form part of an old catch, printed in the Academy of Complements, ed. 1714, p. 108. The same volume (p. 140) contains the original words to another catch, which has been corrupted in its passage to the nursery:
There was an old man had three sons,
Had three sons, had three sons;
There was an old man had three sons,
Jeffery, James, and Jack.
Jeffery was hang'd and James was drown'd,
And Jack was lost, that he could not be found,
And the old man fell into a swoon,
For want of a cup of sack!
| [9] | See the whole poem in my Nursery Rhymes of England, ed. 1842, p. 19. |
It is not improbable that Shakespeare, who has alluded so much and so intricately to the vernacular rural literature of his day, has more notices of nursery-rhymes and tales than research has hitherto elicited. I am only acquainted with one reference to the former, "Pillicock sat on Pillicock hill," which is quoted by Edgar in King Lear, iii. 4, and is found in Gammer Gurton's Garland, and in most modern collections of English nursery-rhymes. The secret meaning is not very delicate, nor is it necessary to enter into any explanation on the subject. It may, however, be worthy of remark, that the term pillicock is found in a manuscript (Harl. 913) in the British Museum of the thirteenth century.
English children accompanied their amusements with trivial verses from a very early period, but as it is only by accident that any allusions to them have been made, it is difficult to sustain the fact by many examples. The Nomenclator or Remembrancer of Adrianus Junius, translated by Higins, and edited by Fleming, 8vo. 1585, contains a few notices of this kind; p. 298, "βασιλινδα, the playe called one penie, one penie, come after me; χυτρινδα, the play called selling of peares, or how many plums for a penie; p. 299, χοινοφιλινδα, a kinde of playe called
Clowt, clowt,
To beare about,
or my hen hath layd; ιποστρακισμος, a kind of sport or play with an oister shell or a stone throwne into the water, and making circles yer it sinke, &c.; it is called,
A ducke and a drake,
And a halfe penie cake."
This last notice is particularly curious, for similar verses are used by boys at the present day at the game of water-skimming. The amusement itself is very ancient, and a description of it may be seen in Minucius Felix, Lugd. Bat. 1652, p. 3. There cannot be a doubt but that many of the inexplicable nonsense-rhymes of our nursery belonged to antique recreations, but it is very seldom their original application can be recovered. The well-known doggerel respecting the tailor of Bicester may be mentioned as a remarkable instance of this, for it is one of the most common nursery-rhymes of the present day, and Aubrey, MS. Lansd. 231, writing in the latter part of the seventeenth century, preserved it as part of the formula of a game called leap-candle. "The young girls in and about Oxford have a sport called Leap-Candle, for which they set a candle in the middle of the room in a candlestick, and then draw up their coats into the form of breaches, and dance over the candle back and forth, with these words:
The tailor of Biciter,
He has but one eye,
He cannot cut a pair of green galagaskins,
If he were to die.