Unable to HTML scan at the moment - does THIS help you Rabi - it might be gibberish?
Opie, Iona and Peter (editors) The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1955, #400-401, p 345. (Not Indexed)
#400
PEASE PORRIDGE (the type letter broke so the imprint looks like PHASE)
Two Verses - CONTENT AS NOTED ABOVE – ending with Greenhouse
Note UK not US punctuation on "quote marks."
Infant amusement, also employed by school-children on cold days for had-warming. Two players, standing opposite each other, clap their own hands together on the first word, their tight hands with each other on the second, their own hands together again on the third, and with succeeding words their left hands with each other, their own hands together, and both hands with each other. They immediately restart the sequence, saying the rhyme faster and faster until one of the players breaks the sequence through addlehandedness or exhaustion. Another such formula is 'Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake" (q.v.).
Newest Christmas Box, c. 1797 / (James Orchard Haliwell, The Nursery Rhymes of England 1844, Newell, 1883, Oral collection 1945.
(still quoted)
****The query may be raised whether there is significance in the unvarying and re occurring 'nine days old'. Compare the street cry 'Mince pies hot, mice pies cold, mince pies in addition nine days old', and the parodies of it in the folk plays:
Mince pies hot, mice pies cold,
I'll send you to the devil till he's nine days old.
#401
Pease porridge hot,
Pease porridge cold,
Pease porridge in the pot,
Spell me that without a P,
And a clever scholar you will be.
"'I will, THAT', said the editor of Mother Goose's Melody. This is a riddle and a clapping-game in one.
Mother Goose's Melody c. 1765, 'Spell me that in four letters' instead of the last couplet / NR (T. Richardson), c 1830, similar to previous / Chambers 1842 / JOH, 1842 / Rymor Club, 1906, ' Cauld kail cauld, Nine days auld, Boild in a pat and sottert in a pan; Spell "that" wi' four letters if you can' / Street Games of N. Shields Children, M. and R. King 1926.
OP CIT p 341.
RE: "Pat-a-cake:
This was portrayed as an infants' ditty as early as 1698….The Campaigners, Tom D-Urfey, 1698.
Sincerely,
Gargoyle