 
These lines are sung by a person at the table after dinner. His next neighbour then sings "Once so merrily hopped she," during which the first singer is obliged to drink a bumper; and should he be unable to empty his glass before the last line is sung, he must begin again till he succeeds. The next line is "Twice so merrily hopped she," sung by the next person under a similar arrangement, and so on; beginning again after "Thrice so merrily hopped she, heigh ho! heigh ho! heigh ho!" till the ceremony has been repeated around the table. It is to be hoped so absurd a practice is not now in fashion. When a boy finds anything, and another sees him stoop for it, if the latter cries halves before he has picked it up, he is, by schoolboy law, entitled to half of it. This right may, however, be negatived, if the finder cries out first—
Or, sometimes the following:
Boys leaving the schoolroom are accustomed to shout—
A sort of persuasive inducement, I suppose, for them to follow the speaker for the sake of forming a party for a game. The earliest and simplest form in which the nursery song appears is the lullaby, which may be defined a gentle song used for the purpose of inducing sleep. The term was generally, though not exclusively, confined to nurses:
The etymology is to be sought for in the verb lull, to sing gently, which Douce thinks is connected with ?a?e? or ?????. One of the earliest nursery lullabies that have descended to our day occurs in the play of Philotimus, 1583:
Another is introduced into the comedy of Patient Grissel, printed in the year 1603:
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