Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book

Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-Book is the first anthology of English-language 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. In 2013 a facsimile edition with an introduction by Andrea Immel and Brian Alderson was published by the Cotsen Occasional Press.

Publication

With the full title: Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book Voll. [sic] II, this was a sequel to the now lost Tommy Thumb's Song Book, published in London by Mary Cooper in 1744.^[1] For many years, it was thought that there was only a single copy in existence, now in the British Library,^[2] but in 2001 another copy appeared and was sold for £45,000.^[3] An earlier collection, Songs for the Nursery, or Mother Goose's Melodies, was supposedly published in Boston in 1719, but the location has been disputed,^[4] and no record of any such work exists. Henry Carey's 1725 satire on Ambrose Philips, Namby Pamby, quotes or alludes to some half-dozen or so nursery rhymes. As a result, this is the oldest printed collection of English nursery rhymes that is available.^[5] The rhymes and illustrations were printed from copper plates, the text being stamped with punches into the lates, a technique borrowed from map and music printing. It is 3×1³⁄₄ inches and it is printed in alternate openings in red and black ink.^[5]

Contents

The book contains forty nursery rhymes, many of which are still popular, including;

• Baa Baa Black Sheep
• Girls and Boys Come Out To Play
• Hickory Dickory Dock
• Ladybird Ladybird
• Little Robin Redbreast
• Little Tommy Tucker
• London Bridge is Falling Down
• Mary Mary Quite Contrary
• Oranges and Lemons
• Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross
• Sing a Song of Sixpence
• There Was an Old Woman Who Lived Under a Hill
• Who Killed Cock Robin?

There are also a number of less familiar rhymes, some of which were probably unsuitable for later sensibilities, including:

Piss a Bed,

Piss a Bed,

Barley Butt,

Your Bum is so heavy,

You can't get up.

Some nursery rhymes turn up in disguise:

The Moon shines Bright,

The Stars give a light,

And you may kiss

A pretty girl

At ten a clock at night.

This is an earlier version of:

When I was a little boy

My mammy kept me in,

Now I am a great boy,

I'm fit to serve the king.

I can handle a musket,

And I can smoke a pipe.

And I can kiss a pretty girl

At twelve o'clock at night.^[6]

References

1. Wolf, Shelby; Coats, Karen; Enciso, Patricia A.; Jenkins, Christine (2010). Handbook of Research on Children's and Young Adult Literature. Routledge. p. 188. ISBN 9780203843543.
2. British Library, http://entrypoint.bl.uk/Results.aspx?query=tommy+thumb%27s+pretty+song+book&Web=True&OG=True&ILS=True&BLD=True&imageField.x=50&imageField.y=13, retrieved 14 November 2009.
3. "News in Brief", 13 December 2001, Telegraph.co.uk, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1365141/News-in-brief.html, retrieved 14 November 09.
4. "MOTHER GOOSE.; Longevity of the Boston Myth – The Facts of History in this Matter", New York Times, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D00E1DD1730E132A25757C0A9649C94689ED7CF, retrieved 14 November 2009.
5. H. Carpenter and M. Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 533–4.
6. William S. Baring-Gould and Ceil Baring-Gould, The Annotated Mother Goose, pp. 24–43.

See also

• Lina Eckstein, Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes, p. 7