[Pg 35] A cat came fiddling out of a barn,
With a pair of bagpipes under her arm,
She sang nothing but fiddle-de-dee,
Worried a mouse and a humble bee.
Puss began purring, mouse ran away,
And off the bee flew with a wild huzza!
In both cases the cat was fiddling, that is moving to instrumental music without the utterance of words, and called upon the others to do so while she played the pipes. Her association with an actual fiddle, however, is preserved in the following rhyme which I cite in two of its numerous variations:—
Sing hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,
The cow jump'd over the moon!
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish lick't up the spoon.
(1797, cited by Rimbault.)
Sing hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed to see such craft,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
(c. 1783, p. 27.)
This rhyme also refers to the revelry which accompanied a feast, probably the one of Twelfth Night also.
CHAPTER IV
RHYMES IN TOY-BOOKS
MANY of our longer nursery pieces first appeared in print in the diminutive toy-books already described, which represent so curious a development in the literature of the eighteenth century. These books were sometimes hawked about in one or more sheets, which were afterwards folded so as to form a booklet of sixteen, thirty-two, or sixty-four pages. Others were issued sewn and bound in brilliant covers, at a cost of as much as a shilling or eighteen pence. Usually each page contained one verse which was illustrated by an appropriate cut. In the toy-books which tell a consecutive story, the number of verses of the several pieces seem to have been curtailed or enlarged in order to fit the required size of the book.