Mother Goose's Book of Nursery Rhymes and Songs [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION" North by south and east by west, Out of space and out of time, Lies the land old dames know best, The foolish land of nursery rhyme." When the candle-flame is bright, When the shadows wait outside, Would you find it, day or night, Take a babe to be your guide."J. L.There is not much that need be said about the time-honoured book of Old Mother Goose's Songs and Nursery Rhymes. It is just as old as it is young and innocent. It is, truly, as old as the English tongue itself. Nay, parts of it are older. For the redoubling ditty of " This is the House that Jack Built" was first put into shape out of a set of lines in an old Jewish Service Book, while some of the riddles are taken from Welsh and Scotch ones, and some of the rhymes were first heard in France and Spain. Still the heart of it is English enough ; English as a Norfolk dumpling or a Sussex down.This book is drawn from a hundred others, but is not quite the same as any one of them. It owes most of all to Halliwell's Nursery Tales and Rhymes, the first part of which he put together for the Percy Society, 'tis sixty years ago and more. But he drew up that rather for collectors than for babes and small children, for nurses and mothers and those who use folksong without trying to analyze it. Since he wrote, many people like Mrs. Gomme and the collectors of the Folklore Society have been at work throughout the country. Many forgotten verses have been recovered ; and this budget contains a few north-country and west-country rhymes which have never hitherto, so far as we know, been printed in any form. Still such a task is never quite done, and those who happen to know genuine child-rhymes, lullabies, and nursery ditties which they do not find here, and will send them to the editors, will help us at some time to make the book a fatter and a better one.E. & G. R.July igio.vii