Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes

“Doctor Foster went to Glo’ster, In a shower of rain; He stepped in a puddle right up to his middle, And never went there again.” A bumper crop of nursery rhymes for the delight of the very young. In his Introduction, Jerrold explains how his selection was based on earlier collections made by John Newbery, Joseph Ritson and James Orchard Halliwell. He goes on to add, “ Students divide our rhymes into narrative pieces, historical folk-lore, game rhymes, counting-out rhymes, jingles, fragments, etcetera, but for the children for whom and by whom they are remembered, and for whom they are here collected and pictured anew, they are just — Nursery Rhymes.”