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scan of Tommy Thumb's pretty song book. Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-Book is the oldest 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.
The first two lines at least appeared in dance books (1708, 1719, 1728), satires (1709, 1725), and a political broadside (1711). It appeared in the earliest extant collection of nursery rhymes, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, published in London around 1744. The 1744 version included the first six lines. [3]
It's easy to rhyme those a's: say, nay, today, away, play, stay, there's a lot of rhymes and those fall in quite easily, so I gradually pieced it together from that journey. Sud-den-ly, and 'b' again, another easy rhyme: e, me, tree, flea, we, and I had the basis of it.
The first surviving version of the rhyme was published in Infant Institutes, part the first: or a Nurserical Essay on the Poetry, Lyric and Allegorical, of the Earliest Ages, &c., in London around 1797. [1] It also appears in Mother Goose's Quarto: or Melodies Complete, printed in Boston, Massachusetts around 1825. [1]
A variant of the melody "A-Hunting We Will Go" is a popular folk song and nursery rhyme composed in 1777 by English composer Thomas Arne. [1] Arne had composed the song for a 1777 production of The Beggar's Opera in London.
A reference in 1725 to 'Now on Cock-horse does he ride' may allude to this or the more famous rhyme, and is the earliest indication we have that they existed. [2] The earliest surviving version of the modern rhyme in Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus, printed in London in 1784, differs significantly from modern versions in that the subject is not a fine lady but "an old woman". [2]
The nursery rhyme is mentioned in Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge (1841), which is the first record of the lyrics in their modern form. [ 1 ] In middle-class families in the mid-eighteenth century "Sukey" was equivalent to "Susan" and Polly was a pet-form of Mary.
"School Days" has been recorded many times over the years. Byron G. Harlan was an early recording star who made it a hit. [4] Billy Murray and Ada Jones also sang it as memorable duet, referenced decades later by Tiny Tim on one of his albums, in which he sang both parts, using his famous falsetto voice.