Little Beauties

THE OXFORD NURSERY RHYME BOOK (224 pp.)--assembled by Iona and Peter Opie--Oxford ($4.50).

When asked how her garden grew, Mary did not always give the same answer. At least once she replied: "With silver bells, And cockle shells:/ Sing cuckolds all on a row." And in Nancy Cock's Pretty Song Book, published around 1780, the row of cuckolds may be seen in a pretty woodcut, horns and all.

The origins of many nursery rhymes are shrouded in the fumes of taverns and mughouses, in a day when English ale and language were both stronger than they are now. How the songs got from the tavern to the nursery has never been quite clear, except that in the 17th and 18th centuries adults were far less squeamish about what was fit for children's ears than they are today. (Later, of course, many of the songs were expurgated and tied with pink and blue ribbons.) Often as not, nursery-rhyme characters were said to have had real counterparts, ranging from stern deans (Dr. Fell) to crooked stewards (Jack Horner) to lovely chippies (Alice, or Elsie, Marley). Everyone knows that my pretty maid said: "I'm going a-milking, sir." But in 1698 some of the lines ran:

What if I do lay you down on the ground?

I will rise up again, sweet Sir, she said.

What if I do bring you with child?

I will bear it, sweet Sir, she said.

Perhaps no one knows more about nursery-rhyme origins than a husband-and-wife team of Britons named Iona and Peter Opie. In The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (TIME, Sept. 24, 1951), they brought together more than 500 of the rhymes and songs that have been the unwitting introduction to literature for English-speaking children everywhere. Now the Opies have followed up with The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book, which packs 800 rhymes, ballads, riddles and trippers, as well as hundreds of woodcuts that are almost always perfect companions to the text (see box).

Not everything the Opies have dug up is nursery gold. But, on the whole, they successfully recreate the nursery-rhyme universe in which the laws of logic, nature and rhyming are suspended. Cruelty can sound carelessly gay, love may be a mere whim, and justice a joke. And yet violence never seems to hurt, love in the child's world is really everywhere, and justice has its own triumphs, as when kings are reduced to thumb-size and beasts are great with wisdom. These verses have, in the words of Poet Walter de la Mare, "their own private and complete little beauty if looked at closely."

A NUSERY SAMPLER

GIANT BONAPARTE

BABY, baby, naughty baby,

Hush, you squalling thing, I say.

Peace this moment, peace, or maybe

Bonaparte will pass this way.

Baby, baby, he's a giant,

Tall and black as Rouen steeple,

And he breakfasts, dines, rely on't,

Every day on naughty people.

ONE-EYED GUNNER

THERE was a little one-eyed gunner,

Who killed all the birds that died last summer.

HECTOR PROTECTOR

HECTOR Protector was dressed all in green;

Hector Protector was sent to the Queen.

The Queen did not like him,

No more did the King;

So Hector Protector was sent back again.

THREE GHOSTESSES

THREE little ghostesses,

Sitting on postesses,

Eating buttered toastesses,

Greasing their fistesses,

Up to their wristesses.

Oh, what beastesses

To make such feastesses!

THE TURNIP VENDOR

IF a man who turnips cries,

Cry not when his father dies,

It is proof that he would rather

Have a turnip than his father.

I SAW a fishpond all on fire

I saw a house bow to a squire

I saw a parson twelve feet high

I saw a cottage near the sky

I saw a balloon made of lead

I saw a coffin drop down dead

I saw two sparrows run a race

I saw two horses making lace

I saw a girl just like a cat

I saw a kitten wear a hat

I saw a man who saw these too

And said though strange they all were true.

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