The Big Book of Nursery Rhymes — Walter Jerrold

INTRODUCTION THE very title "Nursery Rhymes," which has come to be associated with a A great body of familiar verse, is in itself sufficient evidence ot how that verse has been passed down from generation to generation. Some pieces date, perhaps, from hundreds of years ago, and had been repeated thousands of times betore they were printed. There are not wanting learned tolk who tell us that there was once, in Britain, a King Cole, and that the only relic of his reign which we have is the verse in which he is shown calling for his pipe, his bowl, and his fiddlers three. Such wise people forget that pipes were not smoked here before the days of Queen Elizabeth, and that fiddles were not known before the sixteenth century. It is certain, however, that some ot these rhymes were familiar in those great days; Shakespeare seems to reter to one