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Preface
In offering to the public this
collection of Children's Rhymes, Children's Gaines, Children's
Songs, and Children's stories ---the multitudinous items of which,
or such, at least, as were not living in my own memory, have been
gathered with patient industry, albeit with much genuine delight,
from wide and varied sources—I anticipate for the work a hearty and
general welcome, alike from old and young. It is the first really
sincere effort to collect in anything like ample and exclusive
fashion the natural literature of the children of Scotland, and
meets what has long appealed to me as decidedly a felt want. The
earlier pages are occupied with a commentary, textually illustrated,
on the generally puerile, but regularly fascinating Rhymes of the
Nursery, the vitality and universal use of which have been at once
the wonder and the Muzzle of the ages. This is followed in turn by a
chapter on Counting-out Rhymes, with numerous examples, home and
foreign, which is succeeded, appropriately, by a section of the work
embracing description of all the well-known out-door and in-door
Rhyme-Games—in each case the Rhyme being given, the action being
portrayed. The remaining contents the title may be left to suggest.
I may only add that the stories--including ''Blue Beard," and "Jack
the Giant Killer," and their fellow-narratives —ten in all—are
printed verbatim from the old chapbooks once so common in the
country, but now so rare as to be almost unobtainable.
Essentially a book
about children and their picturesque and innocent, though often
apparently meaningless, frolics, by the young in the land, I am
assured, it will be received with open arms. From the "children, of
larger growth" those who were once young and have delight in
remembering the fact.- the welcome, if less boisterous, should be
not less sincere. Commend to me on all occasions the man or woman
who, `1 with lyart haffets thin and bare," can sing with the poet-
''Och hey! gin I were young again,
Ochoue! gin I were young again
For chasin' bumbees owre the plain
Is just an auld sang sung again."
ROBERT FORD
287 Onslow Drive,
Dennistoun,
Glasgow.
Contents
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