"Who killed Cock Robin !"

I, said the Sparrow,

With my bow and arrow—
And I killed Cock Robin !"

The outspoken, barefaced, valiant impudence of the answer, which is far more like a boast than a confession, finds but too much sympathy with the hearers. It is true that the children are, in many instances, affected by the sight of the deceased Cock Robin, with his legs sticking up in the air, as he lies on his little black pall, and more especially

when it is found that—

"All the birds in the air fell a sighing and sobbing,

When they heard of the death of poor Cock Robin."

But not a word of the Sparrow being put upon his trial for the crime; no justice is done, no punishment awarded. What can surpass the tragic conciseness of the following, added to a prelusive touch of the infant's Latin primer ?

"Hic, hac, hoc,

Lay him on the block !"

Killing, for the sake of eating, is by no means the most amiable picture to present a child's imagination:

"There was a little Man,

And he had a little gun,

And his bullets were made of lead, " &c.

He shoots a little duck, which his wife roasts while he goes to kill her husband the drake. We only wonder that the writer of this song did not add the "Ducklings," by way of making the family slaughter complete in its interest. But these killings are often effected (as we too often see

practically enacted by children) out of pure wantonness, and with no assignable cause :—

"Where are you going? said Robin to Bobbin ;

66

Where are you going? said Richard to Robin,” &c.

"To shoot an old hen, said Robin to Bobbin,

To shoot an old hen," &c.

How skilfully the verses retard the "delightful" catastrophe, and how they exult in repetition! The killing of a poor harmless old hen is thus exalted into a great event. But sometimes theft is very directly associated with killing:

Pretty and tender to a degree, as all children feel the conclusion of the story of the Babes in the Wood—with its pathetic illustration of the two children lying side by side, asleep or dead, and the robins covering them with leavesthe previous part of the story narrates the dishonest and murderous intentions of the cruel uncle with abominable distinctness, to say nothing of the preparations for their murder by one of the men hired for that purpose, with his fight, and death by the hand of the other servant.

Nothing seems quite satisfactory without a death. The highly interesting and eventful narrative poem of "Froggy would a-wooing go," terminates with several deaths; the heroic bravery of "Jack and Jill" involves a broken neck or a cracked crown, if not both; and the cumulative lyric of "The House that Jack Built," and the companion song of "A Kid—a Kid," comprises various killings, besides bulltossing and cat-worrying. These things are considerably

overlooked, by reason of the comic images presented, and the rapid recurrence of comic rhymes; but there they Sometimes, however, the song takes a more abrupt and savage tone :—

are.

"Tit-tat-toe-
My first go:

Three jolly butcher boys all in a row!

Stick one up

Stick one down

Stick one in the old man's burying-ground!"

Grim, gloomy, vague, and leaving the child's imagination to fill up the picture. Here is a lighter one

"The Fox, when he came to the Farmer's gate,

Who should he see but the Farmer's drake:

'I love you so well for your master's sake,
And I long to be picking your bones, O!'"

This nice suggestion is presently followed by a shot through the Fox's head. But the question of "capital punishment" for an offence is nothing in the nursery code of song-writing; innocence and guilt all fare alike.

"Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home;

Your house is on fire!—your children alone—

They are all burnt but one," &c.

A tailor intends to kill a crow, for no other offence than watching how he made a coat!—

"Wife, bring me my arrow and my bow,
That I may shoot that old carrion crow,
Sing heigh, sing ho, &c.

The tailor he shot, but he miss'd his mark,

And shot his own sow right through the heart!"

Here is another,

"The woodcock and the sparrow;

The little dog has burnt his tail

And he must be hanged to-morrow!"

What a sense of justice is conveyed in the above! And here follows a pretty lullaby—

"Bye baby bumpkin,
Where's Tony Lumpkin?
My lady's on her death-bed,

With eating half a pumpkin."

No wonder; but a charming picture of greediness. Here is a death from a very different cause—

"Little John Jig Jag

Rode on a penny nag,

And went to Wigan to woo;

When he came to a beck

He fell and broke his neck

Johnny, how dost thou now?"

The number of acts of utterly unprovoked and wanton violence which may be found in Mr. Halliwell's but too faithful collection-such as knocking out the teeth, shooting, cutting, and pecking off noses, cracking of crowns, eatingsup alive, bruising, maiming, and mutilating, with the wholesale John Ball, who "shot them all!"-is something quite amazing to those who look through the book. No innocent or beautiful object is spared by our old Witch:

"The white dove sat on the castle wall;

I bend my bow-and shoot her I shall !" &c.

Halliwell's "Nursery Rhymes."

Even the baby in the cradle is demolished,—

"Hush-a-by Baby,

All on the tree top!
When the wind blows

The cradle will rock;

When the boughs break,

The cradle will fall,

Down tumbles hush-a-by Baby, and all!"

Bravo! excellent fun-a smashed baby!-well done, old Nursery Witch! In short, the grand staple commodity of the nursery songs and tales of England, and we fear of many other nations, is death, or the excitement of killing something. Even the best of these—the most heroic, with the least amount of ghastly horror or barbarity—such as "Jack the Giant-killer," the "Forty Thieves," "St. George and the Dragon," &c., contain a plentiful amount of slaughter in a variety of ways; so that the nursery literature may be said to be quite steeped in imaginary blood. Giants, monsters, men, women, children, birds, beasts and fish, all are brought to the nursery by its tutelar Witch, and there slain under every variety of romantic or questionable circumstance.

We shall, no doubt, be reminded that children do not attach such distinct notions to these things as grown-up people; that they do not realize these horrors to their minds; that they, in a certain sort, comprehend them as things of fancy, and "make believe." Heaven preserve us all, if this were not so! We should all become Guerilla soldiers, or Gordon Cummings at the very best, if it were otherwise; and probably thieves and Thugs, so far as education and early tastes are concerned. But we are well aware that it is most wisely and happily ordained differently