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unusual facts about nursery rhyme



1744 in Great Britain

Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, containing the earliest known printed versions of many nursery rhymes.

A Pocket Full of Rye

Like several of Christie's novels (e.g., Hickory Dickory Dock, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe) the title and substantial parts of the plot reference a nursery rhyme, in this case Sing a Song of Sixpence.

Castle Waiting

The series brings together characters from several classic fairy tales, such as Simple Simon and Iron Henry, as well as referencing several others such as Jack and the Beanstalk and Sleeping Beauty.

Cherrington

Cherrington Manor (or in some versions, the malt-house standing behind it) was popularly supposed to have been the building referenced in the nursery rhyme This Is the House That Jack Built.

Karl Heinz Göller

Göller was widely admired for the number and range of his publications: six books and over 110 essays on topics as diverse as the Old English elegies, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Shelley, T. S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, nursery rhymes and science fiction.

Katherine Lines

Lines was also the general editor of the Bodley Head Monographs and edited Lavender's Blue (1954), a selection of classic nursery rhymes illustrated by Harold Jones.

Reginald Spofforth

He composed about 75 glees, also three books of nursery rhyme settings and many songs and duets, including songs for various stage performances at Covent Garden in the 1790s.

St Martin Orgar

St Martin Orgar was a church in the City of London in Martin Lane, off Cannon Street, most famous as being one of the churches mentioned in the nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons".

The Guns of Avalon

The poem about Avalon that Corwin quotes to Ganelon alludes to both Psalm 137 ("By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion") as well as to a classic nursery rhyme ("How many miles to Babylon? Threescore miles and ten").

The Wicker Man soundtrack

The songs were arranged to hint at a pre-Christian pagan European culture and vary between traditional songs, original Giovanni compositions and even nursery rhyme in "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep".

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Addlestone

For example from 1779–1803 the Duke of Bridgwater held it and from an unknown date until 1827 the British Commander-in-Chief Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, famed for the nursery rhyme, the Duke of York Column was tenant of the lands.

Danish language

Similar constructions are found in German, Dutch, Afrikaans, certain varieties of Norwegian, Slovene and Arabic as well as in archaic and dialect English (compare the line "Four-and-twenty blackbirds" in the old nursery rhyme.)

Drury Lane

The street Drury Lane is also where The Muffin Man lives as mentioned in the popular nursery rhyme.

Fabian Stedman

While in London Fabian became a member of the Scholars of Cheapside, a society of ringing that practised at St Mary-le-Bow; the famous great bell of Bow from the nursery rhyme.

Fiddlers Three

The fiddlers three are characters featured in the English nursery rhyme "Old King Cole".

Four and Twenty Blackbirds

"Sing a Song of Sixpence", an English nursery rhyme which features the line

Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday

"Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday" is a 1979 single by euro disco band Boney M. as an adaption of nursery rhyme Polly Wolly Doodle.

Hot Cross Bunny

The title is a play on the nursery rhyme Hot Cross Buns as well as a punny allusion to the basic plot premise.

Jerry, Jerry, Quite Contrary

The title is a parody of the popular nursery rhyme "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary".

Leon Errol

Most of these were marital farces in which Leon would get mixed up with a pretty girl or an involved business proposition, and face the wrath of his wife (usually Dorothy Granger); the theme tune to the series was the nursery rhyme, London Bridge Is Falling Down.

Liberia; or, Mr. Peyton's Experiments

Liberia; or, Mr. Peyton's Experiments is an 1853 novel by Sarah Josepha Hale, the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb", who wrote the novel under the name of Sara J. Hale.

Mells Manor

This act is supposedly referenced in the popular nursery rhyme Little Jack Horner.

Pie bird

The nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence" makes reference to "Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie..." but it is uncertain whether pie vents were designed to look like birds because of this song.

Plum Bun

The novel’s epigraph quotes the nursery rhyme from which the title is taken: "To market, to market / to buy a plum bun / Home again, home again / Market is done".

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross

The nursery rhyme was very popular before the twentieth century, it was sung every day by William Ewart Gladstone to his children as they had "rides on his foot, slung over his knee".

Robert Clothier

Relic was once referred to as "Taffy," a reference to an English nursery rhyme, "Taffy was a Welshman."

Row Your Boat

Its title is taken from the English nursery rhyme "Row, Row, Row Your Boat".

Star Light, Star Bright

Jeannie (Barbara Eden) says the Star Light, Star Bright nursery rhyme in the I Dream of Jeannie series, season 1, episode 7, "Anybody Here Seen Jeannie", around the 24th minute.

There Was An Old Woman

"There Was an Old Woman Who Lived Under a Hill", a nursery rhyme which dates back to at least its first known printing in 1714

Two Little Dickie Birds

On the 1975 album Minstrel in the Gallery by Jethro Tull song One White Duck / 010 = Nothing At All, makes a reference to the nursery rhyme: "So fly away Peter, and fly away Paul, from the fingertip ledge of contentment".