The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nursery Rhymes of England, by Various

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Title: The Nursery Rhymes of England

Author: Various

Illustrator: W. B. Scott

Release Date: May 18, 2010 [EBook #32415]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE NURSERY RHYMES OF ENGLAND.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

THE NURSERY RHYMES OF ENGLAND:

Collected by

JAMES ORCHARD HALLIWELL.

THE NURSERY RHYMES

OF

ENGLAND.

BY JAMES ORCHARD HALLIWELL.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. B. SCOTT.

[Illustration]

LONDON AND NEW YORK: FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.

1886.

[Illustration]

PREFACE

TO THE

FIFTH EDITION.

The great encouragement which has been given by the public to the
previous editions of this little work, satisfactorily proves that,
notwithstanding the extension of serious education to all but the very
earliest periods of life, there still exists an undying love for the
popular remnants of the ancient Scandinavian nursery literature.
The infants and children of the nineteenth century have not, then,
deserted the rhymes chanted so many ages since by the mothers of the
North. This is a "great nursery fact"--a proof that there is contained
in some of these traditional nonsense-rhymes a meaning and a romance,
possibly intelligible only to very young minds, that exercise an
influence on the fancy of children. It is obvious there must exist
something of this kind; for no modern compositions are found to supply
altogether the place of the ancient doggerel.

The nursery rhyme is the novel and light reading of the infant
scholar. It occupies, with respect to the A B C, the position of a
romance which relieves the mind from the cares of a riper age.
The absurdity and frivolity of a rhyme may naturally be its chief
attractions to the very young; and there will be something lost from
the imagination of t