Nursery rhyme

This article is about the traditional poems or songs for children. For a Japanese galgame, see Nursery Rhyme (visual novel).
Illustration of "Hey Diddle Diddle", a well-known nursery rhyme

A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and other European countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.[1]

From the mid-16th century nursery rhymes began to be recorded in English plays, and most popular rhymes date from the 17th and 18th centuries.[2] The first English collections, Tommy Thumb's Song Book and a sequel, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, were published by Mary Cooper in 1744. Publisher John Newbery's stepson, Thomas Carnan, was the first to use the term Mother Goose for nursery rhymes when he published a compilation of English rhymes, Mother Goose's Melody, or Sonnets for the Cradle (London, 1780).[note 1]

  1. ^ a b "Nursery Rhymes". Oxford University Press. 9 December 2017.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Fox was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Carpenter & Prichard 1984, p. 383


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