Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book
Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-Book is the first extant anthology of English nursery rhymes, published in London in 1744. It contains the oldest printed texts of many well-known and popular rhymes, as well as several that eventually dropped out of the canon of rhymes for children. A copy is held in the British Library. In 2013 a facsimile edition with an introduction by Andrea Immel and Brian Alderson was published by the Cotsen Occasional Press.
Publication
With the full title of Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book Voll. [sic] II, this was a sequel to the now lost Tommy Thumb's Song Book, published in London by Mary Cooper in 1744.[1][2][3] For many years, it was thought that there was only a single copy in existence, now in the British Library,[4] but in 2001 another copy appeared and was sold for £45,000.[5] As a result, this is the oldest printed collection of English nursery rhymes that is available. Henry Carey's 1725 satire on Ambrose Philips, Namby Pamby, quotes or alludes to some half-dozen or so nursery rhymes.[6] The rhymes and illustrations were printed from copper plates, the text being stamped with punches into the plates, a technique borrowed from map and music printing. It is 3×13⁄4 inches and it is printed in alternate openings in red and black ink.[6]
Contents
The book contains forty nursery rhymes, many of which are still popular, including;
- Baa Baa Black Sheep
- Girls and Boys Come Out To Play
- Hickory Dickory Dock
- Ladybird Ladybird
- Little Robin Redbreast
- Little Tommy Tucker
- London Bridge is Falling Down
- Mary Mary Quite Contrary
- Oranges and Lemons
- Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross
- Sing a Song of Sixpence
- There Was an Old Woman Who Lived Under a Hill
- Who Killed Cock Robin?
There are also a number of less familiar rhymes, some of which were probably unsuitable for later sensibilities, including:
- Piss a Bed,
- Piss a Bed,
- Barley Butt,
- Your Bum is so heavy,
- You can't get up.
Some nursery rhymes turn up in disguise:
- The Moon shines Bright,
- The Stars give a light,
- And you may kiss
- A pretty girl
- At ten a clock at night.
This is an earlier version of:
- When I was a little boy
- My mammy kept me in,
- Now I am a great boy,
- I'm fit to serve the king.
- I can handle a musket,
- And I can smoke a pipe.
- And I can kiss a pretty girl
- At twelve o'clock at night.[7]
References
- ^ Wolf, Shelby; Coats, Karen; Enciso, Patricia A.; Jenkins, Christine (2010). Handbook of Research on Children's and Young Adult Literature. Routledge. p. 188. ISBN 9780203843543.
- ^ "Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book". British Library.
- ^ Lynch, Jack. The Oxford Handbook of British Poetry, 1660-1800. Oxford University Press. p. 90.
- ^ British Library, "Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-Book". retrieved 14 November 2009.
- ^ "Rhyme book fetches £45,500". 13 December 2001, Telegraph.co.uk, Retrieved 14 November 09.
- ^ a b H. Carpenter and M. Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 533–4.
- ^ William S. Baring-Gould and Ceil Baring-Gould, The Annotated Mother Goose, pp. 24–43.
