David in Ballarat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >I was just talking with a cousin and she has asked me to ask you if >anyone can tell her the title of a book which she always regrets not buying. > >She saw this book about 30 years ago and can recall that it was >hard-back and many hundreds of pages long. It explained the origins >of all nursery rhymes and I suspect it would have been British.
I was just thinking about a book that might have been it during the discussions of rhymes. I have a two-volume paperback set (a reprint from Dover, now even out of print from Dover) of books called "The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland", by Alice Bertha (Merck) Gomme. This book describes variations of children's games, with variations of chants, descriptions of how they were played, sometimes music to go with the rhymes, and speculations about how the games might have been derived. My Dover copy was published in 1964, and says "published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland and Stewart, Ltd. Published in the UK by Constable and Co., Ltd. An unabridged republication of the work first published . . . in 1894 (Vol. I) and 1898 (Vol. II) by David Nutt, London, as part of the Dictionary of British Folk-Lore." So if you want 17 variations of "Jenny Jo" (Jenny Jones, Janet Jones, etc), this would be the book (whether it's the one your cousin was thinking of or not). Lynn Carpenter in SW Michigan, USA alwen at i2k dot com http://lost-arts.blogspot.com/ To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
