Description
In Britain and America, and wherever the English word is spoken, the children become joyful and wise listening to the same traditional verses. In the New World as in the Old their first poetic memory is of ‘Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie’, A slipkin, a slopkin, a pipkin, a popkin’, ‘Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s’ man’, and ‘Over the hills and far away’. Almost the only point of difference is that in England ther verses are known as ‘nursery rhymes’, and in America as ‘Mother Goose songs’ (Introduction).
