“A cow and a calf,
An ox and a half,
Forty good shillings and three;
Is that not enough tocher
For a shoemaker’s daughter,
A bonny lass with a black e’e?”
Agricultural statistics would shew one, no doubt, how long ago—how many kings’ and queens’ reigns ago—it was that a cow and a calf could be had for £2 3s. That is the key to the date of the rhyme, in fact; for the difference in the value of money merely goes to establish that the personage who espoused the shoemaker’s daughter had no reason to complain of the fortune given with her. But the pecuniary equivalent has ceased to be quoted these two centuries or so; and the lines thus carry within themselves a proof of their appurtenance by birthright to a prior era.
There is another class of tale, comprised in the Nursery Series, which resembles a new dwelling built out of old materials. It is the one beginning,—
“There was an old man, who lived in a wood,
As you may plainly see;