Your correspondent T.S.D. does not remember to have seen that interesting old nursery ditty "London Bridge is broken down" printed, or even referred to in print. For the edification then of all interested in the subject, I send you the following.
The old song on "London Bridge" is printed in Ritson's Gammer Gurton's Garland, and in Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England; but both copies are very imperfect. There are also some fragments preserved in the Gentleman's Magazine for September, 1823 (vol. xciii. p. 232.), and in the Mirror for November 1st of the same year. From these versions a tolerably perfect copy has been formed, and printed in a little work, for which I am answerable, entitled Nursery Rhymes, with the Tunes to which they are still sung in the Nurseries of England. But the whole ballad has probably been formed by many fresh additions in a long series of years, and is, perhaps, almost interminable when received in all its different versions.
The correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine remarks, that "London Bridge is broken down" is an old ballad which, more than seventy years previous, he had heard plaintively warbled by a lady who was born in the reign of Charles II., and who lived till nearly that of George II. Another correspondent to the same magazine, whose contribution, signed "D.," is inserted in the same volume (December, p. 507.), observes, that the ballad concerning London Bridge formed, in his remembrance, part of a Christmas carol, and commenced thus:—
"Dame, get up and bake your pies,
On Christmas Day in the morning."
The requisition, he continues, goes on to the dame to prepare for the feast, and her answer is—
"London Bridge is broken down,
On Christmas Day in the morning."
The inference always was, that until the bridge was rebuilt some stop would be put to the dame's Christmas operations; but why the falling of a part of London Bridge should form part of a Christmas carol it is difficult to determine.
A Bristol correspondent, whose communication is inserted in that delightful volume the Chronicles of London Bridge (by Richard Thomson, of the London Institution), says,—