Lullabies

The oldest children's songs for which records exist are lullabies, intended to help a child fall asleep. Lullabies can be found in every human culture.^[4] The English term lullaby is thought to come from "lu, lu" or "la la" sounds made by mothers or nurses to calm children, and "by by" or "bye bye", either another lulling sound or a term for a good night.^[5] Until the modern era, lullabies were usually recorded only incidentally in written sources. The Roman nurses' lullaby, "Lalla, Lalla, Lalla, aut dormi, aut lacta", is recorded in a scholium on Persius and may be the oldest to survive.^[4]

Many medieval English verses associated with the birth of Jesus take the form of a lullaby, including "Lullay, my liking, my dere son, my sweting" and may be versions of contemporary lullabies.^[5] However, most of those used today date from the 17th century. For example, a well-known lullaby such as "Rock-a-bye Baby", could not be found in records until the late-18th century when it was printed by John Newbery (c. 1765).^[5]

Early nursery rhymes

A French poem, similar to "Thirty days hath September", numbering the days of the month, was recorded in the 13th century.^[7] From the later Middle Ages, there are records of short children's rhyming songs, often as marginalia.^[8] From the mid-16th century, they began to be recorded in English plays.^[2] "Pat-a-cake" is one of the oldest surviving English nursery rhymes. The earliest recorded version of the rhyme appears in Thomas d'Urfey's play The Campaigners from 1698. Most nursery rhymes were not written down until the 18th century when the publishing of children's books began to move from polemic and education towards entertainment, but there is evidence for many rhymes existing before this, including "To market, to market" and "Cock a doodle doo", which date from at least the late 16th century.^[9] Nursery rhymes with 17th-century origins include, "Jack Sprat" (1639), "The Grand Old Duke of York" (1642), "Lavender's Blue" (1672) and "Rain Rain Go Away" (1687).^[10]

The first English collection, Tommy Thumb's Song Book and a sequel, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, were published by Mary Cooper in London in 1744, with such songs becoming known as "Tommy Thumb's songs".^[11][12] A copy of the latter is held in the British Library.^[13] 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).^[14][15] These rhymes seem to have come from a variety of sources, including traditional riddles, proverbs, ballads, lines of Mummers' plays, drinking songs, historical events, and, it has been suggested, ancient pagan rituals.^[3] One example of a nursery rhyme in the form of a riddle is "As I was going to St Ives", which dates to 1730.^[16] About half of the currently recognised "traditional" English rhymes were known by the mid-18th century.^[17] More English rhymes were collected by Joseph Ritson in Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus (1784), published in London by Joseph Johnson.^[18]

19th century

In the early 19th century printed collections of rhymes began to spread to other countries, including Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland (1826) and in the United States, Mother Goose's Melodies (1833).^[3] From this period the origins and authors of rhymes are sometimes known—for instance, in "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" which combines the melody of an 18th-century French tune "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman" with a 19th-century English poem by Jane Taylor entitled "The Star" used as lyrics.^[19]

Early folk song collectors also often collected (what is now known as) nursery rhymes, including in Scotland Sir Walter Scott and in Germany Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim in Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1806–1808).^[20] The first, and possibly the most important academic collection to focus in this area was James Halliwell-Phillipps' The Nursery Rhymes of England (1842) and Popular Rhymes and Tales in 1849, in which he divided rhymes into antiquities (historical), fireside stories, game-rhymes, alphabet-rhymes, riddles, nature-rhymes, places and families, proverbs, superstitions, customs, and nursery songs (lullabies).^[21] By the time of Sabine Baring-Gould's A Book of Nursery Songs (1895), folklore was an academic study, full of comments and footnotes. A professional anthropologist, Andrew Lang (1844–1912) produced The Nursery Rhyme Book in 1897.^[22]

20th century

The early years of the 20th century are notable for the illustrations to children's books including Randolph Caldecott's Hey Diddle Diddle Picture Book (1909) and Arthur Rackham's Mother Goose (1913). The definitive study of English rhymes remains the work of Iona and Peter Opie.^[17]