Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales Author:James O. Halliwell-Phillipps Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 101 III.—GAME-RHYMES. The most obvious method of arranging the rhymes employed in the amusements of children is to commence with the simple lines used by t... more »he nurse in the infantine toe, finger, and face-games, then proceeding to bo-peep, and concluding with the more complicated games, many of the latter possessing a dramatic character. TOE-GAMES. Harry Whistle, Tommy Thistle, Harry Whible, Tommy Thible, And little Oker-belL A game with the five toes, each toe being touched in succession as these names are cried. "This song affords a proof of the connexion between the English and Scandinavian rhymes. The last line, as it now stands, appears to mean nothing. The word oher, however, is the A.-S. secer, Icel. akr, Dan. ager, and Swed. aker, pronounced oker, a field, and the flower is the field-bell."—Mr. Stephens's MS. The following lines are also used in a play with the toes: Shoe the colt, shoe! Shoe the wild mare! Put a sack on her back, See if she'll bear. If she'll bear, We'll give her some grains; If she won't bear, We'll dash out her brains. There are many various versions of this song in English, and it also exists in Danish (Thiele, iii. 133). Skoe min hest! Hvem kan bedst ? Dot kau vor Freest! Nei maen kan han ej! For dot kan vor stned, Som boer ved Lced. Shoe my horse! Who can best ? Why, our priest! Not he, indeed! But our smith can, He lives at Leed. Perhaps, however, this will be considered more like the common rhyme, " Robert Barnes, Fellow fine," printed in the ' Nursery Rhymes of England,' p. 166. An analogous verse is found in the nursery anthology of Berlin (Kuhn, Kinderlieder, 229), and in that of Sweden (Lilja, p. 14),— Sko, sko min lille hilst, I morgon frosten blir' var giist, Da bli' hiistskorna dyra, Tva styfv...« less