Dance Thumbkin.—In the Book of Nursery Rhymes, published by the Percy Society, there is a small error of importance, involving no less that the learned would call "a non sequitur," and which, if my correct-and-almost-unequalled nurse, Betty Richins, was alive, she would have noticed much sooner that the nurseling who now addresses you. (She died about the year 1796.) In the valuable and still popular nursery classical song, "Dance Thumbkin, dance," it is not only an error to say "Thumbkin he can dance alone" (let any one reader of the "NOTES AND QUERIES," male or female, only try), but it is not the correct text. Betty Richins has "borne me on her knee a hundred times" and sung it thus:—
Thumbkin cannot dance alone.
So[1] dance ye merry men, every one."
I scarcely need add, that if this be true of Thumbkin, it is truer of Foreman, Longman, Middleman, and Littleman.
R.S.S.
Footnote 1:[(return)]
Or then, meaning "for that reason."
King's Coffee-house, Covent Garden.—As an addition to "Mr. RIMBAULT's" Notes on Cunningham's Handbook, the following extract from Harwood's Alumni Etonenses, p. 293., in the recount of the boys elected for Eton to King's College may be interesting:—
"A.D. 1713, 12."
"Thomas King born at West Ashton in Wiltshire; went away scholar, in apprehension that his fellowship would be denied him, and afterwards kept that coffee-house in Covent Garden which was called by his own name."
J.H.L.
Spur Money (No. 23. p. 374, and No 28. p. 462.).—In a curious tract, published in 1598, under the title of The Children of the Chapel stript and whipt, we have the following passage:—