tor" and "The Parliament soldiers are
gone to the king;" "Over the water and over the sea" (or lee) is a
parody of a Jacobite ditty of 1748, and refers genially to that love of
ale and wine which Prince Charles displayed as early as he showed
military courage, at the age of fourteen, when he distinguished himself
at the siege of Gaeta. His grandfather, James II., lives in "The rhyme
for _porringer_;" his father in "Jim and George were two great lords."
_Tout finit par des chansons._

Of non-historical jingles, Mr. Halliwell found traces in MSS. as old as
the fifteenth century. But it would be a very rare accident that led to
their being written down when nobody dreamed of studying Folk-Lore with
solemnity. "Thirty days hath September" occurs in the "Return from
Parnassus," of Shakspeare's date, and a few snatches, like "When I was a
little boy," occur in Shakspeare himself, just as a German version of
"My Minnie me slew" comes in Goethe's _Faust_. Indeed, the scraps of
magical versified spells in _Maerchen_ are entirely of the character of
nursery rhymes, and are of dateless antiquity. The rhyme of "Dr.
Faustus" may be nearly as old as the mediaeval legend dramatised by
Marlowe. The Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists put nursery rhymes in
the mouths of characters; a few jingles creep into the Miscellanies,
such as "The Pills to purge Melancholy." Among these (1719) is "Tom the
piper's son," who played "Over the hills and far away," a song often
adapted to Jacobite uses. In 1719, when the Spanish plan of aid to James
III. collapsed, pipers must have been melancholy enough.

_Melismata_ (1611) already knows the "Frog who lived in a well," and in
_Deuteromelia_ (1609) occurs the "Three blind mice." On the Riddles, or
_Devinettes_, chapters might be, and have been written. They go back to
Samson's time, at least, and are as widely distributed as proverbs, even
among Wolufs and Fijians. The most recent discussion is in Mr. Max
Mueller's "Contributions to the Science of Mythology" (1897). For using
"charms," like "Come, butter, come," many an old woman was burned by
the wisdom of our ancestors. Such versified charms, _deducunt carmima
lunam_, are the _karakias_ of the Maoris, and the _mantras_ of Indian
superstition. The magical papyri of ancient Egypt are full of them. In
our own rhyme, "Hiccup," regarded as a personal kind of fiend
("Animism"), is charmed away by a promise of a butter-cake. There is a
collection of such t