Nursery rhymes for holidays

Early nursery rhymes

"Three Blinde Mice" (1609), published by Thomas Ravenscroft.^[6]

A French poem, similar to "Thirty days hath September", numbering the days of the month, was recorded in the 13th century.^[7] From the later Middle Ages there are records of short children's rhyming songs, often as marginalia.^[8] From the mid-16th century they begin to be recorded in English plays.^[2] "Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man" is one of the oldest surviving English nursery rhymes. The earliest recorded version of the rhyme appears in Thomas d'Urfey's play The Campaigners from 1698. Most nursery rhymes were not written down until the 18th century, when the publishing of children's books began to move from polemic and education towards entertainment, but there is evidence for many rhymes existing before this, including "To market, to market" and "Cock a doodle doo", which date from at least the late 16th century.^[9] Nursery rhymes with 17th century origins include, "Jack Sprat" (1639), "The Grand Old Duke of York" (1642), "Lavender's Blue" (1672) and "Rain Rain Go Away" (1687).^[10]

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"Oranges and Lemons" (1744) is set to the tune of the bells of St Clement Danes, an Anglican church in the City of Westminster, London.

The first English collections, Tommy Thumb's Song Book and a sequel, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, were published by Mary Cooper in London in 1744, with such songs becoming known as 'Tommy Thumb's songs'.^[11][12] A copy of the latter is held in the British Library.^[13] John Newbery's stepson, Thomas Carnan, was the first to use the term Mother Goose for nursery rhymes when he published a compilation of English rhymes, Mother Goose's Melody, or, Sonnets for the Cradle (London, 1780).^[14][15] These rhymes seem to have come from a variety of sources, including traditional riddles, proverbs, ballads, lines of Mummers' plays, drinking songs, historical events, and, it has been suggested, ancient pagan rituals.^[3] One example of a nursery rhyme in the form a riddle is "As I was going to St Ives", which dates to 1730.^[16] About half of the currently recognised "traditional" English rhymes were known by the mid-18th century.^[17]