PROJECT ASHABI
African Stories. Limitless Worlds.
PROJECT ASHABI
African Stories. Limitless Worlds.
Project Gutenberg Archive
Complete unabridged public-domain literary work from the Project Gutenberg archive.
Project Ashabi is being built as the home of original African comics, webtoons, graphic novels, and fiction.
This third-party Novel / Book title is temporary preview content. Step by step, third-party titles will be phased out and replaced exclusively by Ashabi Originals created by African writers and artists.
E-text prepared by Bebra Knutson and revised by David Edwards and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net). The original illustrations were generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org).
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[Illustration: "There was a little man and he had a little gun"]
Introduction 9 Sing a Song o' Sixpence 19 The Story of Little Boy Blue 31 The Cat and the Fiddle 45 The Black Sheep 55 Old King Cole 65 Mistress Mary 75 The Wond'rous Wise Man 89 What Jack Horner Did 99 The Man in the Moon 109 The Jolly Miller 119 The Little Man and His Little Gun 131 Hickory, Dickory, Dock 141 Little Bo-Peep 151 The Story of Tommy Tucker 163 Pussy-cat Mew 175 How the Beggars Came to Town 183 Tom, the Piper's Son 199 Humpty Dumpty 207 The Woman Who Lived in a Shoe 221 Little Miss Muffet 233 Three Wise Men of Gotham 245 Little Bun Rabbit 257
"There was a little man and he had a little gun" _Frontispiece_ Little Boy Blue 36 The Black Sheep 58 Old King Cole 68 The Wond'rous Wise Man 92 Jack Horner 102 The Man in the Moon 112 Little Bo-Peep 156 Tommy Tucker 166 Tom, the Piper's Son 200 Humpty Dumpty 212 Three Wise Men of Gotham 248
NONE of us, whether children or adults, needs an introduction to Mother Goose. Those things which are earliest impressed upon our minds cling to them the most tenaciously. The snatches sung in the nursery are never forgotten, nor are they ever recalled without bringing back with them myriads of slumbering feelings and half-forgotten images.
We hear the sweet, low voice of the mother, singing soft lullabies to her darling, and see the kindly, wrinkled face of the grandmother as she croons the old ditties to quiet our restless spirits. One generation is linked to another by the everlasting spirit of song; the ballads of the nursery follow us from childhood to old age, and they are readily brought from memory's recesses at any time to amuse our children or our grandchildren.
The collection of jingles we know and love as the "Melodies of Mother Goose" are evidently drawn from a variety of sources. While they are, taken altogether, a happy union of rhyme, wit, pathos, satire and sentiment, the research after the author of each individual verse would indeed be hopeless. It would be folly to suppose them all the composition of uneducated old nurses, for many of them contain much reflection, wit and melody. It is said that Shelley wrote "Pussy-Cat Mew," and Dean Swift "Little Bo-Peep," and these assertions are as difficult to disprove as to prove. Some of the older verses, however, are doubtless offshoots from ancient Folk Lore songs, and have descended to us through many centuries.
Arthur Conan Doyle
