Writing on the subject of nursery rhymes more than half a century ago, the late Dr. Robert Chambers expressed regret because, as he said, "Nothing had of late been revolutionised so much as the nursery." But harking back on the period of his own childhood, he was able to say, with a feeling of satisfaction, that the young mind was then "cradled amidst the simplicities of the uninstructed intellect; and she was held to be the best nurse who had the most copious supply of song, and tale, and drollery, at all times ready to soothe and amuse her young charges. There were, it is true, some disadvantages in the system; for sometimes superstitious terrors were implanted, and little pains were taken to distinguish between what tended to foster the evil and what tended to elicit the better feelings of infantile nature. Yet the ideas which presided over the scene," he continues, "and rung through it all the day in light gabble and jocund song, were simple, often beautiful ideas, generally well expressed, and unquestionably suitable to the capacities of children.... There was no philosophy about these gentle dames; but there was generally endless kindness, and a wonderful power of keeping their little flock in good humour. It never occurred to them that children were anything but children—'Bairns are just bairns,' my old nurse would say—and they never once thought of beginning to make them men and women while still little more than able to speak." They did not; and, in the common homes of Scotland, they do not to this hour. The self-same rhymes and drollery which amused Dr. Chambers as a child are amusing and engaging the minds and exercising the faculties of children over all the land even now. I question if there is a child anywhere north of the Tweed who has not been entertained by

Or the briefer formula, referring only to the brow, the eye, the nose, and the mouth, which runs:—

And it was only the other evening that I saw a father with his infant son on his knee, having a little hand spread out, and entertaining its owner by travelling from thumb to little finger, and repeating the old catch:—

As well as its fellow-rhyme:—

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.

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.

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 the wind blew these cradles would rock! A young man of the party observing this, pulled off a piece of bark and wrote off the above words, which is believed to be the first poetry written in America." Several have curious histories.

Master Horner, it appears, was not a myth, but a real personage. Tradition tells that when Henry VIII. suppressed the monasteries, and drove the poor old monks from their nests, the title-deeds of the Abbey of Mells, including the sumptuous grange built by Abbot Bellwood, were demanded by the Commissioners. The Abbot of Glastonbury determined instead that he would send them to London; and, as the documents were very valuable, and the road was infested by thieves, to get them to the metropolis safely he ordered a pie to be made, as fine as ever smoked on a refectory table, inside of which the precious documents were placed, and this dainty he entrusted to a lad named Horner to carry up to London and deliver into the hands of the party for whom it was intended. But the journey was long, the day was cold, the boy was hungry, the pie was tempting, and the chances of detection, the youth presumed, were small. So he broke the crust of the pie, and behold the parchment! He pulled it forth innocently enough, wondering by what chance it could have reached there, and arrived in town. The parcel was delivered, but the title-deeds of Mells Abbey estate were missing. Jack had them in his pocket, and—now learning their value—he kept them there. These were the juiciest plums in the pie. Great was the rage of the Commissioners, heavy the vengeance they dealt out to the monks. But Jack kept his secret and the documents, and when peaceful times were restored he claimed the estates and received them. So goes the story; and it may be true. But, then, in the light of its truth, whether Master Horner deserved the title of "good boy" bestowed on him by the rhyme will be more than doubtful.

We all know the lines,

These verses were founded, it appears, on an actual circumstance, and the heroine Mary may be still living. Less than eighty years ago she was a little girl, the daughter of a farmer in Worcester County, Massachusetts, U.S. One spring her father brought a feeble lamb into the house, and Mary adopted it as her especial pet. It became so fond of her that it would follow her everywhere. One day it followed her to the village school, and, not knowing well what to do with it there, the girl put it under her desk and covered it over with her shawl. There it stayed until Mary was called up with her class to the teacher's desk to say her lesson; but then the lamb went quietly after her, and the whole school burst out laughing. Soon after, John Rollstone, a fellow-student with Mary, wrote a little rhyme commemorating the incident, and the verses went rapidly from lip to lip, giving the greatest delight to all. The lamb grew up to be a sheep, and lived many years; and when it died Mary grieved so much that her mother took some of its wool, which was "white as snow," and knitted for her a pair of stockings to wear in remembrance of her pet. Some years after, Mrs. Sarah Hall composed additional verses to those of John Rollstone, making the complete rhyme as we know it.[A] Mary took such good care of the stockings made from her lamb's fleece that when she was a grown-up woman she was able to give one of them to a church bazaar in Boston. As soon as it became known that the stocking was from the fleece of "Mary's little lamb," every one wanted a piece of it. So the stocking was unravelled, and the yarn cut into short pieces. Each piece was fastened to a card on which Mary wrote her full name, and those cards sold so well that they brought the handsome sum of £28 to the Old South Church in Boston.

Attempts have been made to show how that was suggested by the fall of a bold bad baron who lived in the days of King John; but every child more than ten years old knows that the lines present a conundrum, the answer to which is—an egg. And yet, were it no conundrum, but only a nonsense rhyme, its fascination for the budding intellect would be no less. It is enough when, with the jingle of rhyme, the imagination, is tickled, as in—