper round singing--

"Rosy apple, lemon and pear,

Bunch of roses she shall wear,

Gold and silver by her side,

I know who shall be my bride."

"Choose one, choose two, choose the nearest one to you."

"Take her by her lily-white hand,

Lead her across the water,

Give her kisses one, two, three,

Mrs. ---- daughter."

THE KING OF THE BARBARINES.

In this street game an entire regal court is appointed, the children

taking the characters of king, queen, princes, and courtiers. When these

preliminaries are settled two children join hands and whisper

something--supposed to be a great state secret--to each other. This at

once causes a rivalry amongst certain of the mock courtiers, and the

dissatisfaction spreads, culminating in an open rebellion. The children

take sides. Things now look serious; the prime minister tells the king

he fears rebellion, and for safety his little majesty, attired in royal

robes, and wearing a paper crown, retires to his palace--one of those

places "built without walls." The soldiers, the king's bodyguard, are

summoned, and orders are given to them to suppress the insurrection and

capture the little rebels. As each one is taken prisoner the soldiers

ask--

"Will you surrender? Oh, will you surrender

To the King of the Barbarines?"

During the struggle reinforcements come up from the rebel camp and try

to beat off the king's soldiers, exclaiming--

"We won't surrender, we won't surrender