The Nursery Rhymes of England

								


      He call'd for his bowl,

      And he call'd for fidlers three:

      And there was fiddle fiddle,

      And twice fiddle fiddle,

      For 'twas my lady's birth-day;

      Therefore we keep holiday,

      And come to be merry.]

II.


When good king Arthur ruled this land,

    He was a goodly king;
He stole three pecks of barley-meal,

    To make a bag-pudding.


A bag-pudding the king did make,

    And stuff'd it well with plums:
And in it put great lumps of fat,

    As big as my two thumbs.


The king and queen did eat thereof,

    And noblemen beside;
And what they could not eat that night,

    The queen next morning fried.

III.



    [The following song relating to Robin Hood, the celebrated

    outlaw, is well known at Worksop, in Nottinghamshire, where it

    constitutes one of the nursery series.]


Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
Is in the mickle wood!
Little John, Little John,
He to the town is gone.


Robin Hood, Robin Hood,

    Is telling his beads,
All in the green wood,

    Among the green weeds.


Little John, Little John,

    If he comes no more,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood,

    He will fret full sore!

IV.



    [The following lines were obtained in Oxfordshire. The story

    to which it alludes is related by Matthew Paris.]


One moonshiny night
As I sat high,
Waiting for one
To come by;
The boughs did bend,
My heart did ache
To see what hole the fox did make.

V.



    [The following perhaps refers to Joanna of Castile, who

    visited the court of Henry the Seventh, in the year 1506.]


I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear;
The king of Spain's daughter came to visit me,
And all was because of my little nut tree.
I skipp'd over water, I danced over sea,
And all the birds in the air couldn't catch me.

VI.



    [From a MS. in the old Royal Library, in the British Museum,

    the exact reference to which is mislaid. It is written, if I

    recollect rightly, in a hand of the time of Henry VIII, in an

    older manuscript.]


We make no spare
Of John Hunkes' mare;
And now I
Think she will die;
He thought it good
To put her in the wood,
To seek where she might ly dry;
If the mare should chance to fale,
Then the crownes would for her sale.

VII.



    [From MS. Sloane, 1489, fol. 19, written in the time of

    Charles I.]


The king of France, and four thousand men,
They drew their swords, and put them up again.

VIII.



    [In a tract, called 'Pigges Corantoe, or Newes from the

    North,' 4to Lond. 1642, p. 3, this is called "Old Tarlton's

    Song." It is perhaps a parody on the popular epigram of "Jack

    and Jill." I do not know the period of the battle to which it

    appears to allude, but Tarlton died in the year 1588, so that

    the rhyme must be earlier.]


The king of France went up the hill,