Writing in the Daily Express, Robert Lacey takes a trip down memory lane in a fascinating new book celebrating some of our most fundamental children’s verses.
DEAR OLD Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. And then, poor fellow, he had a great fall . . .
But why do we always assume that Humpty was an egg? There is no mention of an egg anywhere in the words of this famous nursery rhyme.
First appearing in print more than two centuries ago (in 1803, in the reign of King George III), the sad story of Humpty Dumpty can be pursued back even earlier in our history – to the English Civil War. In the summer of 1648, the forces of Parliament were surrounding the troops of King Charles I in the siege of Colchester, the original capital of Roman Britain and, today, the second largest city in Essex.
‘Humpty Dumpty’ was the affectionate nickname that the royalists had given to a bulbous cannon with which they had been shooting cannonballs fiercely into the Parliamentary army. But then the huge bazooka fell off the battlements to shatter into fragments – since it was, alas, made of brittle cast iron. What a tragedy for the royalists!
‘All the King’s horses and all the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again . . .’
The Colchester garrison surrendered to Parliament, and a few months later King Charles I’s head was cut off. So, the ill-starred fate of Humpty Dumpty – egg or cannon – provides a fine example of how nursery rhymes have come to be part of English history and culture.
These odd scraps of verse can also provide us with a morality tale. ‘Pride goes before a fall!’ is a useful lesson for any child to ponder – and there are others. Have you noticed how many nursery rhymes focus on a child’s fear of falling?
Take ‘Rock-a-bye Baby on the Treetop’, for example. This apparently charming lullaby, sung for centuries as tots have been rocked to sleep, dwells on the fear that the poor child could be tossed to the ground. The inescapable law of gravity is one of the basic realities with which children must learn to cope. Ignore it at your peril!
Nursery rhymes can deal in some frightening emotions, with their seemingly innocent verses confronting some of life’s darkest fears and feelings. Just think of those games in which the baby is pretend-dropped by its carer – only to be ‘saved’ from disaster. There is excitement in the dread.
Nursery rhymes and lullabies also possess a very practical – and unsentimental – social function. It is no coincidence that so many of them were printed and published in the years around 1800 AD, the era of the Industrial Revolution.
In 1765 a printed version of ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’ first appeared in a popular ‘chap-book’, a small pamphlet of woodcuts. It was a pioneer version of the modern board-book, helping harassed workers to get their children off to sleep at night – so they could snatch some sleep themselves before heading off to work in those Dark Satanic Mills.
This practical function endures today in what we like to think of as our more child-friendly age. Grandparents seize happily on the chance that a book of nursery rhymes offers them to snuggle up with their grandchildren in those precious years before the dreaded ‘smart’ phone intervenes.
Educational researchers have even put a practical value on this. According to one academic study, children who can recite three nursery rhymes by heart at the age of 4 come at or near the top of their class in reading by the time they are 8:
Man was made for Joy & Woe,
And when this we rightly know,
Thro the World we safely go.
Study those end-of-line rhymes more closely – three words that are all spelled differently, but which all make the same final ‘o’ sound. Rhymes can turn words and reading into so much more fun for young listeners who, we hope, will later become readers. Just consider the rhythmic appeal of ‘The Cat in the Hat’.
In a 4-year-long study, Oxford researchers tested 64 children of pre-school age – 31 boys and 33 girls – across a wide range of social backgrounds, and they found that knowledge of nursery rhymes pushed children significantly up the class in terms of reading, writing and also spelling.
Baa! Baa! Black Sheep, Simple Simon, Hey Diddle Diddle! – all these riddles and giggles of the highly significant parent-to-infant dialogue helped to promote a joyful familiarity with language.
‘Children’s knowledge of nursery rhymes,’ reported the study, ‘does enhance their awareness of the component sounds in words.’ Then, tracking the 64 kids as they developed, the researchers found that this enjoyment and knowledge played ‘a causal role in their reading several years later on.’
They also reported that ‘children with Down’s syndrome enjoy nursery rhymes, and deliberately choose to listen to them from a very early age.’
Poetry lovers may recognise those ‘Joy & Woe’ lines above, as coming from the pen of the visionary 19th century poet William Blake – which reminds us that almost any lines of verse can earn the status of a nursery rhyme. There are no limits. If children like the sound of it and care to recite it, then it becomes a nursery rhyme – especially if it is cheeky or even gruesome.
The apparently charming ‘Ring-a ring o’ roses’, for example, is said by some modern origin-hunters to have been inspired by the tragic epidemic that preceded the Great Fire of London of 1666. ‘Rosie’ was the noxious-smelling rash that infected the skin of bubonic plague sufferers, who might then try to conceal the stench with a fragrant ‘pocketful of posies’.
There is no contemporary evidence for this ingenious connection. But in 1665 the Great Plague did kill an estimated 15% of the capital’s population – ‘A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down.’ Down DEAD, in other words. How dark do you want it?
‘Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, Lavender’s green,’ was my own favourite nursery rhyme as a child. ‘When I am King, dilly dilly, you shall be Queen.’
Might that be the reason why, perchance, I have spent so much of my life studying Britain’s monarchy and royal family? Who can guess at the wild ambitions that nursery rhymes may inspire as we set off through life?
When I recently encountered a striking 1919 anthology of rhymes and drawings assembled by the stage designer and Great War hero Claud Lovat Fraser for his newly born daughter, I was entranced. The colours were so vibrant!
Lovat was famous in his day as the ‘Vermillionaire’. The artist kept bottles of brightly coloured inks on his desk – yellow, green and red – to help generate his vivid and glorious images.
The only problem was that early 20th century printing technology could not handle that much hue and varied pigment. Many of Lovat’s sparkling masterpieces had to go out to the world in black and white. How wonderful, I thought, if the Vermillionaire’s colourful fun and frolics could be seen by us today as he originally intended!
So, I recruited the young Deptford artist Ben Coppin to restore and revive Lovat’s images. For more than two years Ben and I worked together, recruiting the skills and re-cycling technology of the famed Gomer Press in West Wales – and hey presto!
We have now produced our own edition of these classic nursery rhymes in full, glowing colour, as they have never been seen before – with Lovat-designed endpapers produced with reclaimed paper cups.
We hope that you, and all those young readers with whom you share our book, will enjoy it. And may those promising young readers also go top of the class!
Nursery Rhymes with Pictures by Claud Lovat Fraser, by Robert Lacey and Ben Coppin, is published by Paper Argosies Publishing Services, PO Box 80666, London, NW8 1PA. £20.00.
Nursery Rhymes with Pictures by Claud Lovat Fraser, edited by Robert Lacey and illustrated by Ben Coppin, was published by Paper Argosies on 3 October 2024, £20.
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