II

THE ORIGINAL MOTHER GOOSE MELODY

AS ISSUED BY

JOHN NEWBERY OF LONDON

CIRCA 1760

AND

ISAIAH THOMAS OF WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS

CIRCA 1785

M

UCH might be said in favour of this collection, but as we have no room for critical disquisition we shall only observe to our readers that the custom of singing these songs and lullabies to children is of great antiquity. It is even as old as the time of the ancient Druids. Charactacus, King of the Britons, was rocked in his cradle in the Isle of Mona, now called Anglesea, and tuned to sleep by some of these soporiferous sonnets. As the best things, however, may be made ill use of, so this kind of composition has been employed in a satirical manner of which we have a remarkable instance so far back as the reign of King Henry V.; when the great monarch turned his arms against France, he composed the preceding march to lead his troops to battle, well knowing that music had often the power of inspiring courage, especially in the minds of good men. Of this his enemies took advantage, and as our happy nation, even at this time, was never without a faction, some of the malcontents adopted the following words to the King's own march, in order to ridicule his majesty, and to show the folly and impossibility of his undertaking:

There was an old woman toss'd in a blanket
Seventeen times as high as the moon;

But where she was going no mortal could tell,
For under her arm she carry'd a broom.

Old woman, old woman, old woman, said I,
Whither, ah whither, ah whither so high?

To sweep the cobwebs from the sky,
And I'll be with you by and by.

Here the King is represented as an old woman engaged in a pursuit the most absurd and extravagant imaginable, but when he routed the whole French army at the Battle of Agincourt, taking their king and the flower of their nobility prisoners, and with ten thousand men only, made himself master of their kingdom, the very men who had ridiculed him before began to think nothing too arduous for him to surmount; they therefore cancelled the former sonnet, they were now ashamed of, and substituted this in its stead, which you will be pleased to observe goes with the same tune:

So vast is the prowess of Harry the Great,
He'll pluck a hair from the pale fac'd moon;
Or a lion familiarly take by the tooth,
And lead him about as you lead a baboon.

All princes and potentates under the sun,
Through fear into corners and holes away run;

While no danger nor dread his swift progress retards

For he deals with kingdoms as we do our cards.

When this was shown to his majesty he smilingly said that folly always dealt in extravagancies, and that knaves sometimes put on the garb of fools to promote in that disguise their own wicked designs. "The flattery in the last," says he, "is more insulting than the impudence of the first, and to weak minds might do more mischief; but we have the old proverb in our favor: 'If we do not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others will never hurt

us.

We cannot conclude without observing, the great probability is that the custom of making nonsense verses in our schools was borrowed from the practice among the old British nurses; they have indeed always been the first preceptors of the youths of this kingdom, and from them the rudiments of taste and learning are naturally derived. Let none therefore speak irreverently of this ancient maternity as they may be considered the great grandmothers of science and knowledge.

NOTE: This is the preface in the Newbery Edition of Mother Goose Melody, written in London in 1765, and as far as is known is the first preface written for children's books.