The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Nursery Rhymes, by Percy B. Green

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Title: A History of Nursery Rhymes

Author: Percy B. Green

Release Date: December 28, 2007 [EBook #24065]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF NURSERY RHYMES ***

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A
HISTORY
OF
NURSERY
RHYMES

BY
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