CHAPTER VI
Jingles, Fables, and Folk-Lore

The first stories told to a child are almost invariably the Mother Goose rhymes and jingles, beginning perhaps with:

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man!

So I will, master, as fast as I can:

Pat it, and prick it, and mark it with T,

And toss in the oven for Tommy and me.

Or this, from the Chinese Mother Goose (Fleming H. Revell Company):

Pat, pat,

A swallow’s nest we’ll make,