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A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and other European countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
From the mid-16th century nursery rhymes began to be recorded in English plays, and most popular rhymes date from the 17th and 18th centuries. The first English collections, Tommy Thumb's Song Book and a sequel, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, were published by Mary Cooper in 1744. Publisher 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).
Many medieval English verses associated with the birth of Jesus take the form of a lullaby, including "Lullay, my liking, my dere son, my sweting" and may be versions of contemporary lullabies. However, most of those used today date from the 17th century. For example, a well-known lullaby such as "Rock-a-bye Baby", could not be found in records until the late-18th century when it was printed by John Newbery (c. 1765).
The first English collection, 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". A copy of the latter is held in the British Library. "Rhyme book fetches £45,500". 13 December 2001, The Telegraph, Retrieved 24 September 2019. 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).A. H. Bullen's 1904 facsimile of Newbery's 1791 edition of Mother Goose's Melody ( on-line) These rhymes seem to have come from a variety of sources, including traditional riddles, , ballads, lines of Mummers' plays, drinking songs, historical events, and, it has been suggested, ancient pagan rituals. One example of a nursery rhyme in the form of a riddle is "As I was going to St Ives", which dates to 1730.I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 376–77. About half of the currently recognised "traditional" English rhymes were known by the mid-18th century. More English rhymes were collected by Joseph Ritson in Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus (1784), published in London by Joseph Johnson.
Early folk song collectors also often collected (what is now known as) nursery rhymes, including in Scotland Walter Scott and in Germany Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim in Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1806–1808). The first, and possibly the most important academic collection to focus in this area was James Halliwell-Phillipps' The Nursery Rhymes of England (1842) and Popular Rhymes and Tales in 1849, in which he divided rhymes into antiquities (historical), fireside stories, game-rhymes, alphabet-rhymes, riddles, nature-rhymes, places and families, proverbs, superstitions, customs, and nursery songs (lullabies).R. M. Dorson, The British Folklorists: a History (Taylor & Francis, 1999), p. 67. By the time of Sabine Baring-Gould's A Book of Nursery Songs (1895), folklore was an academic study, full of comments and footnotes. A professional anthropologist, Andrew Lang (1844–1912) produced The Nursery Rhyme Book in 1897.
| "Arthur o' Bower" | King Arthur as leader of the Wild Hunt | Late 18th century (Britain) | Conjectural |
| "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" | The slave trade; medieval wool tax | c. 1744 (Britain) | Medieval taxes were much lower than two thirds. There is no evidence of a connection with slavery. |
| "Doctor Foster" | Edward I of England | 1844 (Britain) | Given the recent recording the medieval meaning is unlikely. |
| "Goosey Goosey Gander" | Henry VIII | 1784 (Britain) | No evidence that it is linked to the propaganda campaign against the Catholic Church during the reign of King Henry VIII.C. Roberts, Heavy words lightly thrown: the reason behind the rhyme (Granta, 2004), p. 23. |
| "The Grand Old Duke of York" | Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York in the Wars of the Roses; James II of England or Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany; Flanders campaign of 1794–95. | 1913 (Britain) | The more recent campaign is more likely, but first record is very late. The song may be based on a song about the king of France.E. Knowles, Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941, 6th edn., 2004). |
| "Hickory Dickory Dock" | Exeter Cathedral astronomical clock | 1744 (Britain) | In the 17th century the clock had a small hole in the door below the face for the resident cat to hunt mice.Blythe, Ronald. Circling Year: Perspectives from a Country Parish. p. 87. Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd, 2001 |
| "Humpty Dumpty" | Richard III of England; Thomas Wolsey and a cannon from the English Civil War | 1797 (Britain) | No evidence that it refers to any historical character and is originally a riddle found in many European cultures. The story about the cannon is based on a spoof verse written in 1956. |
| "Jack and Jill" | Norse mythology; Charles I of England; King John of England; Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette | 1765 (Britain) | No evidence that it stretches back to early medieval era and poem predates the French Revolution. |
| "Little Boy Blue" | Thomas Wolsey | c. 1760 (Britain) | Unknown; the identification is speculative. |
| "Little Jack Horner" | Dissolution of the Monasteries | 1725 (Britain), but story known from c. 1520 | The rhyme may have been adapted to satirise Thomas Horner who benefited from the Dissolution, but the connection is speculative. |
| "London Bridge Is Falling Down" | Burial of children in foundations (immurement; burning of wooden bridge by Vikings) | 1659 (Britain) | Unknown, but verse exists in many cultures and may have been adapted to London when it reached England. |
| "Mary Had a Little Lamb" | An original poem by Sarah Josepha Hale inspired by an actual incident. | 1830 (US) | As a girl, Mary Sawyer (later Mrs. Mary Tyler) kept a pet lamb, which she took to school one day at the suggestion of her brother. |
| "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" | Mary, Queen of Scots or Mary I of England | c. 1744 (Britain) | Unknown; all identifications are speculative. |
| "The Muffin Man" | Street sellers of English muffin in Britain. | c. 1820 (Britain) | The location of Drury Lane is a thoroughfare bordering Covent Garden in London.I. Opie and P. Opie, The Singing Game (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 379–82. |
| "Old King Cole" | Various early medieval kings and Richard Cole-brook a Reading clothier | 1708–09 (Britain) | Richard Cole-brook was widely known as King Cole in the 17th century. |
| "One for Sorrow" | Records the superstition (it is not clear whether it has been seriously believed) that seeing Eurasian magpie predicts the future, depending on how many are seen | 1780 (Britain) | The magpie was considered a bird of ill omen in Britain at least as far back as the early 16th century.I. Opie and M. Tatem, eds, A Dictionary of Superstitions (Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 235-6. |
| "Ring a Ring o' Roses" | Black Death (1348) or The Great Plague of London (1665) | 1880 (Britain) | No evidence that the poem has any relation to the plague. The "plague" references are not present in the earliest versions.D. Wilton, I. Brunetti, Word myths: debunking linguistic urban legends (Oxford: Oxford University Press US, 2004), pp. 24–25. |
| "Rock-a-bye Baby" | The Egyptian god Horus; Son of James II of England preceding the Glorious Revolution; Native American childcare; anti-Jacobitism satire | c. 1765 (Britain) | Unknown; all identifications are speculative. |
| "Sing a Song of Sixpence" | Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII, with Catherine of Aragon representing the queen, and Anne Boleyn the maid. | c. 1744 (Britain) | Unknown; all identifications are speculative. |
| "There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe" | Queen Caroline of Ansbach, wife of King George II of Great Britain; Elizabeth Vergoose of Boston. | 1784 (Britain) | Unknown; all identifications are speculative. |
| "Three Blind Mice" | Mary I of England | c. 1609 (Britain) | Unknown; the identification is speculative. |
| "Cock Robin" | Norse mythology; Robin Hood; William II of England; Robert Walpole; Ritual bird Animal sacrifice | c. 1744 (Britain) | The story, and perhaps rhyme, dates from at least the later medieval era, but all identifications are speculative. |
In the early and mid-20th centuries, this was a form of Expurgation, concerned with some of the more violent elements of nursery rhymes and led to the formation of organisations like the British "Society for Nursery Rhyme Reform".N. E. Dowd, D. G. Singer, R. F. Wilson. Handbook of children, culture, and violence (Sage, 2005), p. 136. Psychoanalysis such as Bruno Bettelheim strongly criticised this revisionism, because it weakened their usefulness to both children and adults as ways of symbolically resolving issues and it has been argued that revised versions may not perform the functions of catharsis for children, or allow them to imaginatively deal with violence and danger.Jack Zipes, The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World, p. 48, .
In the late 20th century revisionism of nursery rhymes became associated with the idea of political correctness. Most attempts to reform nursery rhymes on this basis appear to be either very small scale, light-hearted updating, like Felix Dennis's When Jack Sued Jill – Nursery Rhymes for Modern Times (2006), or satires written as if from the point of view of political correctness to condemn reform.F. Dennis, When Jack Sued Jill – Nursery Rhymes for Modern Times (Ebury, 2006). The controversy in Britain in 1986 over changing the language of "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" because, it was alleged in the popular press, it was seen as racially dubious, was based only on a rewriting of the rhyme in one private nursery, as an exercise for the children.J. Curran, J. Petley, I. Gaber, Culture wars: the media and the British left (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 85–107.
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