s are gone to St. Paul's!
The babies are bit,
The moon's in a fit,
And the houses are built without walls.

[Illustration: Notes.]

THE origin of the right nursery rhymes is, of course, popular, like the
origin of ballads, tales (_Maerchen_), riddles, proverbs, and, indeed, of
literature in general. They are probably, in England, of no great
antiquity, except in certain cases, where they supply the words to some
child's _ballet_, some dance game. A game may be of prehistoric
antiquity, as appears in the rudimentary forms of backgammon, _Pachin_
and _Patullo_, common to Asia, and to the Aztecs, as Dr. Tylor has
demonstrated. The child's game--

"Buck, buck,
How many fingers do I hold up?"

was known in ancient Rome as _bucca_, though it would be audacious to
infer that it arrived in Britain since the Norman Conquest. Hop-scotch
is also exceedingly ancient, and the curious will find the theories of
its origin in Mr. Gomme's learned work on Children's Dances and Songs,
published by the Folk-Lore Society. Dr. Nicholson's book on the
Folk-Lore of Children in Sutherland, still unpublished when I write, may
also be consulted. One of the songs collected by Dr. Nicholson was
copied down by a Danish traveller in London during the reign of Charles
II. Robert Chambers's "Popular Rhymes of Scotland" is also a treasure of
this kind of antiquities. It is probable that the Lowland rhymes have
occasionally Gaelic counterparts, as the nursery tales certainly have,
but I am unacquainted with any researches on this topic by Celtic
scholars.

In Mr. Halliwell's Collection, from which this volume is abridged, no
manuscript authority goes further back than the reign of Henry VIII.,
though King Arthur and Robin Hood are mentioned. The obscure Scottish
taunt, levelled at Edward I. when besieging Berwick, is much in the
manner of a nursery rhyme:--

"Kyng Edward,
When thu havest Berwic,
Pike thee!
When thu havest geton,
Dike thee!"

This, as Sir Herbert Maxwell says, "seems deficient in salt," but was
felt to be irritating by the greatest of the Plantagenets. The jingles
on the King of France, against the Scots in the time of James I.,
against the Tory, or Irish rapparee, and about the Gunpowder Plot, are
of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Great
Rebellion supplies "Hector Protec