THR BOOKMAN Reviews & Notes

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 477, 5 October 1928, Page 14

THR BOOKMAN Reviews & Notes

NURSERY RHYMES

(Written for THE SUN) |»OBERT LYND has, in the preface to his anthology, an amusing note on nursery rhymes. He names a few and ranges them into rhyme and poetry, fancy and imagination. Nursery rhymes, he says, are the beginnings of poetry. They satisfy a child’s sense of rhythm, which is an exacting thing. When it beats the table with its spoon the beats are rhythmic. So early does music enter our clay and blow through us like wind in a flute. Up till then I, like others, had taken nursery rhymes for granted as things in a class apart, meaning little or nothing, but having some sort of magic. Then one winter's night someone stumbled on a rare old one, and it being an idle night of wind and rain, we all became children again for an hour and vied with one another in remembering nursery rhymes. And as they tumbled out it was impossible not to turn the torch of Lynde’s criticism on them. They fell into their places with faery precision. Let us take the mere rhymes first. They are not of the first water, for fancy is less than imagination. “I had a little pony—his name was Dapple Gray. I lent him to a lady

to ride him fa# away.” That was one of them, but even in that there is a hint of poetry. “To ride him far away”—isn’t that what Chesterton would call symbolic of the English; that reaching out to distance? He said once that "over the hills and far away” was the refrain of his nation’s song, or words to that effect. Even in the rhyme of the cat who went to London to see the Queen there is the idea of majesty and distance. But that rhyme is not poetry. Nor is the one on the man in the moon. The moon which inspired the Greeks is merely humorous to children. In dignities are placed upon it. A cow jumps over it. A leering old woman with a burnt mouth grins from it. Shades of Endymion! We pass on. “Polly, put the kettle on,” is practical, but not romantic. “Crosspatch, draw the latch, Sit by the fire and spin,” is better. “Call the neighbours in” is a phrase so warm and human that it goes to the roots of life, but it is not poetry. “There was an old woman that lived In a shoe.” and "Old Mother Hubbard” deal with the eternal problems of larder and house-room. Bread and a roof are introduced tVrly as necessities. “Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross” is a flight of fancy merely. “Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes” is a pretty line, but the last decoration would scarcely be comfortable. "Curly-loclcs, curly-locks,” is another domestic idyll. The delights promised are those of the body, as they are in the one where greediness retires with its plums to the corner In a gastric ecstasy. None of these Is poetry. “Hark, hark, the dogs do bark, The beggars are coming to town,” is pictorial and picturesque rather than idealic and imaginative. “Goosey, goosey gander” rules itself out. The goose and the donkey have been made by fate the fools of the ages. Chesterton has exalted the donkey in literature but the goose is as yet undefended. I do not mean the outlay/ of the reeds. He is celebrated for his own sake, and for the sake of bands of wild gay souls driven forth from a sorrowful country like wild geese flying, fierce and lonely, in certain years not kindly to remember. To return to our jingles—“ Ding dong bell” is a crude thing, like a child’s own first attempt at rhyming. So is “Little Miss Mullet,” except that it expresses the emotion of fear, and produces delightfully safe shudders. Fear is an emotion that children love —when it is mock fear. “Hickery Dickery Dock” is meant, one guesses, to be onomatopoeic, and is certainly a favourite, but it isn’t poetry. “Mother, may I go to bathe?” is whimsical. “Hang your clothes upon the tree, But don’t go near the water” should appeal to those whose beach finery surpasses their powers of natation. Not such a foolish rhyme as it looks by any means. The French have one its kind, but more nipping, “My daughter, walk straight,” says the mother crayfish, “It’s not good form to walk backwards.” And says the dutiful infant, “Walk first, my mother, I will follow.” Shrewd but not lovely. Well, that’s enough of utility and fancy. Let us turn to those that actually are poetry. There is a fascination about bells, chiming, booming bells that makes one pause before—“ Oranges and I Lemons.” You get a joyous notion of a clanging jubilant Sabbath with bell jostling bell in silver rivalry.

Bell answering bell, bell defying bell. “Oranges and lemons,” The hells of St. Clement’s, “You owe me five farthings,” Say the bells of St. Martin’s. “When will you pay met” Say the bells of Old Bailey. “When I grow rich,” Say the bells of Shoreditch; “And when will that bet” Say the bells of Stepney. “I’m sure I don l t know ” Said the great bell of Bowl Note the heavy mellow stroke of that last as compared with the impudent dancing of the bells of Stepney, lighthearted coster bells. Then there is “Green gravels, green gravels —the grass is so green.” That is certainly poetry with a Shakespearian wildness that has a hint of a maiden matching madly her heroes by a stream. The last line mars its far-awayness. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary” carries one into beauty, beauty bordered, by silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row. It is not hard to enter Mary’s garden. The mediaeval touch is sustained in the seldom heard “I am a knight from out of Spain. I come to court your daughter, Jane,” the mother rejects his confident advances and insults the sheen of his spurs. He answers with Spanish deadliness, “My spurs ate bright and richly wrought, and in this town they were not bought, And in this town they shan’t be sold. Neither for silver nor for gold.” He retorted by an insult to her spires. It’s not hard to imagine that Spain was chosen for the sake of its simplicity of rhyme, in such efforts especially as, “Rain, rain go to Spain,” but if so, it was a lucky choice, for there is a turreted magic about the country. The Irish who got the wash of the Armada feel it still, and Galway is a ghost of Spain. One of Colum’s loveliest poems tells it. There’s a line of pure poetry to end the most famous bird’s requiem that the world has known. ..... And the birds of the air were all sighin’ and sobbin’ When they heard of the death of poor CocJc Robin. We may grow up and put away childish things, but we can never grow out of the habit of leaving the best till last. And here it is like a lark’s song in empty air, like a leaf on a bare bough. 1 had a little nut-tree, Nothing would it bear, Save a silver nutmeg And a golden pear. The King of Spain’s daughter Came to visit me, And all for the sake Of my little nut-tree. The king of Spain’s daughter, for a magical unreason, crossing a world. What would you? It is faery. It is poetry. —EILEEN DUGGAN. Wellington. AUCKLANDER’S BOOK ON NEW ZEALAND LIFE “Along the Road” is the title chosen by Miss Elsie K. Morton for her book of New Zealand life and travel, to be published in October by the Unity Press, Ltd. Miss Morton comes of a literary family. Her uncle has already published a most interesting volume—reminiscences of early days in New Zealand. Miss Morton takes up the tale, as it were, where her uncle ended it and will. supply her readers with glowing pictures of New Zealand as it exists to-day. Miss Morton knows her country from one end to the other and the publication of the first collection of her essays will be awaited with interest.