Jingles of a Happy Mother Goose: with illustrations

Jingles of a Happy Mother Goose By Emma S. Seale. Published in San Francisco in 1911. With Illustrations By Gertrude Marin. Contains 99 of Mother Goose's favorite rhymes. (68 pages)

The Publisher has copy-edited this book to improve the formatting, style and accuracy of the text to make it readable. This did not involve changing the substance of the text. Some books, due to age and other factors may contain imperfections. Since there are many books such as this one that are important and beneficial to literary interests, we have made it digitally available and have brought it back into print for the preservation of printed works of the past.

Introduction:

...THIS has been called "the century of the child," and truly we have just commenced to study the child as a personality and to perceive the child's natural right to happiness of mind as well as to that happiness of body which is called "health." Realizing how potent is the power of all good thought planted in the fertile ground of the mind of a growing child, the careful modern mother hesitates over the old Mother Goose rhymes. Dear as they are for old custom's sake, many of them are brutal, or too sad to be mentally healthful at a time when the little brain is most plastic to absorb and strong to retain.
...We who have felt their spell cannot bear to part with them altogether, so it has been found possible to turn to good that which seemed evil. In this little volume the objectionable parts of the old verses have been altered so that there is not a line remaining to engender unbeautiful or fearful images in the youthful imagination; and withal the ancient charm and swing remain.

Excerpts:

LITTLE Bo-peep so loves her sheep
She knows just where to find them;
If she leaves them alone they'll all come home
Bringing their lambs behind them.

Little Bo-peep fell fast asleep
And dreamt she heard them calling;
But when she awoke she found it a joke,
For still they all were browsing.

One day she took her little crook,
Happy once more to lead them;
She found a big stone that stood all alone
Where they played with the lambkins near them.

It happened one day, as Bo-peep did stray
Into a meadow hard by,
That there she espied them all side by side,
So lovingly did each one lie.

She looked at them long, then sang them a song,
As over the hillocks they played;
She did what she could, as a shepherdess should,
To make them all happy and quite unafraid.

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I HAD a little pony,
They called him Dapple-gray;
I lent him to a lady
To ride a mile away.
She petted him, she loved him,
She kept him from the mire;
I'll always lend my pony now
For the little lady's hire.