When was the first nursery rhyme written?

Baloo55th

Are you trying to compile a history of the world, Joe? Only kidding... This is another of those ones that we just can't answer. Heck, we don't even know what half of them mean, let alone when they started! There were probably nursery rhymes created as soon as language and culture developed far enough to create rhymes. The rhyming form is restful for small kids (and big ones, too, sometimes). There is sometimes a tie-in with 'fairy tales', most of which have no fairies in them but usually quite a lot of blood and gore. This doesn't upset most kids - if the someone bangs his knee they are more upset than if someone gets his head chopped off. Some 'nursery rhymes' were political satires in origin - Little Jack Horner and the Grand Old Duke of York to name two. Sometimes they're just simply unexplainable nowadays, as people didn't bother to record the start of something so commonplace (or in the case of political ones, so apparently temporary). Nov 29 04, 4:13 PM

gmackematix

According to "The New Shell Book of Firsts", the earliest known book of English nursery rhymes is "Tom Thumb's Song Book" published in 1744. It includes "Baa Baa Black Sheep". Mind you, I don't think the term "nursery" for the care of children had been coined back then so they wouldn't have been called "nursery rhymes". I can't think of any instances of a rhyme clearly written for children appearing in any ancient form but I suspect there must be some. Nov 30 04, 8:50 PM

peasypod

It seems that nursery rhymes are remarkably resilient and often outlive the events or ideas which produced them. Also, they seem to be ubiquitous amongst literate societies, so that there are Roman and Greek nursey rhymes as well as in earlier cultures. In fact since literature perhaps originally found form in fireside stories and sagas to instruct the younger tribe members, it could be argued that "nursery rhymes" are the original literary form. In evidence of the resilience of nursery rhymes beyond the memory of their origin or meaning is the following verse sang by children in Scandinavia in the 20th century. Jeck og Jill Vent op de hill Og Jell kom tombling after. It seems that the verse was introduced by British soldiers in the Napoleonic wars, and had been handed down for 130 odd years despite the fact that the verse made absolutely no sense to the children speaking it. Dec 01 04, 2:07 AM

Baloo55th

Very few of the nursery rhymes we have today were written for children. They were for adults, but the 'childish' way they were written, of the words used made them appeal to children who couldn't understand what they were about - as peasy points out. Dec 01 04, 12:28 PM

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