ittle finger, and repeating the old
catch:--

This is the man that broke the barn,
This is the man that stole the corn,
This is the man that ran awa',
This is the man that tell't a',
And puir Pirly Winkie paid for a', paid for a'.
well as its fellow-rhyme:--

This little pig went to the market,
This little pig stayed at home;
This little pig got roast beef,
This little pig got none;
This little pig cried, Squeak! squeak!
I can't find my way home.

Than the nonsense rhymes and capers that have delighted the nursery life
of Scotland for many generations, none, of course, could be more
delectable--none more suitable. While charming the sense, they have
awakened imagination and developed poetic fancy in thousands who
otherwise might have blundered into old age proving stolid and
uninteresting men and women. They are, for this reason, part and parcel
of every properly-balanced life, and the healthy and happy mind can
never let them go.

Johnny Smith, my fallow fine,
Can you shoe this horse o' mine?
Yes, indeed, and that I can,
Just as weel as ony man.
Ca' a nail into the tae,
To gar the pownie climb the brae;
Ca' a nail into the heel,
To gar the pownie trot weel;
There's a nail, and there's a brod,
There's a pownie weel shod,
Weel shod, weel shod, weel shod pownie.

What pleasing recollections of his own early childhood many a father has
had when, sitting with his child on his knee, he has demonstrated and
chanted that rude rhyme by the fireside o' nights far, as often has
been the case, from the scene where he learned it! To know such is to
realise one, at least, of the various reasons why the old delight in the
frolics of the young.

Hush-a-by baby on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
And down will come cradle and baby and all.

This is a rhyme which "every child has joyed to hear." Its origin, as
told in the records of the Boston (U.S.) Historical Society, is not more
curious than beautiful and significant. "Shortly after our forefathers
landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts (I am quoting), a party were out in
the fields where the Indian women were picking strawberries. Several of
the women, or squaws as they were called, had papooses--that is
babies--and, having no cradle, they had them tied up in Indian fashion
and hung from the limbs of the surrounding trees. Sure enough, when th