This book is an illustrated version of the original Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories by Robert Ford. 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 puzzle 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.
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