Nursery rhymes, English; Oral tradition -- England
The king of France went up the hill,
With twenty thousand men;
The king of France came down the hill,
And ne'er went up again.
IX.
The king of France, with twenty thousand men,
Went up the hill, and then came down again;
The king of Spain, with twenty thousand more,
Climb'd the same hill the French had climb'd before.
X.
[Another version. The nurse sings the first line, and repeats
it, time after time, until the expectant little one asks, what
next? Then comes the climax.]
The king of France, the king of France, with forty thousand men,
Oh, they all went up the hill, and so--came back again!
XI.
At the siege of Belle-isle
I was there all the while,
All the while, all the while,
At the siege of Belle-isle.
XII.
[The tune to the following may be found in the 'English
Dancing Master,' 1631, p. 37.]
The rose is red, the grass is green,
Serve Queen Bess our noble queen;
Kitty the spinner
Will sit down to dinner,
And eat the leg of a frog;
All good people
Look over the steeple,
And see the cat play with the dog.
XIII.
Good Queen Bess was a glorious dame,
When bonny King Jemmy from Scotland came;
We'll pepper their bodies,
Their peaceable noddies,
And give them a crack of the crown!
XIV.
[The word _tory_ has changed greatly in its meaning, as it
originated in the reign of Elizabeth, and represented a class
of "bog-trotters," who were a compound of the knave and the
highwayman. For many interesting particulars see Crofton
Croker's 'Researches in the South of Ireland,' 4to, 1824, p.
52.]
Ho! Master Teague, what is your story?
I went to the wood and kill'd a _tory_;
I went to the wood and kill'd another;
Was it the same, or was it his brother?
I hunted him in, and I hunted him out,
Three times through the bog, about and about;
When out of a bush I saw his head,
So I fired my gun, and I shot him dead.
XV.
Please to remember
The fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
XVI.
[Taken from MS. Douce, 357, fol. 124. See Echard's 'History of
England,' book iii, chap. 1.]
See saw, sack-a-day;
Monmouth is a pretie boy,
Richmond is another,
Grafton is my onely joy,
And why should I these three destroy,
To please a pious brother!
XVII.
Over the water, and over the lee,
And over the water to Charley.
Charley loves good ale and wine,
And Charley loves good brandy,
And Charley loves a pretty girl,
As sweet as sugar-candy.
Over the water, and over the sea,
And over the water to Charley,
I'll have none of your nasty beef,
Nor I'll have none of your barley;
But I'll have some of your very best flour;
To make a white cake for my Charley.
XVIII.
[The following is partly quoted in an old song in a MS. at
Oxford, Ashmole, No. 36, fol. 113.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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