Nursery Rhyme verses

Subject: Nursery Rhyme verses
From: DMcG
Date: 04 Feb 18 - 05:21 AM

I have just sent my grandson home after a weekend visit. During it I sang four verses of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' but was very aware that almost every playschool and nursery rhyme book only includes the first verse. Peter and Iona Opie's wonderful book contains additional verses for many of them, as well as many less well known songs.

And I got to wondering about the 'folk process' trimming many songs of extra verses, versus a general lack of interest in keeping the richness of the originals.

I have no conclusions, but would welcome your thoughts.

Subject: RE: Nursery Rhyme verses
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 04 Feb 18 - 05:53 AM

The folk process may have trimmed verses but it has also kept the songs alive.

Subject: RE: Nursery Rhyme verses
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Feb 18 - 08:20 AM

D
"And I got to wondering about the 'folk process' trimming many songs of extra verses, versus a general lack of interest in keeping the richness of the originals." Forgive me if I've misunderstood your statement here, but the 2 items 'versus', aren't they the same?

The general idea of the folk process is that the trimming of extraneous material is more often than not an improvement in the mouths/ears of the folk who preserved/mediated them. Otherwise we'd all be dashing back to the broadsides and sheet music for the earliest versions.

Subject: RE: Nursery Rhyme verses
From: DMcG
Date: 04 Feb 18 - 08:33 AM

Agreed, Steve. I was thinking more of the commercial lack of incentive to preserve things. A book of a 100 popular nursery rhymes will simply sell better than one of 20, each with more verses.

Subject: RE: Nursery Rhyme verses
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Feb 18 - 10:48 AM

Hmmm, that's an interesting way of looking at it! This is certainly what happened with the broadsides. The 50 verses of the mid-18th century were chopped down to about a dozen by the end of the century. The majority of what was being collected by the end of the next century derive from the c1800-1840 ones, so they aren't as long.

Subject: RE: Nursery Rhyme verses
From: Murpholly
Date: 05 Feb 18 - 04:14 AM

Always preferred
Scintillate, scintillate
Globular vivific
Fain would I fathom thy nature specific
Loftily poised in ether capacious
Strongly resembling a gem carbonacious
Scintillate scintillate
Globulare vivific
Fain would I fathom thy nature specific

Subject: RE: Nursery Rhyme verses
From: Mo the caller
Date: 05 Feb 18 - 05:50 AM

Yes, but would you like it if you didn't know the simple version?

Thinking about Twinkle twinkle - I couldn't remember the words but Wiki gives them. My expectation of Victorian religiousity was not exactly right - 1806 & no mention of God - but it has that flavour.

The same thing happened to all the Sankey & Moody type hymns. The verses were ditched and books of 'choruses' were published for Sunday Schools - spiritual nursery rhymes.