1) Mother Play, (2)
Mother Stories, and (3) Child Play, with subordinate groupings under
each. About 250 rhymes are included in Welsh's collection, and the
arrangement suggests the best order for using them practically, without
dropping into any ironclad system.

It may be argued that any attempt at classification of material so
freely and variously used as the Mother Goose rhymes is sure to stiffen
the work of the class and render it less enjoyable. Spontaneity is more
vital here than at any other stage of one's literary education.

_What is the secret of the nursery rhyme's appeal to children?_ Here at
least we are face to face with what may be called a final fact, that
these jingles do make an appeal so universal and remarkable that any
attempt to explain it seems always to fall far short of completeness.
Perhaps the best start may be made with Mr. Welsh's suggestion that this
appeal is threefold: first, that which comes from the rhyming jingle, as
in "Higgledy, piggledy, my fat hen"; second, that which comes from the
nonsense surprises, as in "Hey diddle diddle," "Three wise men of
Gotham," and "I'll tell you a story"; third, that which comes from the
dramatic action, as in "Little Miss Muffet," and "Little Jack Horner."
This summary does not differ much from Mr. Walter Taylor Field's
conclusions: "The child takes little thought as to what _any_ of these
verses mean. There are perhaps four elements in them that appeal to
him,--first, the jingle, and with it that peculiar cadence which modern
writers of children's poetry strive in vain to imitate; second, the
nonsense,--with just enough of sense in it to connect the nonsense with
the child's thinkable world; third, the action,--for the stories are
quite dramatic in their way; and fourth, the quaintness." Mr. Field also
emphasizes the probable charm of mystery in the face of the unknown
facts beyond the child's horizon, which appear in many of the rhymes.

Other commentators do little beyond expanding some of these suggestions.
All of them agree in stressing the appeal made by rhythm, the jingle,
the emphatic meter. This seems a fundamental thing in all literature,
though readers are mainly conscious of it in poetry. Just how
fundamental it is in human life has not been better hinted than in a
sentence by Mrs. MacClintock: "One who is trying to write a sober
treatise in a matter-of-fact way dares not, lest he be set down as the
veriest mystic, say all the things tha