Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net A HISTORY OF NURSERY RHYMES BY PERCY B. GREEN LONDON GREENING & CO., LTD. 20, CECIL COURT CHARING CROSS ROAD 1899 Now Reissued by Singing Tree Press 1249 Washington Blvd., Detroit, Michigan. 1968 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 68-31082 Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note, whilst significant amendments are noted at the end of the text. Archaic and dialect spellings remain as printed. Greek text appears as originally printed. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION xiii PART I. CHAP. I. Prehistoric man--His language one of signs and sounds--The story of Psammetichus and the Two Babies--Idiom of language a survival of primitive peoples 1 II. Modern types of early man--Sign-language of people living on the globe to-day--The custom of the UVINZA grandees--The "good-morning" of the Walunga tribe--Signs of hospitality in the sign vocabulary of the North American Indian--The "attingere extremis digitis" of the Romans--Clap-hands one of the first lessons of the Nursery--The modern survival of hand-clapping--"Is it rude to shake hands, Nurse?"--A hypercritical mother--Plato's rebuke--Agesilaus and his children--Nursery classics and critical babies--"Lalla, lalla, lalla" of the Roman child--The well-known baby dance of "Crow and caper, caper and crow" 8